Global Humanities

How did transcultural exchanges, explorations, art market(s), travels, and diplomatic interactions influence artistic production, taste, and collecting? By focusing on the early modern period (roughly 15th -18th centuries), this course explores material and artistic exchanges across cultures and investigates case studies casting light on how encounters among diverse societies have shaped art and visual/material culture. After a preliminary methodological and historical introduction, the course will focus especially on three major Italian centres—Rome, Florence, and Venice—to explore their interactions with the global world, and investigate how entangled objects, complex ethnoscapes, and mobility help us problematize the production and spectatorship of art in relation to local and global contexts.

no prerequisites

In addition to the class powerpoints, which will be periodically uploaded to Moodle, students will be expected to read the following required texts: Kathleen Christian and Leah Clark, eds., European Art and the Wider World, 1350-1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017) Emma Barker, ed., Art, Commerce, and Colonialism, 1600-1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), chapters 1 and 2 Further required readings will be provided throughout the course. moodle page for the course: https://elearning.uniroma1.it/course/view.php?id=18752

Lectures and classroom/zoom discussions.

Attendance is strongly recommended.

In order to pass the exam (18/30), students will be required to have a basic knowledge of the course materials. Students showing an excellent and critical knowledge of all course materials and demonstrating outstanding capacity for independent thinking and the ability to meaningfully connect topics and information learned during the course will obtain a grade of 30/30 e lode. An optional written exam (in the form of a research paper to be submitted at the end of the course) may be proposed to attending students as alternative to the oral exam.

Jerry Brotton, Renaissance Bazaar. From the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Deborah Howard. Venice and the East. The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100-1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000) James Harper, ed., The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450-1750 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2011) Stephanie Leitch, “Burgkmair’s Peoples of Africa and India (1508) and the Origins of Ethnography in Print,” The Art Bulletin 91, No. 2 (June 2009): 134-159 Amin Jaffer and Anna Jackson, eds., Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800 (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2004) Michael North, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900. Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections, (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010) Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C. Mancall, eds., Collecting across Cultures. Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)

Lectures and classroom discussions, together with visits to monuments and artworks that are relevant to the course.