Introduction to Latin American Studies

Catalog description

Latin America stretches from the beaches of Cancun in Mexico and the Caribbean to the glaciers of Bolivia. Given the great diversity of this hemisphere’s ecology, culture, and people, we draw on multidisciplinary approaches to explore the region’s history and geopolitical importance in modern times. We begin with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural legacies of Indigenous and African people on the region’s transformation through processes of colonization, dispossession, and enslavement. The class goes on to interrogate Latin America’s role in globalization, capitalism, and development as well as the contradictions created by the region’s extreme social inequality and the ways that people have rebelled against that inequality. Over a single semester, we learn from the wide-ranging, creative interventions forged by Latin American philosophers, artists, activists, peasants, musicians, engineers, religious mystics, and social visionaries as well as from the region’s strategic position for technological innovation, development, and multicultural social change.