Revisiting the Dutch Golden Age: Amsterdam as and at the Center of the Early Modern World

Recent museum and scholarly initiatives have offered innovative, corrective approaches to the study of the seventeenth century in The Netherlands-an era commonly known as "the Dutch Golden Age." Within the last decade, numerous museums and special exhibitions have questioned the historical accuracy and political sensitivity of the term; some museum curators have refused to use it any longer, and many scholars have deliberated on its significance, structuring their arguments about the time through other terms. At the heart of conceptions of the "Golden Age" is the city of Amsterdam, which increased in girth, population, and celebrity between 1600 and 1700. Dutch maritime prowess and trading ventures around the globe resulted in the exponential growth of the urban fabric of Dutch cities and their fame, and Amsterdam was first among equals. Amsterdam was not just the wealthiest, most powerful city in the Dutch Republic, but was praised as the center of the world (omphalos mundi) and celebrated in monuments; and the visual arts were practiced and celebrated widely. But the flow of currency and luxury goods was not the only structuring dynamic: the Dutch involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and the gap between rich and poor, powerful and disenfranchised in the burgeoning metropolis are also hallmarks of the time and place. Studying contemporary scholarly and curatorial approaches to a past that has been by turns glorified and disavowed, this seminar will enable students to engage directly with changing conceptions of the history of this time and place-by reading current historical accounts and editorial interventions and meeting with proponents of various views of the subject (e.g., scholars who have opined that doing away with the "Golden Age" model amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater vs. scholars and artists who engage with and propose new lenses for assessing the history of Amsterdam and the Dutch Republic in the context of considerations on po
Course Attributes: AS HUM; AS LCD; EN H; FA HUM; AR HUM; AH RB; BU Hum; BU IS

Revisiting the Dutch Golden Age: Amsterdam as and at the Center of the Early Modern World

ART HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY 4674

Section 01