VISST 4601

Space, Gender, Body in Early Modern Art

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

The body is a universal. How we construct our understandings of it is not. In this class we will investigate conceptions and treatment of the early-modern body (1400-1700) mainly in Europe with excursions to China, Japan, Africa. Among our topics will be: classical understanding of the body and gender; cross-cultural practices of medicine and anatomy; aesthetics and the nude; definitions of beauty and the grotesque. Criminal, sinful and saintly bodies; death, the macabre, and  the mortal, divine body of Christ; the ambiguous gender of children; the formation of identity through portraiture; the science of sexuality and art of erotics as well as correspondences among bodies, domestic and public spaces, the macrocosm and microcosm will round out our study. We will work with historical materials with an eye for current practices in bodily identities.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (HA-AS)

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