As an alternative to the Material Culture essays, you can choose to create a cartonera.

Your cartonera (cardboard book) project will consist of your artwork (see Cartonera Resources link) plus 3 diary entries written by you from the perspective of a historical figure that we study in class or from one of your role play figures. Please come up with a theme for your cartonera depending on the nature of your diary entries: some theme examples are: “My Family History,” “My Family Album,” “Queer History,” “Marriage across Time,” “Rebel Women.”

In addition to an in-class talk by Paloma Celis-Carbajal, the NYPL Curator for Latin American, Iberian, & U.S. Latino Collections, who has extensive knowledge and experience with cartoneras, I will host two non-mandatory cartonera workshops in my office during club hours (Thursdays 12:30-1:45pm) so that you can work on your projects together and be inspired by each other. I will show you how to bind the cartoneras and supply cardboard and art supplies. Feel free to bring your own supplies as well. Check the syllabus for workshop dates.

Although the content of your diary entries should demonstrate that you have been doing the related readings by referring to these historical figure’s lives and the historical context, this cartonera project encourages creative expression. Think of how your historical figure would write in one of the most intimate ways possible: their personal diary. Feel free to use profanity (not gratuitously, of course), make jokes, complain, etc.!

This project is also an opportunity for you to explore and develop your artistic side. For example, you may decide to include codex-style drawings in addition to the text. Or you may decide to write the diary page as if it were a page from a graphic novel. This would be an example of anachronism, since graphic novels were not around in the 15th, 16th, or 17th centuries, but this whole assignment is creative, so I will allow it!

Also, on March 2, 2020, Paloma P. Celis-Carbajal, NYPL Curator for Latin American, Iberian, & U.S. Latino Collections, will be our guest speaker. She has extensive experience with cartoneras and edited the book on display in Cohen Library’s cartonera exhibit “Ambivalent Encounters,” which will be up through the end of the spring 2020 semester (in the second floor display cases). “Ambivalent Encounters” showcases the work of the fall 2018 course “The Conquest of Latin America: Ambivalent Encounters and Historical Memory.”

Everyone will present their cartonera project (or material culture essays) on the final day of class.