TWENTIETH-CENTURY LATIN AMERICA

This course provides a close examination of major topics in twentieth-century Latin American history, seen especially through the lens of first-person narrative and everyday life experiences. Topics examined include revolutions, dictatorship, popular culture, social movements, drugs, gangs, and migration. Recurring themes that run throughout the course include inequality, violence, human rights, social movements, identity, globalization, and the environment. Sources include first person accounts, memoirs, novels, and films, in addition to selected scholarly publications. Our goal is to understand some of the major transitions in Latin America in the last hundred years, and to further engage our curiosity about the region by delving into the details of some individual lives and how they were intertwined with larger events and processes.