GHUM 252: Latin America - Schedule
Schedule
Pre-contact civilizations (before 1492)
WEEK 1:
August 26 Tues
Introduction to the Course
August 28 Thurs
Foundational Cultures in the “New World,” The Iberian Peninsula, and Africa
Discussion Questions:
How would you define the world view of each of the major cultural groups
that contributed to the formation of the Americas before contact? In what
ways were these views similar to and different from one another?
Readings:
Jeffrey Pilcher, “The People of Corn,” BB (Blackboard)
WEEK 2:
Sept 2 Tues
Readings:
Karen Vieira Powers, “Pre-Hispanic Gender roles under the Aztecs and the
Incas” in Women and the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish
American Society, 1500-1600, pp. 15-38. BB
Sept 4 Thurs
Readings:
Mary Elizabeth Perry Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville Princeton
University Press pp. 3-52. BB
WEEK 3:
Sept 9 Tues
Continue discussion of the Iberian world before greater integration with the
“New World”
Sept 11 Thurs
Readings:
James H. Sweet “Demography, Distribution, and Diasporic Streams” in Recreating
Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770,
pp. 13-30. BB
WEEK 4:
Contact, Colonization and Colonial Society
Themes: Change, resistance, emergence of hybrid cultures, gender, race and caste,
social order and public diversions
Discussion Questions:
What social factors shaped the ways in which the mixture of “racial” cultures
were viewed in society? How do the views of a mestizo, an indigenous noble (Guaman
Poma) compare and contrast with one another? How do elite views of colonial society
contrast with those of the slave? How have these themes from the colonial era
been remembered and contested in more contemporary art or literature? How did
colonial society attempt to control the activities of its citizens?
Sept 16 Tues
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter one, “Encounter,” pp. 25-54.
Pilcher, chapter two, “The Conquests of Wheat: Culinary Encounters in the Colonial
Period,” pp. 25-44. BB
Sept 18 Thurs
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter two, “Colonial Crucible,” pp. 59-86.
Start Reading: Clorinda Matto de Turner, Birds Without A Nest
WEEK 5:
Sept 23 Tues
Readings:
Guaman Poma, A Letter to a King (Selections) BB
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Poems, Protest, and a Dream excerpts BB
Sept 25 Thurs
Readings:
John Charles Chasteen “Morena (American Eve)” in National Rhythms, African Roots:
The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance, pp. 189-204. BB
WEEK 6:
Late Colonial period, Independence and the New Nation(s)
Emergence of New Elite Identities
Sept 30 Tues
Themes: Racial purity, Foreign Ideals, and the Definition of the Nation
Discussion Questions:
How did the elite of Latin America view the question of who forms the nation?
Were these views all in agreement with one another? How did these elites view
the problems that their new nations faced? How did they define solutions to these
problems? Why has the novel been so important to the construction of national
identities in Latin America?
Readings:
Juan & Ulloa (excerpts) BB
Students will view casta paintings in class
Discussion:
Birds Without a Nest
Oct 2 Thurs
Readings:
Sidney W. Mintz “Food, Sociality, and Sugar” in Sweetness and Power: The Place
of Sugar in Modern History, pp. 3-18. BB
Aluisio Azevedo, The Slum (start reading)
WEEK 7:
Oct 7 Tues
Chasteen, chapter three, “Independence,” pp. 91-113.
Simón Bolívar “Cartegena Manifesto” BB
Oct 9 Thurs
TBA
Midterm exam due in class
WEEK 8:
The 19th Century: New Nations
Flowering of Popular Identities during the 19th century
Themes: Gauchos, mestizaje/racial mixing, dance and music, constructing the nation
“from below.”
Discussion Questions:
How do these popular-centered views of nineteenth-century society contrast from
that of the elites? How does the ethnic background described in popular views
compare and contrast with that of elites?
Oct 14 Tues
Readings:
Chapter two, “Confronting a Colonial Past,” by Oriana Baddeley and Valerie Fraser,
Drawing the Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin America (Verso
Press, 1989). pp. 41-78. BB
Chasteen, chapter 4 “Postcolonial Blues,” pp. 119-147
Oct 16 Thurs
Readings:
Juan Manuel de Rosas, excerpts from The Caudillos Order, Domingo F. Sarmiento,
excerpts from Civilization and Barbarism (From Argentina Reader) 80-90 BB
John Charles Chasteen, Chapter one, “Transgressive National Dances?;” in National
Rhythms, African Roots, pp. 1-15.
