The Nature of Conquest: Scientific Literatures of the Americas

Catalog description

Throughout history, conquest and colonization have implied different kinds of appropriations: control over new lands, new bodies, new languages. With the appropriation of new languages came the confrontation between different ways of organizing the world and, in particular, alternative ways of understanding humankind's relationship to nature. This course explores the scientific literatures that emerged in the wake of Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas (1500-1800). These hybrid scientific literatures, written in Spanish but also in Nahuatl, Maya, Quechua and graphic forms, illustrate the lasting cross-pollination between Old and New World notions about American nature.