Wintersession Travel Courses: Mandatory Pre-Departure Meeting (Mexico, all courses)

The primary focus of this studio is to weave together cultural research, material exploration, and full-scale construction to explore the resonance between traditional craft practices and contemporary techniques of design.

This travel course is a cross-disciplinary Liberal Arts collaboration between THAD and HPSS. The THAD component "Pre-Colonial to Contemporary" addresses colonial, modern, and contemporary arts, while the HPSS component, "Pre-Columbian Architecture and Traditional Crafts" addresses the pre-Columbian history of architecture and arts.

Students in this course will be introduced to Oaxaca and its biodiverse environs as home to a radical mixture of cultures and ethnicities: Zapotec, Mixtec, and a host of other indigenous communities; mestizos, or those with mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage; as well as the historically under-recognized AfroMexican communities.