Symposium: The Fabric of the Spanish Americas

ONLINE EVENT | 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. CT | Friday, October 21, 2022

Organized in tandem with Painted Cloth, this symposium will bring together scholars from Colombia, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S. to further explore the social role of textile arts in colonial Latin America. The keynote will be delivered by Dr. Elena Phipps and speakers include historians Tamara J. Walker and Meha Priyadarshini and fashion historian James Middleton. The round table discussion will feature art historians Laura Beltrán-Rubio, Martha Sandoval, and Leslie Todd.

SPEAKER SCHEDULE

9 a.m. – Elena Phipps, Independent Scholar, “Garments and Identity: Textile Traditions in the Global World of Colonial Latin America.”

10 a.m. – Tamara Walker, Barnard College, “Fashioning Whiteness in Colonial Latin American Art.”

10:30 a.m. – James Middleton, Independent Scholar, “They All Greatly Affect Fine Clothes: Textiles in Eighteenth-Century Lima-School Painting.”

11 a.m. – Meha Priyadarshini, University of Edinburgh, “Global Trade, Local Fashion: The rebozo, piña and mantón de Manila.”

11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – Q&A with all morning panelists.

12:00-1:30 p.m. – Intermission

1:30-3:00 p.m. – Round Table Discussion: Artifice in Fashion, Painting and Sculpture

• Laura Beltrán-Rubio, Universidad de los Andes “The Artifice of Fashion: Creating and Performing Identities through Clothing in Colonial Spanish America.”
• Martha Sandoval-Villegas, Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, ITESO”Habit Makes the Man… and the Woman. Portrait and New Spain Social “Fabric.”
• Leslie Todd, Sewanee: The University of the South, “The Brilliance and Brocateado of Eighteenth-Century Sculpture in Quito.”

Funding provided by the College of Liberal Arts, College of Fine Arts, and the School of Architecture.

Image Credit: Domestic Landscape from Quito, in Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa’s Relación histórica del viage a la América Meridional (Madrid: A. Marin, 1748). Benson Latin American Collection, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, The University of Texas at Austin.