W Douglas

This course is an introduction to the history of Latin America in and part of the modern world from the independence movements of the 1810s to the present. The course is organized thematically as well as chronologically. We will cover political and economic regimes and transformations, as well as social and cultural movements, and will travel from the deserts of the US-Mexico border to the Amazon rainforest and the glacial archipelago of Patagonia. Source materials will include everything from revolutionary priests to tango celebrities and some of the world?s first female heads of state. By the end of the course, we will have worked through a history of Latin America on its own terms, but also within a modernizing world.

A variety of specific historical studies are offered on a rotating basis. Recent offerings have included The Limits of Reason, a study of European Enlightenment; Sex, Booze, and Baseball, the nature of leisure activities in American cultural life; Space, Heaven, and God, a study of the relationships of religion, astronomy, and cosmology; and War in American History.