Latin American Ethnohistory

Catalog description

HIST 571 gives students an overview of key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historiography of Latin American ethnohistory, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. "Ethnohistory" is defined here as the historical study of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The course comprises four sections, each based on an historical sub-field and its historiography: (1) the indigenous civilizations of the Americas in the pre-Contact and Contact periods, primarily fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including but not necessarily limited to the civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas; (2) indigenous responses to European invasion, with particular attention to regions of Spanish and Portuguese activity - and including the historiographical development of the New Conquest History, with attention also given to regions where colonies were not established; (3) the indigenous experience of Spanish and Portuguese colonization, and indigenous contributions to new colonial-era societies, including changes and continuities in indigenous civilizations during the colonial centuries - and including the historiographical development of the New Philology); and (4) the indigenous experience of the long Independence period, taking the seminar to a point in the nineteenth century, as determined by the instructor.