Portuguese Discoveries and Early Modern Global History

Catalog description

This seminar introduces students to the study of Portugal and its connections to Africa, Asia and the Americas between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Rather than offering a chronological or geographic overview of the topic, we will consider the shifting meanings of "discovery" as understood by early modern individuals and historians since, and how expressions of "discovery" have reflected tensions and struggles around empire, race, gender, and other social categories of difference.