Seminar in Latin American History
Fall 2013
This course will examine the ways that Latin American intellectuals and revolutionaries have proposed to improve the human condition.
In the 1510s, pondering the mysteries of the “New World” and the problems of the Old the Englishman Thomas More coined the term Utopia, a pun with Greek roots that mean both “Good Place” and “No Place.” More placed his fictitious Utopia in the Americas, on an island off the coast of Brazil. This course will examine how over the following 400 years, Utopia—the elusive ideal society—has been imagined and re-imagined in Latin America.
In the beginning of the course, we will read a mix of primary and secondary materials that outline the development of utopian thought in Latin America from the Conquest to the late twentieth century. In doing so, we will understand how intellectual currents and social realities interacted to create new aspirations for the future and to crush old dreams. We will explore how envisioning a utopia may also be a condemnation of current realities. Our thematic approach will connect us to questions of race, gender, nationalism, class, and education, as we discover that attempting to create the perfect society often meant attempting to create the perfect human being.
The final ten weeks of the course will culminate with each student writing a 25 to 30 page research paper that utilizes primary sources to deeply explore one historical aspect of how Latin Americans have imagined the future, whether as the “Good Place” or as a “No Place” forever out of reach.