Eduardo Gutierrez, “Juan Moreira,” in Edward Hale Bierstadt, Three Plays of the
Argentine, (Duffield and Company, 1920), pp. 1-20. BB
WEEK 9:
Oct 21 Tues
End of slavery and oppression of the underclass
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter 5 “Progress,” pp. 149-178
BB TBA [on Afro-Latin culture]
Oct 23 Thurs
Readings:
Discussion: Aluisio Azevedo, The Slum
Research topic prospectus due in class
WEEK 10:
The 20th Century
Oct 28 Tues
Film: Like Water for Chocolate
Oct 30 Thurs
Film: Like Water for Chocolate (conclusion)
Readings:
Barbara A. Tenenbaum “Why Tita Didn’t Marry the Doctor, or Mexican History in
Like Water for Chocolate” in Donald F. Stevens ed. Based on a True Story: Latin
American History at the Movies (Scholarly Resource Books, 1997) pp. 157-72. BB
WEEK 11:
Culture of Populism
Themes: The Use of Mass Media and the Rise of the Working Classes.
Discussion Questions:
What was the connection during the 1920s between art and revolution? Why was
the revolutionary government in Mexico concerned about sex? How did these and
other concerns and interventions help to construct the nation (or were they effective
approaches)?
Nov 4 Tues
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter 6 “Neocolonialism,” pp. 181-214.
Katherine Bliss “The Science of Redemption: Syphilis, Sexual Promiscuity, and
Reformism in Revolutionary Mexico City” Hispanic American Historical Review 79:1
1999 1-40. BB
Students will also view some art of David Alfáro Siqueirors, José Orozco, Diego
Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Nov 6 Thurs
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter 7 “Nationalism,” pp. 217-248.
Rubén Darío “To Roosevelt” BB
WEEK 12:
Nov 11 Tues
Discussion Questions: How did technology shape or re-shape culture? Where there
differences in how technology was used or understood in relation to class structures
in Latin American societies? What was the relationship between technology and
the emergence of populist governments in Latin America?
Readings:
“Radio and Estado Novo,”, in Bryan McCann, Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music
and the Making of Modern Brazil, (Duke University Press, 2004). pp. 19-40 BB
Joy Elizabeth Hayes, “Broadcasting the Revolution,” Chapter four of Radio Nation:
Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920-1950. pp. 42-62
BB
Nov 13 Thurs
Readings:
“Peron and the People” Daniel James in The Argentina Reader (DUP) pp. 273-295
BB
WEEK 13:
Nov 18 Tues
Revolutionary Cultures Reactionary Cultures and Resistance
Themes: Violence from below, consolidating and representing revolutionary changes
in society
Violence from above, cultural resistance and responses to state violence
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter 8 “Revolution,” pp. 249-278.
Che Guevara, “Man and Socialism,” in The Cuba Reader. BB
Pablo Neruda “Ode to Tomatoes” BB
Nov 20 Thurs
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter 9 “Reaction,” 279-310.
Chile:
Chapter Six, “The Culture of Fear,” from Constable and Valenzuela, A Nation of
Enemies. Chile Under Pinochet, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1991. pp. 140-165.
BB
Marjorie Agosin, “Chile: Patchwork of Memory,” NACLA, vol. XXVII, no. 6, May/June
1994 (on arpilleras) pp. 11-14. BB
WEEK 14:
Nov 25-27 Tues Thurs No Class Thanksgiving Holiday
WEEK 15:
Transnational Latin America
Themes: Migration, New Alliances, New Influences
Discussion Questions:
How has migration changed Latin American nations and peoples (both immigration
and emmigration)? Are these changes substantially different than changes brought
about by migration in earlier centuries? Has migration changed what we think
about Latin America? How has Latin American migration effected areas beyond the
region?
Dec 2 Tues
Readings:
Chasteen, chapter 10 “Neoliberalism,” pp. 311-329
Dec 4 Thurs
Readings:
George Brandon, “Santería in the United States (1959-1982)” in Santería From
Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1993) pp. 104-125.
Writing assignment due in class
Final Exam due (submit by email by 6 pm Thursday Dec. 11)
