Art and Identity: 'Race', Ideology, Culture

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Annie E. Coombes

This module explores the ways in which visual culture has contributed to the construction of national and ethnic identities during periods of intense political and social transformation. It compares how such categories are produced in two distinct political contexts: the aftermath of the Socialist Revolution in Mexico during the late 1920s and 1930s and in Germany during the Third Reich.

Topics include an analysis of modernity, tradition and history in Mexico through the murals of Diego Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros; revolutionary politics and subjectivity in the work of  Frida Kahlo and  Tina Modotti; myth and indigeneity in Eisenstein's film Que Viva Mexico; the body as 'sign' in Nazi Germany and the invention of tradition in Riefensthal's film Triumph of the Will.