Department of History

This Field Seminar introduces some major debates and literatures about Latin American history since 1820. It is designed for MA-level students who intend to go on to a Ph.D. in Latin American History, though advanced students from other geographic concentrations, disciplines, and area universities are more than welcome.

The focus is mainly historiographical or methodological: We critically engage–via intensive readings, weekly discussions, and debate–about ten model monographs in the field. Rather than cover all of the “great books” in this vibrant field, whether of trendy or classic vintage, we’ll concentrate on a broad theme found through much recent historiography: nation-building, nationalisms, nationality, and the construction of national identities in the region. The seminar begins by revisiting Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (a book which has worked its influence everywhere) and by sharpening some perspectives on questions of nationality. Then, with close readings of a dozen or so major new monographs, we’ll examine diverse angles on Latin American “nationalisms”: from the cultural, peasant, regional, and ethnic nation to the revolutionary, gendered, and even trans-national kind. (Sorry: some obvious topics, such as economic or labor nationalism, or citizenship and nation, get overlooked here) We hope to end up with a critical awareness of how well Latin American historians–at least those working in the United States– have deployed such concepts for post-colonial Spanish America, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

- Requirements/Expectations
- There are a few basic requirements for the seminar. 1) Consistent commitment to readings and to energetic participation in weekly group discussions. 2) A collective writing assignment–of 7-9 pages–during Weeks 6-7, to evaluate how you think and write on paper. 3) Concurrent participation in the New York City Workshop in Latin American History (NYCWLAH), a collaborative project with scholars from Columbia and NYU. The Workshops are scheduled from 12-2 on three Fridays (Sept. 24, Oct. 26th, Nov. 30) at Stony Brook Manhattan (28th and Park Ave). Students report on at least one of these seminars 4) A final paper, due December 11, of 12-15 pages, surveying a national historiography of “nationalism/national identities” for one Latin American country, or a comparative essay on a specific thematic approach to nationality across several historiographic sites. Paper topics should be narrowed by Week 8, in time for the scheduled individual student conferences.
- Readings
- Major Latin-Americanist Monographs:
- Benedict Anderson, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: REFLECTION ON THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF MODERN NATIONALISM (Verso, 1995, revised version)
- Claudio Lomnitz, DEEP MEXICO, SILENT MEXICO: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF NATIONALISM (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001)
- Mark Thurner, FROM TWO REPUBLICS TO ONE DIVIDED: CONTRADICTIONS OF POST-COLONIAL NATIONMAKING IN ANDEAN PERU (Duke Univ. Press, 1997)
- Ada Ferrer, INSURGENT CUBA: RACE, NATION AND REVOLUTION, 1868-1898
- (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999)
- Greg Grandin, THE BLOOD OF GUATEMALA: A HISTORY OF RACE AND NATION
- (Duke Univ. Press, 2000)
- Nancy Appelbaum, MUDDIED WATERS: RACE, REGION, AND LOCAL HISTORY IN COLOMBIA, 1846-1948 (Duke University Press, 2003)
- Daryle Williams, CULTURE WARS IN BRAZIL: THE FIRST VARGAS REGIME, 1930-45
- (Duke University Press, 2001)
- Eric Zolov, REFRIED ELVIS: THE RISE OF THE MEXICAN COUNTERCULTURE
- (Univ. Of California Press, 1999)

This course will examine the formation of racial, ethnic and national identities in different American contexts in the modern era. We will begin with broad synthetic approaches to the history of racial discourses and their sociopolitical uses in the formation of modern nations, empires, and market economies. In this course, I want to look at the plural Americas as a collection of postcolonial, modernizing societies trying to come to terms with the stark legacies of colonialism and slavery-namely, large (often, unruly) popular cultures of Africans, Indians, and all variety of mestizos and mamelucos. We will see how concepts of race and ethnicity got constructed in particular historical moments of national flux and need, and how racial-cultural discourses infiltrated and shaped specific forms of power, social reform, and domains of knowledge and identity.

Sample Readings:

Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race. Race, History and Culture in Western Society.

Davd Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture. Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning.

Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba. Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898.

Mathew Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color. European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race.

Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics. Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America.

Michael George Hanchard, Orpheus and Power. The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988.

David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness. Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Revised Edition.

Deborah Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity. A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World.

This seminar takes legal systems and the criminalization of social groups as lenses on modern states’ techniques for disciplining populations, reproducing structures of privilege, and articulating nationalist ideologies. In addition to looking from the perspective of states, we consider the ways subjects and citizens manipulate, modify and evade legal regimes. Moving from the early modern period through the contemporary, the course takes on themes ranging from legal pluralism, social banditry, law and cultural difference under colonial regimes, prisons and rehabilitation, ethnic profiling and criminalization, and the place of outlaws in nationalist rhetoric. The course will be interdisciplinary, incorporating comparative and monographic historical and anthropological studies, theoretical works and literary texts; and transregional, with units examining particular themes in South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, the US, and other other locations. Readings may include books or articles by scholars Lauren Benton, Michel Foucault, Carlo Ginzburg, Ranajit Guha, Eric Hobsbawm, Eric Tagliacozzo, Richard L. Roberts, Nicolas Shumway, Radhika Singha, and some selections from literary or historical primary sources.