Background

The art history department already teaches a number of courses that go beyond the parameters of European and North American art and architecture and it is the department's policy to develop this further and attract research students in such fields. The department already has particular strengths in Chinese and Islamic Art. Further opportunities to globalise the teaching of art and architectural history in an under represented field have arisen from Dr Williams desire to introduce fresh material to his course on Modernism and to expand the subject to look at other kinds of Modernism. The project builds on previous visits to Rio de Janeiro and Brasília which have provided slides for the department's slide collection and inform current teaching.

Aims and Objectives

Create a bank of about 200 images - 35mm slides available for use by students and staff at Edinburgh University. The images will be digitised at the expense of the university. The materials are to be created through a field trip to Mexico City and will cover urban life, buildings and monuments as well as some images from journals.

This will feed into the introduction of a level 3 and 4 (Honours) course on Latin American Modernism as well as two existing Honours courses: the Contemporary City course and the Art as Process course. Visual material relevant to Modernist architecture and public art in Mexico will also be introduced to other lectures at levels 1 and 2 which will encourage a more critical, and less Euro and American centric view of Modernism. This will consist of lectures for the History of Art 1 and 2 survey courses. The new image resource will also feed into an MA course called Architecture and Identity. Following the introduction and revision of these courses, 20 - 25% of Dr Williams's teaching will use Latin American Modernism as a major reference point.

A longer-term aim is to develop a pack of images that can be used by other institutions and or to make available a selection of images, a bibliography and commentary relating to them on an open-access website.

Resources

The main source of visual information will come from the images collected by Dr Williams. Some published material is available on Latin American Modernism in English, but students will be advised that it would be beneficial for them to have some French and or Spanish.

Timescale

Groups Affected

Dr Williams will be implementing the changes. All art history students taking courses on Modernism from undergraduate to postgraduate levels will benefit from the changes made to the curriculum.

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