Colonial Latin American History

Catalog description

HIST 569 gives students an overview of key literatures, methodologies, and debates in the historiography of Latin America (the writing of Latin American history), from the 1490s to the Independence period (mostly, but by no means solely, the 1820s). Its primary focus is Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil, especially Iberian interactions with indigenous American and Africans/African-descended people. But some attention is given to all regions of the Americas and to roles played by British, French, and other colonizers. Chronologically, it is a prequel to HIST 570 (but not an official prerequisite). The course comprises five sections, each based on an historical sub-field and its historiography within the larger field: (1) the indigenous civilizations of the Americas and their responses to European invasion, including the shift from traditional Eurocentric Conquest narratives to the New Conquest History; (2) the political and economic institutions, as well as the culture, of Spanish and Portuguese colonization; (3) the changes and continuities in indigenous civilizations during the colonial centuries (usually termed "Ethnohistory," and explored more fully in HIST 571 ); (4) the history of trans-Atlantic slavery and the experience of African-descended peoples in Colonial Latin America; and (5) a sub-field that will vary according to instructor, examples being the history of science and medicine in the region, the history of gender and sexuality, and the history of religious change (or "the Spiritual Conquest").