| Latinx/e Art and Visual Culture |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
3020 (001) |
Spring 2026 |
|
Description
This course examines the dynamism and complexities of Latinx artistic and cultural production in the United States from the mid-twentieth century to the present. An imperfect yet ultimately generative identifier, Latinx is a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American and/or Caribbean birth or descent living in the United States. In addition to studying the formation of Latinx identities among artistic and creative practitioners, the course will study the context-specific histories that have shaped the aesthetics, ideological frameworks, and socially engaged practices of Latinx art and visual culture.
We will read a variety of texts and publications that debate, conceptualize, and critique Latinx art and visual culture, including academic essays and book chapters, interviews and dialogues, exhibition catalogues, primary documents and manifestos, artists¿ books, and zines. Throughout the class, we will investigate issues concerning race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, intersectionality, migration and diaspora, social and political activism, family and kinship, religion and spirituality, art markets, and cultural reclamation.
Students can expect to complete weekly reading responses, a midterm exam, a 3-5-page essay on an exhibition or artwork, a final research paper, and a class presentation about their final paper topic.
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Class Number
1057
Credits
3
|
| The Creative Lives of Archives |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
3034 (001) |
Fall 2025 |
|
Description
Archives are more than boxes of historical documents studied by historians. As this course demonstrates, archives are also sites of creative practices, interventions, and collaborations. Focusing on archival practices in contemporary art, this course examines how artists make work with preexisting archives and produce new collections of their own. We will investigate how artists have activated archival collections, countered exclusions in archives, critiqued colonial archives, and developed archives with and for marginalized communities. The course will provide an overview of key terms and major themes in critical archival studies, such as memory, ephemera, critical fabulation.
Readings will include texts by the following scholars, curators, and archivists: Sarah Callahan, Tina Campt, Michelle Caswell, Maria Eugenia Cotera, Ann Cvetkovich, Okwui Enwezor, Saidiya Hartman, Carolyn Steedman, and Diana Taylor. Along with these writings, we will learn about the art practices and archives of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC artists: William Camargo, Guadalupe Rosales, Wendy Red Star, Irene Antonia Diane Reece, Diana Solís, Stephanie Syjuco, and Fred Wilson. In addition to the Flaxman Library Special Collections, we will visit archives held in Chicago institutions, such as the Newberry Library, the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, and the Harold Washington Library Center. During these class trips, we will meet with archivists and librarians.
Coursework will include written reflections on assigned readings and field trips, a creative project based on an archival collection, and a final research paper and presentation on a self-selected topic.
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Class Number
2279
Credits
3
|
| Latinxs Studies |
Liberal Arts |
3301 (001) |
Spring 2026 |
|
Description
This course introduces students to theories and methodologies foundational to Latinx Studies as well as current trends and debates in the field. Through close readings of assigned texts and classroom discussions, students will study the diverse social, economic, political, and cultural histories of Latines and Latinxs in the United States. The course integrates close textual analysis with in-depth discussions, equipping students with critical tools to analyze the social construction of race and ethnicity, patterns of migration and diaspora, the impacts of colonialism, modes of resistance and activism, and the emergence of pan-ethnic identities. Texts and assignments will vary each year. Readings may include book chapters and articles by Gloria Anzaldua, Frances R. Aparicio, Lilia Fernandez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Albert Sergio Laguna, Claudia Milian, Nancy Raquel Mirabal, and Barbara Andrea Sostaita, among others. Students should anticipate completing in-class writing exercises and reading responses, two short papers, and a final research-based essay and presentation on a topic of their choosing. Students¿ final projects will be organized into a class publication, with each student receiving their own copy at the conclusion of the semester.
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Class Number
1755
Credits
3
|
| Identities |
Art History, Theory, and Criticism |
5002 (006) |
Fall 2025 |
|
Description
This interdisciplinary course focuses on issues of identity and artistic production in modern and contemporary art from the nineteenth century to the present. Situated in the context of the United States, the class examines how individual and collective identities shape the production, categorization, and reception of art. While the terms ¿modern¿ and ¿contemporary¿ remain largely undisputed, categories of identification adopted by and placed upon artists are neither universally accepted nor applied. Even as more nuanced understandings of intersecting identities (including race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, and religion) develop, simplistic and reductive ideas concerning the correlation between identity and aesthetic persist. In our investigation, we will study how histories of migration, settler colonialism, activism, and the emergence of political identities intersect the art worlds and visual culture.
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Class Number
1923
Credits
3
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