Lecture Slides 2024-25

Lecture Slides 2023-24

Questions

• To what extent is our view of pre-1519 Meso-America crucial to our understanding of the Conquest of the Americas?
• What specific features of fifteenth-century Spanish (or Portuguese) society affected how these Europeans would view the Americas?
• How did Iberians’ ongoing involvement with the African continent shape Iberian encounters with the Americas?

Required Seminar Reading

Any TWO of:

• León Portilla, Miguel, “Meso-America before 1519,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 1, pp.1-36. (E-book at Library)
• Leo Garofalo, “The Shape of a Diaspora: The Movement of Afro-Iberians to Colonial Spanish America,” in Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora, eds. Sherwin K Bryant, Rachel Sarah O’Toole, and Ben Vinson (University of Illinois Press, 2012), pp. 27-49 (e-book at library)
• Elliott, John, ‘The Mental World of Hernán Cortés,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 17 (1967), pp. 41-58. OR Kamen, Henry, Spain 1469-1714 (New York, 2024), pp.1-61, Ch. 1: ‘The Catholic Monarchs 1469-1516’. (a more general introduction)

Additional Readings

* 3D visual reconstruction of Tenochtitlan: Tenochtitlan by Thomas Kole

• Walter D. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Blackwell, 2005), “Preface: Uncoupling the Name and the Reference,” and Chapter 1, “The Americas, Christian Expansion and the Modern/ Colonial Foundation of Racism,” pp. 1-50. [e-book at Library]
• Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011), chapter 1: “Slavery and Iberian Colonisation,” pp. 9-51. There are a large number of print books as well as several e-books in the library. Some of the e-books are restricted to one user at a time, but others are accessible by multiple students at once.
• Caroline Dodds-Pennock, Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifecycle, andSacrifice in Aztec Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 [e-book at Library]
• Elliott, John, ‘The Ordering of Spain: The Church and the Faith’ in Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (London, 1963), pp. 87-99.
• Fuentes, Carlos, The Buried Mirror (London, 1992), pp. 15-147, Parts I and II: ‘The Virgin and the Bull’ and ‘The Conflict of the Gods’.
• Kamen, Henry, Spain 1469-1714 (New York, 2024), pp.1-61, Ch. 1: ‘The Catholic Monarchs 1469-1516’.
• León-Portilla, Miguel, ‘Those made worthy by divine sacrifice: The faith of ancient Mexico’, in Gary H. Gossen, ed., South and Meso-American Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation (New York, 1993), pp. 41-65.
• Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun : A New History of the Aztecs, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. (Introduction and Chapters 1-3)
• Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

  Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 CUP, 1998 (2nd ed.)

• Wright, Elizabeth. The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain. University of Toronto Press, 2016 [e-book at Library]