Two views of the same event. Two distinct ways of looking at the past. This opposition of attitudes and beliefs is a fitting symbol for what is commonly called "colonial Latin America. "Over the "colonial" centuries, or in other words that period of time when the region was controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires, many different kinds of people with different backgrounds and ideas helped to forge a culturally variegated "new world. " For the story of this region's formative centuries is not the history of any one group--not just the Spanish nor the indigenous people, no any other specific culture, ethnicity, gender, or race. It is a story of destruction, but also one of perseverance and rebirth. We will focus on the social, cultural, biological, political, and economic consequences of Spanish and Portuguese "conquest" and colonial rule. We will pay greater attention to the people caught up in these "new world" enterprises than to the institutions that arose, seeking to understand the deeper meaning of colonialism for individual women and men of all social strata, races, and ethnicities. Whenever possible, class presentations will include visual materials such as film clips (both from Hollywood productions and from documentaries) as well as other images from overhead projections and perhaps slides. We will listen to excerpts from colonial-era music from time to time, too. It is hoped that this approach will help us all move beyond a concentration on merely "what happened" in the past to a better understanding of the texture of human life in precontact and colonial Latin America.

The following books, available in the University Bookstore, are required reading for the course. Students should not expect to pass the course without reading these books.

	Catalina de Erauso, Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World (1997)
	R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Dominion: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (1994).
	Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, eds., Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History (1998).
	David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash, eds., Struggle and Survival in Colonial Amefica (1981).

You should note that in "Part IV" Colonial Spanish Amefica includes some material from the later eighteenth century that moves beyond the temporal scope of our course. However, in the course calendar I have keyed in references to this material in the "recommended reading" slot. Colonial Spanish Amefica also has a very useful glossary on pages 347-352.

I have placed one copy of each of the required course books on reserve in the Knight Library, as well as three copies of the following recommended general textbook:

	Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin Amefica (Ist edition, 1990; 2ndedition, 1994; 3rd edition, 1998).
	The Burkholder and Johnson text has a wealth of details on the history, economy, and society of colonial Spanish and Portuguese America that should be useful for all students, especially for those of you who feel the need for more background narrative information. You will find references to the Burkholder and Johnson book in the "recommended reading" entries in the course calendar.