AFRC070 - COLONIAL LATIN AMERICA

This course provides an introduction to the broad literature on Latin America s rich colonial history. We will begin by tracing some of the early origins of - and points of contact between - the Indian, Iberian, and African men and women who formed the basis of colonial society. As the course progresses, we will explore the variety of ways in which colonial subjects lived, worked, ate, worshipped and socialized. Lectures and reading assignments will draw upon a variety of sources, including court cases, artistic renderings, city maps and street plans, travel accounts of visits to the region, and the material, cultural, and intellectual products made possible by the wealth and dynamism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The course will conclude with an analysis of the Age of Revolutions, a period of dramatic upheaval that remains at the center of lively scholarly debates. By the end of the semester, students will be able to engage the key questions driving these debates, the most important of which, perhaps, is: what is Latin America s colonial legacy?