HIST4900 New World Encounters, 1500-1800 (also AIIS 4900, AMST 4900) (HB) (HA-AS, HST-AS, SCD-AS) (HPE, HNA) (Pre-1900 AMST)
Tuesday and Thursday: 9:40-10:55
Professor Jon Parmenter
The discovery of the Indies, wrote Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552, was "the greatest event since the creation of the world, excepting the Incarnation and Death of Him who created it." Five centuries have diminished neither the overwhelming importance nor the strangeness of the early encounter between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of North America. This course explores fascinating and complex questions emerging from meetings between peoples of different cultural backgrounds, and their subsequent interactions as they learn (or fail to learn) to deal with one another. Taking a comparative approach, the course conceptualizes early American history as the product of reciprocal cultural encounters by assessing the varied experiences of European newcomers and indigenous peoples in different regions of North America from 1492 to 1800. Critical interpretation of primary source material and published scholarship will be emphasized in the course, as will the development of students' ability to take into account the perspective of both colonizers and colonized.
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