LILH 202: Human Traditions, 1500-Present [.PDF]
This course asks students to read and think about the origins and development of our modern global world. We begin by learning how Europe, Africa and the Americas became socially, culturally, and economically linked, and how these developments set the stage for what we now call “globalization.” We will learn what it meant to live in the early global era, when foods, languages, products and ideas began to circulate across continents. Readings and lectures will ask students to consider who benefited from this new global system and what groups of people found themselves enslaved, abused or in other ways exploited. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity and class shaped the way that individuals experienced living in a global world. Finally, we will end by looking at globalization today, especially at the way that corporations make and market their products and the way that we, as consumers, are affected.
History 255: Gender in Latin American History [.PDF]
This course asks students to think about what it meant to be a man and a woman in Latin America, and how these ideas about masculinity and femininity shaped the lives of ordinary people, as well as the politics and culture of the region. We start by learning how ideas about how men and women shaped the lives of people during the pre-Columbian (before Christopher Columbus) and colonial period. We then proceed to learn how gender notions shaped the creation of Modern Latin America. Along the way, we learn about how knife dueling allowed men to establish power over women, how women fought for a voice in government, how certain types of jobs were designated as proper to certain sexes, etc. We conclude by learning about gender’s role in Latin American society over the last 20 years.
History 339: Latin American History Through Film [.PDF]
This course asks students to analyze the problems and possibilities of employing film to study themes in Latin American history. Each week we will read about a major theme in the region’s history and view a film on the topic. We will ask ourselves how the film helps us learn about the topic as well as what it leaves obscured. Over the course of the semester, we will acquire a greater appreciation for the region’s culture and history.
History 400: Rebellion and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Latin America [.PDF]
This course examines the major revolutionary movements in Latin America during the twentieth century—particularly—but not exclusively—those movements that developed in Mexico (1910), Cuba (1959), Chile (1973) and Nicaragua (1979). This course asks what were the political, economic, and cultural forces at work that compelled ordinary people in these countries to rebel against their government and the status quo. We will begin by questioning the meaning, or meanings, of “revolution” in order to give us a theoretical framework for understanding our Latin American case studies. We will then proceed by discussing how each revolutionary movement unfolded, paying close attention to the causes that led people to mobilize, as well as to the declared objectives of revolutionaries and the revolutions’ final results. We will ask who stood to benefit from revolutionary programs, and how did everyday life change for people once a push for revolutionary change took place. These questions will urge us to consider divisions within revolutionary movements, such as the differences between women and men, young and old, as well as divisions between those who formed a revolution’s leadership and those who supported revolution through grassroots political activism. Along the way, students will be asked to think comparatively in order to assess how and why revolutionary strategies and outcomes in one country resembled or differed from those in another.
