Professor Carolyn Dean, History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz will discuss her current book project. Recognizing that the humanistic disciplines, born in Europe, have often had an uncomfortable relationship with things created outside Western traditions, Colonial Things, Cosmopolitan Thinking seeks to illuminate how indigenous objects in the colonial past have been used and invested with meaning—both by their creators, and by people living outside indigenous communities. The book addresses three fundamental issues: how indigenous Americans created their place in the wider world to which Spanish colonialism introduced them; how perceptions of indigenous art have shifted over time, both for natives and outsiders; and how, therefore, indigenous art contributes to our understanding of colonialism and its history. By developing new insights and cross-cultural perspectives on indigenous art from the Americas, Colonial Things, Cosmopolitan Thinking participates in both long-standing and current debates about that which is foreign and unfamiliar within the context of Western hermeneutics.
