My name is Krystle Stricklin, and I am a 7th- year doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department. My research focuses on American art and photography and the visual legacies of war and empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I am currently finishing a Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., where I spent the past year researching and writing my dissertation on photographic albums created during the Spanish-Cuban-American and Philippine-American Wars. While living in Baltimore, MD, this year, I am excited to collaborate with faculty and fellow PhD grads on new collections-based art history curriculum for undergraduates at Pitt.  

For the Humanities Engage Curricular Development Grant, I am working with Professor Jennifer Josten of the History of Art and Architecture Department on a course titled, Art and Politics in Modern Latin America, which is scheduled for fall 2020. This course examines artistic and architectural developments in modern Latin America (from the late nineteenth century to the present) in relation to broader political, social, and economic forces. A central concern of this course is to consider Latin America, including the Caribbean, from the vantage point of the United States: how has the US intervened in the region historically, and what is the nature of cultural and political relationships between the US and Latin America today? In studying the important contributions made by artists, architects, and patrons in Latin America, this course surveys artists and architects who worked in the service of governmental regimes during the twentieth century, as well as artists who employed artworks to challenge or subvert structural inequities and repression, from the 1930s paintings of Frida Kahlo to conceptual projects realized under dictatorships in the Southern Cone.

My module titled “Photographing the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Émigré Experience” centers on photography relating to the exodus of Cubans to the US that began in 1959 during the Cuban Revolution, which reached a high point in 1980 with the Mariel Boatlift, and continues to today. “The situation of exile, for anyone anywhere, is traumatic,” writes art historian Carol Damian in her discussion of how art is used to negotiate the traumatic experiences of exile. An important goal of the module is for students to learn about the history of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban exile experience and to discuss how the trauma of exile has influenced the work of important Cuban-American artists and photographers.

For this module, students will be asked to explore a few significant digital collections of Cuban and Cuban-American photographs, including the University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection, which is the largest repository of materials on Cuba outside of the island and the most comprehensive collection of resources about Cuban exile history. Specifically, we will be looking at the online digital exhibition In Search of Freedom: Cuban Exiles and the U.S. Cuban Refugee Program, which draws from the University of Miami Libraries’ collection of Cuban Refugee Center Records. This important show was originally curated by Graciella Cruz-Taura, Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University, and displayed at Miami-Dade County’s Stephen P. Clark Building in 2005. After exploring the online collections, students will select one or two photographs to write about in a discussion board post and to share with their fellow classmates during the weekly recitation.

I am excited to work with Professor Josten and her TA for this course, Marisol Villela Balderrama, as we navigate the challenges of teaching during a pandemic and hopefully develop new skills and pedagogical strategies that will engage students in learning about the art and politics of modern Latin America.

Krystle Stricklin
History of Art and Architecture
August 17, 2020

Learn about all the projects from the Curricular Development Opportunity for Ph.D. Students