2017-18 Academic Catalog

This course offers an investigation of ancient Maya art and architecture from the pre-Classic, Early, Middle, and Late Classic to the Post-Classic (conquest and post-conquest) and Spanish-Colonial periods. Focusing on a variety of artistic materials, monumental sites, approaches to city planning, including temple burial and entombment, and artistic conversation and cultural interactions with the Maya periphery, we will explore how ritual, death, and the afterlife are imagined, depicted, and enacted through the accouterment of Maya dynastic rulership. Discussion of the art-historical legacy of the ancient Maya as well as the artistic traditions of the present-day Maya will bookend the term.