“You Are Here”: Mapas, Pueblos Indígenas y Mundos Nuevos

Catalog description

Maps can and have been taken lightly as innocent illustrations of space, but there is so much more to them than meets the eye. This course will teach us how to deal with maps as complicated cultural for the study of Latin America. By learning how to “read” maps or “make them speak”, we will navigate issues of knowledge and power as they manifest in these documents throughout colonial history and until the era of resolutions. Moreover, we will connect these issues with present-day Indigenous mapping practices and processes or repossession and restorative justice. We will broaden our knowledge of the processes of conquest and colonization in the Americas while reflecting on some classic and urgent topics of ethnic representation, land dispossession, and border-making.