Delia Cosentino, “México-Tenochtitlan Transcendent”
UIC Art History Colloquium
April 19, 2024
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location
106 Henry Hall and via Zoom
Calendar
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In this presentation, Cosentino lays out the framework for Resurrecting Tenochtitlan: Imagining the Aztec Capital in Modern Mexico City (UT Press, 2023). The book demonstrates how artists, intellectuals, and government officials attempted to revive the Aztec capital as part of a reassessment of national identity in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). This social network of thinkers oversaw a conceptual excavation of the original Mexica (Aztec) capital in relation to the modernizing urban landscape to produce the idea that the Mexico City of the present is mestizo. With the help of maps, prints, and paintings, cultural leaders essentially rewrote the long-standing myth of the capital’s origins in the Spanish colonial establishment in favor of an earlier foundation in Aztec Tenochtitlan. Celebrations certified its status as the oldest capital city in the American hemisphere as part of a larger set of activities informed by post-revolutionary cultural politics. Engaging contemporary spatial theorists like geographer Doreen Massey, sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel, and cultural heritage scholar Rodney Harrison, Resurrecting Tenochtitlan shows how the Mexican capital’s identity as a layered city was actively constructed through a variety of efforts, especially between 1914-1964—a process that in many ways continues to this day.
Delia Cosentino (PhD, UCLA) is Professor of History of Art and Architecture, affiliated with Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University (Chicago). A Scholar-in-Residence at the Newberry Library, Cosentino studies the visual cultures of Greater Mexico. She is author of Las Joyas de Zinacantepec: Arte Colonial en el Monasterio de San Miguel (Colegio Mexiquense, Estado de México, 2003, 2007). With Adriana Zavala (Tufts) she co-authored Resurrecting Tenochtitlan (Shortlisted, 2024 Charles Rufus Morey Award, & Honorable Mention, ALAA-Arvey Foundation Award]) and has curated several exhibitions at the DePaul University Art Museum, including Nexo/Nexus: Latin American Connections in the Midwest (2016).
For a Zoom link, email arthistory@uic.edu.
Date posted
Apr 15, 2024
Date updated
Apr 15, 2024