LATINAM 325
First Nations in Latin America
Please note: this is archived course information from 2016 for LATINAM 325.
Description
Indigenous peoples have played a huge role in major transformations throughout Latin America, leading movements that have introduced twenty-first century constitutions in Venezuela (1999), Ecuador (2007) and Bolivia (2008), incorporating indigenous concepts of sumak kawsay and suma qamaña (living well, wellbeing) and new rights, such the right of Mother Nature to regenerate. Theorists describe these innovative changes as potentially post-capitalist or decolonial, but they are also a return to ways of knowing that indigenous communities have practiced for millennia.
This course will introduce students to the long history of indigenous peoples before the arrival of Europeans to the lands they call the Americas and indigenous organisations call Abya Yala. This study will begin by analysing how modernity itself was created through colonialism and cannot be separated from this historical process. To understand proposals coming from indigenous communities today across Abya Yala requires understanding of how modernity created knowledge structures that sustain colonial relations.
This study of colonialism will focus on indigenous writings about their own history alongside canonical writings by specialists who describe how European colonisation created civilisations in lands they called the Americas.
Learning Goals
The aim of this course is to develop the skills required for understanding indigenous knowledge today by studying the history of Latin America from several different indigenous perspectives in dialogue with well-known scholarship. By the end of the course, students should be equipped with the basic history for understanding how First Nations of Latin America understand their own history and that of the region of Latin America and the world.
Assessment for LATINAM 325 100 percent coursework (5000 words)
- Short in-Class Tests (5) 20%
- Essay Test (approximately 1000 words) 20%
- Two Research Essays (approximately 1500 words) 60%
Availability 2016
Semester 1
Lecturer(s)
Coordinator(s) Dr Kathryn Lehman
Lecturer(s) Dr Genaro Oliveira
Reading/Texts
Attendance at lectures is required and students should come prepared to discuss the assigned readings each week. There will be two to three articles or book chapters to be read in connection with viewing audiovisual material. Drawing on the various approaches covered, students will be expected to develop a research-informed essay on the topics introduced.
Assessment
Coursework only
Points
LATINAM 325: 15 points
Prerequisites
15 points from LATINAM 201, 216, SPANISH 201, 202, 205
Restrictions
SPANISH 306, 725, 729