This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

In 2010, activists in a small Spanish town doused red paint on a statue depicting Hernán Cortés with his foot on the head of an Aztec deity. Ten years later, protestors in California, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Chile, and other parts of the old Spanish imperial world rose up to topple statues of conquistadors, explorers, and missionaries. These recent protests represent more than just a modern-day repudiation of Spain’s imperial legacy. They mark the most recent chapter in a complex history of tensions and resistance stretching back centuries in these spaces. In this course, we will trace the rise and fall of the global Spanish empire through the lens of this resistance at regional and local levels to imperial governance, economic exploitation, racial classification, religious conversion, and cultural assimilation. Lectures will grapple with critical questions, such as what strategies, mechanisms, and institutions did Spanish imperial agents develop to conquer and reinforce their control over far-flung possessions in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and the Philippines? What different forms of resistance emerged in response to this process of colonization, and how did they shape the development of both regional identities and the broader empire? When and why did the Spanish imperial project begin to falter and eventually collapse? Over the semester, students will come to see that resistance manifested at different moments, for different reasons, and in different ways. Rebellions, revolts, and uprisings were common, but so too were communal and individual acts of nonviolent defiance against the established order carried out by indigenous peoples, slaves, nuns, merchants, soldiers, and others. All of these and more will be covered in this course as we adopt a novel approach to Spanish imperial history with relevance to the present day.

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