Experience Reed’s renowned HUM 110 course, focusing on Mexico for this syllabus, particularly the city of Tenochtitlan/Mexico City, from the Spanish invasion to the twentieth century. Participants may sign up for one or all three standalone sessions. Each session includes optional advanced reading. The first half of each session features a lecture viewing, followed by discussion in the second half.

Unit I: "Casta Paintings"- Sunday, February 22, 3-5pm PT

The readings and materials in HUM 110 examine how difference is constructed, utilized, and reframed through cultural, political, and artistic forms, particularly in relation to race, power, and identity. One example of this process can be seen in casta paintings from eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mexico. These paintings were created within a colonial context to depict and enforce racial categories that shaped people’s legal rights, social opportunities, and claims to citizenship. Rooted in racist assumptions and hierarchical thinking, casta paintings functioned as visual narratives that supported colonial power structures. At the same time, they document the diverse ancestries present in New Spain and complicate the modern myth of a homogeneously “mestizo” Mexico.

Considering both the historical role of casta paintings and the more recent recognition of Afro-Mexican communities, reflecting on how art can both impose racial hierarchies and become a site where those hierarchies are questioned, resisted, or reimagined over time.

This lecture was presented by Laura Leibman, professor of English and humanities, on February 17, 2020.

Assignment

• View the lecture and handout
• Magali M. Carrera, “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico,” Art Journal 57.3 (1998): 36-45. 
• John Tutino, “Terms of Analysis: New Spain in Spanish America,” introductory maps, and “From Mexica Capital to Silver Metropolis, 1350-1770,” in Mexico City, 1808: Power, Sovereignty, and Silver in an Age of War and Revolution (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2018), xiv-xxiv, 21-34.

Prompts

How do artistic representations like casta paintings contribute to the construction, reinforcement, or erasure of racial identities, and in what ways do these images shape the relationship between truth, representation, and political power both in colonial New Spain and in contemporary Mexico? Additionally, how do these visual forms participate in the narration of the modern nation-state, particularly in defining who is included or excluded from national identity?

Sign up by visiting the Hum 110 webpage!