HIST 4195 Identity Politics in the Ibero-Atlantic (also JWST 4195) (HPE, HEU)
Thursday: 11:20-1:15
Dr. Mayer Juni
This seminar explores the politics of identity-making by analyzing the role that identity played in the social and cultural developments that shaped the Ibero-Atlantic. Our primary focus will be on the interplay between pre-formed identities circulating in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and the construction of a politics of empire that engendered new forms of identity and socio-cultural patterns across Spanish and Portuguese realms from the fifteenth century onward. Weekly readings and discussions will draw on recent scholarly debates on the interplay of race, ethnicity, slavery, class, gender, sexuality, religion, law and cultural performance, to trace how a variety of individuals and political institutions confronted an increasingly multi-plex social landscape. And we will reflect on how the identity politics that such historical actors developed and deployed in the process ultimately gave shape to the social dynamics of the early modern Atlantic World and produced long-lasting reverberations into the era of the modern nation state.
