HIST 162 - Envisioning Latin America

1 unit(s)

How have people come to see Latin America since it first entered the European consciousness at the end of the fifteenth century? How have the people of Latin America themselves deflected and recast the “imperial eye”? This course explores Latin America ca. 1500-ca. 2010s through the writings of outside observers–explorers, bureaucrats, Enlightenment scientists, traders and investors, ethnographers—to uncover the process of producing an exoticized vision of a region open to economic expansion and empire. We also explore Latin American self-representations, drawing on colonial-era indigenous and creole letters and reports, post-colonial poetry and novels, government-sponsored pavilions at international expositions, and official tourist campaigns. Along the way, we address several central themes in Latin American history—race and ethnicity, gender, nation building (as both a political and a cultural project)—considered within the conceptual frame of transculturation. Leslie Offutt.

Not offered in 2017/18.

Two 75-minute periods.

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