Collective identities in Latin America have traditionally been regarded as the product of an epochal clash between European and indigenous cultures, and as the result of geopolitical and cultural confrontations with the U.S. and European hegemonic interests. However, the emergence of regional and national identities has not been a simple operation of drawing boundaries: in spite of a quest for collective destinies that began in earnest in the 18th century, the diverse regional and ethnic identities in Latin America have alternatively resisted and embraced centralized nation-building projects and interpretations of their collective past, generating an existential confusion that has informed military and sociopolitical confrontations. This course will examine the development of political and sociocultural notions of collective identity in Latin America from late colonial times until the present, the impact of U.S. and European political and economic domination in these processes, and the multitude of discourses on national identity through an interrogation of contending versions of national origins and identity, the symbols and pageants of nationhood, nation-building projects, and blueprints for citizenship. Case studies include the U.S. and French wars of intervention in Mexico, the Cuban wars of independence, and foreign intervention and nationalist responses in the Caribbean, Central America, and the Andean region. This is an LAIS core course, and a prerequisite for LAIS seminars.

This course examines the changing rapports between political authority, social status, and the use of pictographic and alphabetic writing in indigenous societies in Precolumbian, colonial, and national Latin America. Departing from an examination of the political and social uses of pictographic and ideographic writing in Precolumbian times, we will explore the appropriation of alphabetical writing by preexisting historical and ritual genres, trace the emergence of novel colonial genres-legal records, annals, devotional writings, etc.-examine the social and political aims which these native genres served, and analyze the links between textual production and native historical and social consciousness. Through an inquiry into writing and reading practices, this course will address the intellectual and ethnographic context of production and the dynamics of reception of these texts, as well as the social life and the political impact of influential works and genres. This course ends with a brief consideration of current works produced by contemporary indigenous authors, and their complex reception as the "voice" of the ethnographic Other. Readings will focus on recent translations of select works in Nahuatl, Quechua, Yucatec Maya, Quiché, Zapotec and Spanish, and in analyses of current native intellectual

renaissances.

See Social Studies section for description

See Anthropology section for description.

All course listed under SPANISH and

PS 153 Latin American Politics and Society

PS 413 The Spread of Democracy

SST 140 Latinos in the USA

ARTH 249 Women Artists of the Surrealist Movement