3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The course begins at the time when the Southwest was the homeland of the ancient Pueblo people (the “Anasazi”). Our survey moves from the major archaeological sites such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde to the historical communities of the Hopi and Zuni and other Pueblo peoples of New Mexico and Arizona, along with the Navajo and Apache. We then move on to focus on the period of Spanish incursion, when the region became first part of colonial New Spain and then part of independent Mexico. We look at the narratives of the earliest Spanish arrival, and at the long tradition of Spanish colonial art and architecture, culture and religion in the region. We then move on to the incorporation of the region into the U.S. after the Mexican-American war, and with its impact on the Native American and Hispanic populations. The 19th century saw the arrival of the railroads and of an Anglo population of Easterners, and the genesis of the Southwest as a fine art center, sometimes called the Santa Fe-ization of the Southwest. More recently, the area has witnessed the “re-arrival” of a Mexican-American, or Chicano, population along with the retrieval and revival of Mexican cultural traditions such as the Day of the Dead and the cult of Guadalupe. Today the region, for all its cultural conflicts, is the site of an ongoing evolution of a modern ulticultural Southwest. The course includes reading and discussion of literary works by such authors as Willa Cather, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ed Abbey and Tony Hillerman, and an extensive look at the arts of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples, the paintings of the Taos School and the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, and the contemporary revival of Southwest folk art.