Weekly Outline

Week 1 – Introduction (January 27)

We will start this course by exploring both what we cover in this course and how we will cover it. Some basic questions we will begin with are–What is considered design? How do we define Latin America? These seemingly simple questions allow us to start to think about the implications of what we call “modern Latin American design.” We will also consider from where (our positionality) we, individually and collectively, enter into this work.

Week 2 – Latin American Design in a Global Context (February 3)

Questioning how the field has been constructed allows us to better understand the readings, objects, and narratives we will engage with throughout the semester. Even beyond the topic of the course, we can ask how Latin American design can provide an opportunity for a more globally-minded design history, not just in terms of geography but in terms of promoting more inclusive perspectives and methods?

Readings:

Patricia Lara-Betancourt and Livia Rezende, “Locating Design Exchanges in Latin American and the Caribbean,” Journal of Design History 32, no. 1 (Feb. 2019), 1-16.
Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2-3 (March/May 2007):168-178.
Tatiana Flores, “Latinidad is Cancelled: Confronting an Anti-Black Construct,” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 3, no. 3 (2021): 58-79.

Recommended:

Andrea Giunta and George F. Flaherty, “Latin American Art History: And Historiographic Turn,” Art in Translation 9 (2017): 121-142.

Week 3 – Colonial Crossroads: Contact and Narrative Building (February 10)

Examining the colonial period enriches our history of Latin American design both at that moment and illuminates certain power structures and themes that continue to affect design later on and in the contemporary moment. What ideas and values were embedded in design? What do terms like mestizaje, hybridization and creolization mean for design? How did Latin America function as a global crossroads and what implications did that have in shaping what becomes considered Latin American design?

Readings:

Jorge F. Rivas Pérez, “Domestic Display in the Spanish Overseas Territories,” in Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492-1898, ed. Richard Aste (New York: Monacelli Press, 2013), 48-103.
Fernando Luiz Lara, “American Roots of Cartesian Concepts” and “Renaissance and Baroque Counterinfluences,” in Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024), 56-90.

Recommended:

D. J. Huppatz, “Globalizing Design History and Global Design History,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 2 (May 2015): 182-202.

Week 4 – Graphic Power (February 17)

Using graphic design as the thread, we will look diachronically to explore themes such as national identity, cultural expression, resistance, and style, among others. In doing so, we will further interrogate the frameworks used to construct narratives of Latin American design. We will consider the ways in which we negotiate different themes and frameworks that can help or hurt our own intellectual and research endeavors.

Readings:

Diane Miliotes, José Guadalupe Posada and the Mexican Broadside (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006).
Nicole Cristi and Javiera Manzi Araneda, “Political Resistance Posters During Pinochet’s Dictatorship in Chile: Approaching the Graphic Backroom,” Journal of Design History 32, no. 1 (Feb. 2019): 69-87.
Teresa Eckmann, “The Latin AMerican Poster: Image, Message, and Means,” in Latin American Posters: Public Aesthetics and Mass Politics, ed. Russ Davidson (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2006), 35-49.

Week 5 – Theorizing Latin America (February 24)

Through group work, we will explore different theoretical texts about Latin America and/or design. Groups will be assigned different texts and we will come together to share our work, ultimately broadening everyone’s understanding of the diversity of relevant theory.

Group 1

Lucila Fernández Uriarte, “Modernity and Postmodernity from Cuba,” Journal of Design History 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2005): 245-255.
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 95-109.

Group 2

Arturo Escobar, “Autonomous Design and the Emergent Transnational Critical Design Studies Field,” in Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives, eds. Claudia Mareir and Nina Paim (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021), 25-38.
Santiago Castro-Gómez, “(Post)Coloniality for Dummies: Latin American Perspectives on Modernity, Coloniality, and the Geopolitics of Knowledge,” in Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, eds. Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 259-285.

Group 3 (to be confirmed)

Néstor García Canclini, “Introduction: Hybrid Cultures in Globalized Time” and “Latin American Contradictions: Modernism without Modernization,” in Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. Christopher L. Chiappari and Silvia L. López (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), xxiii-xlvi, 41-65.

Week 6 – Mid-Century: Tradition Meets Modernity and Other Myths (March 3)

Turning to the topic of mid-century modernism we will interrogate how designers negotiated such constructed dualities as modern/traditional, design/craft, and machine/man–whether reinforcing, questioning, or subverting these artificial dichotomies. We will also consider reception, especially user experience, as not always aligning with designer intentions.

Readings:

Clara Porset, “Living Design: In Search of Our Own King of Furniture (1953)” in Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940-1978, eds. Gabriela Rangel and Jorge Rivas Pérez (New York: Americas Society), 196-207.
Christina L. de León, “Modern Lifestyles: Clara Porset and the Art of Exhibiting the Mexican Home,” in Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940-1978, eds. Gabriela Rangel and Jorge Rivas Pérez (New York: Americas Society), 62-75.
Verónica Devalle, “Tomás Maldonado, 1944-1957: From Arte Concreto to nueva visión,” Journal of Design History 32, no. 1 (Feb. 2019), 17-34.

Recommended:

Silvia Fernández, “The Origins of Design Education in Latin America: From the hfg in Ulm to Globalization,” Design Issues 22, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 3-19.

Week 7 – Industrialization, Developmentalism and the Latin American Cold War (March 10)

Drawing from a growing body of new research on the Latin American Cold War as context, this week’s focus considers how industrialization and developmentalism both shaped and were shaped by design. We will consider the relationship between developmentalist mentalities and different political structures and governments and how that intersects with the professionalization of design.

