Art, Material Culture, Exchange, and Conflict in the Early Modern Atlantic

Emeralds. Chocolate. Sugar. Indigo. Precious. Sacred. Addictive. Invasive. Like human actors, commodities—and the decorative arts and material culture they can produce and sustain—have stories of their own. They shape human existence, creating new sets of interactions which cross time and space, and offer a unique and incredible lens through which to view the past. This seminar explores the lesser-known lives of material and visual culture that circulated through the early modern Atlantic out into the rest of the world, indelibly changing global trade and taste. We will consider not only the life cycle of a range of materials like emeralds and pearls, visual representations and material culture of colonial exchange, like cacao and tobacco, and consider the ways in which what was seen as a lifeless commodity in one context could be a being and kin in another. Among the topics covered will be the ways in which materiality and the arts reveal new perspectives on narratives of Atlantic violence embedded within luxuries, including the expropriation of Indigenous land and the theft of enslaved labor. Course readings will consider different methods and strategies to investigate these histories of objects and beings found in different parts of the Americas from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Questions of cultural property, considerations of repatriation/rematriation, and cultural appropriation, as well as contemporary artistic interventions into Atlantic world legacies will be woven throughout the semester. Students will be responsible for framing readings weekly, in turn, and will also choose an example of material culture or a commodity to focus on for a final research paper. 3 credits. Satisfies the geocultural requirement.