Cécile Fromont (Department of History of Art and Architecture)
First-Year Seminar 66J (Spring Term) Enrollment: Limited to 15
Tuesday, 12-2:45 PM CANVAS SITE
How and why are monsters made? What can visualizations of monsters tell us about how Otherness is constructed, contested, and critiqued? What do monsters tell us about human oppression, agency, and cross-cultural encounters? In this seminar, we will use historical analysis of visual and material culture through the charged site of the “monster” in the Atlantic World (Africa, Latin America, and Europe) to hone in sharper visual analysis skills, a critical awareness of the many-sided discourses on monstrosity, and a deeper understanding of Atlantic history.
Our seminar will make robust use of Harvard’s collections to observe, analyze, and discuss in person artworks, rare books, maps, in conjunction with the scholarly and theoretical approaches they have engendered over the centuries. Our intellectual journey will follow a diachronic and thematic trajectory with special attention paid to Atlantic Africa, Latin America, and the Iberian Peninsula from circa 1500 to today. The goal for the seminar is to interrogate how monsters create and disrupt social categories. As the perpetually constructed Other—that which exists outside of and breaks with culturally-defined norms—monsters and their depictions provide a uniquely appropriate site for investigating multiple perspectives on questions related to imagination, race, gender, violence, sexuality, and sanctity.