a LatAm History Class

Schedule

Week 1: Introduction (August 29)

Read:

In-class viewings:

Week 2: Precolombia I (September 5)

Read:

  1. Transcript of bell hooks, “Cultural Criticism & Transformation”
  2. Donald F. Stevens, Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies, Intro and Chapter 1.
  3. Tom Gunning, “Making Sense of Film.”
  4. Charles Mann, “1491.” The Atlantic Monthly, March 2002.
  5. J. Eric Thompson, “The Meaning of Maize for the Maya”

At-home viewing:

In-class viewing:

Writing due:

Week 3: Apocalypto (September 12)

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapters 1-3.
  2. David Freidel, “Betraying the Maya,” Archaeology 60, no. 2 (March/April 2007): 36-41.
  3. Traci Ardren, “Is Apocalypto Pornography?” Archaeology, December 5, 2006
  4. Andrea Stone, “Orcs in Loincloths,” Archaeology, January 3, 2007

In-class viewing:

Writing:

Week 4: Caribbean Phase (September 19)

Discussion of Apocalypto

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapters 4-5.
  2. Sonya LIpsett-Rivera and Sergio Rivera Ayala, “Columbus Takes On the Forces of Darkness, or Film and Historical Myth in 1492: The Conquest of Paradise,” Based on a True Story, Chapter 2.
  3. Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, “A Handful of Adventurers: The Myth of Exceptional Men,” pp. 1-27.

Writing:

Week 5: 1492 (September 26)

Read:

  1. The Requerimiento.
  2. Leo j. Garofalo, “Christopher Columbus Evaluates Indigenous Societies,” pp. 6-16 in Documenting Latin America: Gender, Race, Empire Volume 1.
  3. Leo J. Garofalo, “European Priests Discuss Ruling Indigenous and African Peoples,” pp. 57-68.

Writing:

Week 6: Conquest I (October 3)

Discussion of 1492

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapters 6-7.
  2. Indian Conquistadors, Intro and Ch. 1.
  3. Camila Townsend, “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico,” AHR 108.3 (2003): 659-687.

Writing:

Week 7: La otra conquista (October 10)

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapter 8.
  2. Mesoamerican Voices, Ch. 3.
  3. 2.J. Michael Francis. “In the Service of God, I Order these Temples of Idolatrous Worship Razed to the Ground”: Extirpation of Idolatry and the Search for the Santuario Grande of Iguaque (Columbia, 1595)” in Colonial Lives, pp. 39-53.
  4. “Orders given to the Twelve (1523)” in Mills, Taylor, and Graham Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History,” (SR Books, 2004): 59-64.

Writing:

Week 8: Colonial Society I - Gender (October 17)

Discussion of La otra conquista

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapters 10-12.
  2. Few, Martha. “Women, Religion, and Power: Gender and Resistance in Daily Life in Late-Seventeenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala.” Ethnohistory 42:4 (Autumn 1995), 627-637).
  3. Rosalva Loreto Lopez (trans. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera), “The Devil, Women, and the Body in Seventeenth-Century Puebla Convents,” The Americas 59.2 (October 2002): 181-199.

Writing:

Week 9: I, Worst of All (October 24)

Read:

  1. Susan E. Ramirez, “I, the Worst of All: The Literary Life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”
  2. Leo J. Garofalo, “Ambitious Women in a ‘Man’s World’” pp. 140-149.
  3. Read the six Sor Juana sonnets here.
  4. Kathryn Burns, “Gender and the Politics of Mestizaje: The Convent of Santa Clara,” HAHR 78.1 (Feb 1998): 5-44.

Writing:

Week 10: Colonial Society I – Slavery (October 31)

Discussion of I, Worst of All

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapter 9.
  2. William Van Norman, “Café con azúcar: The Expansion fo the Slave Population and Plantations,” in Shade-Grown Slavery (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013).
  3. Sherwin Bryant, “Finding Gold, Forming Slaver: The Creation fo a Classic Slave Society, Popayan, 1600-1700” The Americas 63.1 (july 2006), pp. 81-112.
  4. Manuel Barcia, “Homicides, Conspiracies, and Revolts,” in Seeds of Insurrection (Baton Rouge: LSU Press)

Writing:

Week 11: La ultima cena (November 7)

Read:

  1. The documents from Gloria García Rodríguez, Ada Ferrer, and Nacy Westrate, eds. Voices of the Enslaved in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2011):
    • Chapter 5. The Plantation Social Network
    • Chapter 6. The Labor Relations of Coartado Slaves
    • Chapter 7. The Master’s Violent Hand.
  2. William Van Norman, “When Everyday Actions Escalate: Resistance, Rebellions, and Cultural Complexity,” in Shade-Grown Slavery.

Writing:

Week 12: Bourbon Reforms (November 14)

Discussion of La ultima cena

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapters 13-14.
  2. Chad Black, Limits of Gender Domination, Chapters 1 and 2. (https://muse.jhu.edu/book/2113)
  3. Mary-Elizabeth Reeve, “Regional Interaction in Western Amazon: The Early Colonial Encounter and the Jesuit Years: 1538-1767,” Ethnohistory 41.1 (Winter 1993): 106-138.

Writing:

Week 13: The Mission (November 21)

Read:

  1. James Schofield Saeger, “The Mission and Historical Missions: Film and the Writing of History”, The Americas Vol. 51 No. 3 (1995): pp. 393-415. (On JSTOR)
  2. “José de Gálvez’s Decrees for the King’s Subjects in Mexico (1769, 1778).
  3. Olga Merino and Linda Newson, “Jesuit Missions in Spanish America: The Aftermath of the Expulsion,” Yearbook 21 (995), 133-148.
  4. Leo Garofalo, “High Clergy Warns the Crown of Popular Discontent”, pp. 207-214.

Writing:

Week 14: Colonial Legacies (November 28)

Discussion of The Mission

Read:

  1. Restall and Lane, Chapter 15.
  2. Michael Gobat, “The Invention of Latin America,” AHR (Dec 2013): 1345-1375.

Writing:

Week 15: Tambien La Lluvia (December 5)

Read:

None!

Writing:

Final paper, due.