ARTH 391 Art and its Changing Contexts: Vietnam & Cambodia

• Tuesdays, 11:45 am-14:15 pm
• Course delivery: Online
• Instructor: Dr. Marco Deyasi

Southeast Asia is a crossroads, where ancient cultures meet, change, and persevere. The religions and cultures of India and China famously meet in the Southeast Asian peninsula (once called “Indo-China”). But they are hardly the only ones. This course will focus on the art and culture of Vietnam and Cambodia, from c. 1,000 CE to the present. Of particular concern will be the cultural diversity of the area. Rather than project twenty-first century national borders into the past, we will instead focus on the persistence of cultural mixing in identity formation, including the appropriation and adaption of colonial ideas by local peoples—from Chinese Confucianism through to modern colonialism and twenty-first century globalization. In this way, we will be better equipped to interrogate the ways that cultural and national identities are tied to particular historical narratives and imagined communities. We will examine the histories written by various groups to justify their own visions of what SE Asia should be. A major goal of the course is for students to understand how problematic and complicated the writing of history can be.

This is the last time this course will be taught at Concordia. It will be as much a history course as an art history course. Readings may include some postcolonial theory along with scholarly histories. No prior coursework in art or history is required.