This course covers the history of Latin America from the time of Columbus to around 1870. It thus reckons with almost four centuries of encounter, colonization, accommodation, and struggle that frame the ways that Latin America was becoming Latin American. Lectures and a mix of secondary and primary source readings and images produced during the colonial period serve as points of entry for discussion in section meetings.

The broad goal of this class is to understand how Latin America’s colonial past affected its experience in the aftermath of colonialism, and indeed continues to affect it today. The focus will be on what systemic racism means in the Latin American context, and how it is different from and similar to the systemic racism that emerged out of the British American context in the United States. “Latin American” colonialism, at least as much as the British variety in the U.S. and probably more so, was intimately bound up with race, given the very large indigenous populations in much of the region and the very large African populations in other places, and also given that there were many sub-regions where both indigenous and African-descended peoples were numerous compared to European-descended peoples. How the nations that emerged out of colonialism handled questions of race is a crucial part of the story, and the class extends beyond the colonial period strictly defined and into the twentieth century. While the class is centrally concerned with systemic racism, we will also explore how other themes intersect with race, including epidemic disease, gender, religion, urban history, and nationalism. Requirements: two short papers, midterm, final. Midterm and final will both be take-home.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills