ARTH 4601/6601 Space, Gender, Body in Early Modern Art
SPRING 2019
(also VISST 4601/6601, FGSS 4601/6601)
L. Pincus
T 2:30-4:25
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.
