HIS 219 Mistaken Identities: Myths and Realities of the New World Encounter
The term “discovery” is an ambivalent and charged word when discussing the arrival, military occupation and colonization of the Americas during the late 15th and 16th centuries. Who discovered whom in 1492 and what were the economic, demographic, ecological, political and cultural consequences brought about by the New World/Old World encounter? How were Europe and the Americas transformed by this seminal event, and how were the foundations of modern Latin America (and modern Western civilization) laid during this fascinating period? These questions and many others will be studied and analyzed through exposure to the primary texts and artifacts of that era, in an attempt to understand the Spanish and Indigenous mindset on the eve of conquest and their mutual transformation throughout the 16th century, when a New World — a world still in formation — was born.
Credits
4