Readings:

Ramón Grosfoguel, “Developmentalism, Modernity, and Dependency Theory in Latin America,” in Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, eds. Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 307-331..
Patricio del Real, “Our Man in MoMA: René d’Harnoncourt, the “Mixed-Blood,” and the “Cholo,” in Constructing Latin American: Architecture, Politics, and Race and the Museum of Modern Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 129-153.
Erica Morawski, “The Caribe Hilton: Redefining Puerto Rico Through Operation Bootstrap,” in Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming), np.

Spring Break – No Class – March 17

Week 8 – Resistance and Revolution (March 24)

Resistance and revolution are common themes through which to explore the history of Latin America. We’ll take these on to consider the way design has been employed in service of resistance and revolution as well as interrogating how design is used to construct historical narratives.

Readings:

Juan-Camilo Buitrago-Trujillo, “The Siege of the Outsiders ALADI: The First Latin American Design Association and Its Discourse of Resistance,” Journal of Design History 34, no. 1 (2020): 54-68.
Karen Benezra, “Cybersyn: Style, Management, and the Object of Design,” in Dematerialization: Art and Design in Latin America (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), 133-160.
Erica Morawski, “Por el Pueblo, Para el Pueblo: Tensions between Leisurescapes and Revolutionary Ideology in Castro’s Cuba,” in Coastal Architectures and the Politics of Tourism: Leisurescapes in the Global South, eds. Sibel Bozdogan, Petros Phokaides, and Panayiota Pyla (New York: Routledge, 2022), 101-115.

Week 9 – Research Project: Mid-Project Workshop (March 31)

Week 10 – Designer Spotlight: Lina Bo Bardi (April 7)

Through a focus on Lina Bo Bardi we will take a deeper dive into questions of the designer–especially in relation to identity, agency and politics. Bo Bardi is a useful example to consider not just the designer as individual, but relationships between individuals and between individual and state/government. This case study also allows us to explore questions of knowledge, the public, insider/outsider, and engagement with indigenous culture.

Readings:

Hilary Macartney (introduction) and Zanna Gilbert (translation), “Lina Bo Bardi: Three Essays in Design and the Folk Arts of Brazil,” West 86th 20, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2013): 110-124. (you will be assigned one of the three essays to read)
Olivia de Oliveira, “Myth, Popular Culture, and Collective Memory: The Humanist and Symbolic Dimension in the Work of Lina Bo Bardi,” in Lina Bo Bardi 100: Brazil’s Alternative Path to Modernism, eds. Andres Lepik and Vera Simone Bader (Osfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag), 153-167.

Choose one of the following to read:

Zeuler R. Lima, “Between Cabinets of Curiosity and Teatro Povero: Lina Bo Bardi’s Tactics of Display,” in Lina Bo Bardi 100: Brazil’s Alternative Path to Modernism, eds. Andres Lepik and Vera Simone Bader (Osfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag), 67-86.
Catherine Veikos, “The Hands of the People: SESC Pompeia,” in Lina Bo Bardi 100: Brazil’s Alternative Path to Modernism, eds. Andres Lepik and Vera Simone Bader (Osfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag), 119-134.
Renato Anelli, “Lina Bo Bardi and Her Relationship to Brazil’s Economic and Social Development Policy,” in Lina Bo Bardi 100: Brazil’s Alternative Path to Modernism, eds. Andres Lepik and Vera Simone Bader (Osfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag), 169-184.

Week 11 – Exhibiting Latin America (April 14)

How have different Latin American countries and their design work been displayed to other publics and why? How and by whom is designed used to depict or assign identity to Latin American countries or regions? How does an exhibition function as a space for negotiating identities–one that is also susceptible to diverse reception? These are just some of the questions we explore as we engage with some case studies of exhibitions.

Readings:

Patricio del Real, “Building a Continent: MoMA’s Latin American Architecture SInce 1945 Exhibition,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (2007), 95-110.
Livia Rezende, “Manufacturing the Raw in Design Pageantries: The Commodification and Gendering of Tropical Nature at the 1867 Exposition Universelle,” Journal of Design History 30, no. 2 (May 2017): 122-138.
Jorge Rivas Pérez, “The Nerve Center: Identity and Production in Contemporary Latin American Design,” in New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America (Madrid: Museum of Art and Design and Turner, 2014), 59-62.

Week 12 – Research Review & Check-in with Instructor (April 21)

Week 13 – Works in Progress & Peer Review (April 28)

Week 14 – Latin America Beyond?: Latinx Identity and Aesthetics (May 5)

Challenging the geographic borders of Latin America, this week looks to scholarship that engages with Latinx graphic design in the United States to invite questions of a more expansive design history. What might be shared, or different, within and without the borders of Latin America in terms of design practice and profession, identity, and culture.

Readings:

Johana Lodoño, “The Latino-ness of Type: Making Design Identities Socially Significant,” Social Semiotics 25, no. 2 (2015): 142-150.
Robin Adèle Greeley, “Richard Duardo’s ‘Aztlán’ Poster: Interrogating Cultural Hegemony in Graphic Design,” Design Issues 14, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 21-34.
Jesse Lerner, “The Mesoamerica of the Chicano Movement,” in Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915-1985, ed. Wendy Kaplan (Munich: DelMonico Books, 2017), 168-171.

Week 15 – Student Presentations & Course Conclusion (May 12)

Students will present their research projects followed by comments and questions. After this, we’ll have a group conversation tying research projects into the content and work of the course overall, encouraging reflection on where we’ve been, where we are, and where we may go.