Columbus: A Global History

Catalog description

This seminar returns to the global framework of Columbus's encounters with what would come to be called the New World. Students will study medieval conceptions of the world in maps, cosmographies, and travel literature as well as developments in China and the Americas before 1492. Our central focus will be texts by Columbus and his contemporaries: Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, Amerigo Vespucci, Martin Waldseemüller, Bartolomé de las Casas, Peri Reis, Mehmed el-Su'udi, and Jacopo ha-Kohen. Attention will be given to slavery, colonization, evangelization, prophecy, apocalypticism, and resistance. We will also explore the economic and intellectual consequences of Columbus's voyages across time.