7:00-9:00P     T     BH221

Topic:  Introduction to graduate Latin American studies
A portion of the above section reserved for majors
Above section meets with LTAM L501

This reading seminar will focus on themes in 20th century Latin
American history that have dominated the field over the
Past twenty years, summarized as follows:
1. Under what conditions did the transition toward capitalism take
place in distinct regions? 2. Was the Mexican Revolution a popular
agrarian-based revolution, a nationalistic rebellion, or merely the
violent substitution of one elite for another?  3. To what extent did
Central American regimes develop hegemony or have they always ruled
through the threat and reality of coercion (Costa Rica excepted)?  4.
What role did the discourses of mestizaje (mixed-race society) and
contemporary state indigenista policies (integration of the Indian
into national society) play in the construction of hegemony in Latin
America?  5. How do we best characterize the populist regimes and
labor movements in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico: elite corporatist
manipulations or multi-class alliances with significant degrees of
labor autonomy?
6. How does a gender analysis alter our understanding of Latin
American labor history?  7. Can studies of collective memory support
or transform historical analysis?  8. To what extent and with what
consequences has a post-modernist paradigm displaced social history
within Latin American studies?
The book will be organized around the reading of the most important
texts produced in the past two decades as well as historiographical
debates around the above issues.
Students will produce short essays as well as one historiographical
essay.
Selected texts:  Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution; Ann
Farnsworth-Alvear, Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men, and
Women in Colombia's Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960; Gil Joseph and
Alan Wells, Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Evil: Elite Politics and
Rural Insurgency in the Yucatan, 1876-1915; Michel-Rolph Trouillot,
Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History; Daniel James,
Doña María's Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity;
Jeffrey Gould, To Die In This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of
Mestizaje.