Professor Kirsten Weld. Surveys the complex, mutually constitutive, and often thorny relationship - characterized by suspicion and antagonism, but also by fascination and desire - between the United States and the diverse republics south of the Rio Grande. Examines public policy, US expansionism and empire, popular culture and consumption, competing economic development models, migration, tourism, the Cold War, sovereignty, dissent, and contrasting visions of democratic citizenship.

Professor Kirsten Weld. During the late 20th century, much of Latin America was engulfed by intense political conflict, the legacies of which still resonate. Focusing on Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala, this course comparatively examines these periods of dictatorship and violence, and then explores how these societies have reckoned with their powerful aftermath. Topics covered include peace processes, truth commissions, transitional justice, activism, law, and the politics of historical interpretation.

Professor Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. This course is designed to help graduate and advanced undergraduate students acquire a basic grounding in key texts, events, periods, and debates in the history of Latina/o/x people in North America since European colonization.  The goal is not to provide coverage, but rather to explore this dynamic field through important recent publications that provide a window into key methods, debates, and comparisons.  The course will benefit students contemplating thesis or other research projects in Latinx history or adjacent...

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Professor Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. This course offers student to put their social scientific research and writing skills to work on actual asylum cases.  Working in teams, students will collaborate with law students and professors at the Immigration and Asylum Clinic at Harvard Law School to draft documents helping to document conditions in the home countries of asylum applicants. Students will also have opportunities to build their understanding of asylum law, hone their historical and legal research skills, and reflect critically on the asylum system, the ethical... Read more about HIST 16A: Immigrant Justice Lab

Professor Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. This course assists students to develop an informed analysis of the current political debate through investigation of the legal history of immigration since founding of the republic. Students analyze the ways that histories of race, gender, sexuality, class and global politics have shaped and continue to shape the law and politics of immigration. Through structured in-class activities and challenges, students learn a range of legal history methods. They then have opportunities to use these methods to study competing claims about... Read more about HIST 1016: Immigration Law: A History of the Present

Professor Alejandro de la Fuente. “Race,” most social scientists and well-informed people agree, is a social construction with no basis in biology. It is an invention, a political instrument of power and subordination, deployed to naturalize social hierarchies. Yet “race” and racially based understandings of human difference continue to shape how we identify, classify, and group individuals. Scientific studies in various fields, from medicine to psychometric assessments of intelligence, continue to gather racial information for research purposes. Claiming strict...

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Professor Paulina Alberto and Professor Alejandro de la Fuente. This seminar studies contemporary struggles over citizenship and belonging by Afrodescendants in Latin America, situating these struggles within historical patterns of nation building, racial stratification, and political mobilization. Afrodescendants have been at the forefront of struggles typically associated with liberal values—equality, democracy, voting rights—since the colonial period. But Afrodescendant activists, thinkers, and artists have also articulated alternative visions of freedom and belonging... Read more about AAAS 222B/HIST 2220B: Afrodescendant Citizenship in Latin America: Mobilization, Contestation, and Change

Professor Paulina Alberto and Professor Alejandro de la Fuente. This seminar studies contemporary struggles over citizenship and belonging by Afrodescendants in Latin America, situating these struggles within historical patterns of nation building, racial stratification, and political mobilization. Afrodescendants have been at the forefront of struggles typically associated with liberal values—equality, democracy, voting rights—since the colonial period. But Afrodescendant activists, thinkers, and artists have also articulated alternative visions of freedom and...

Read more about AAAS 222A/HIST 2220A: Afrodescendant Citizenship in Latin America: Mobilization, Contestation, and Change

Professor Tamar Herzog. This course is an introductory survey of colonial Latin American history, spanning the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Organized chronologically and thematically, it will examine developments in Spanish and Portuguese America by reading both secondary and primary sources (available in English translation).

Professor Tamar Herzog. This course is an introductory survey of European Early Modern history, from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century. Organized chronologically and thematically, it examines developments from the late Middle Ages to the Age of Revolutions, including the passage from feudalism to urban institutions, the Renaissance, European Expansion overseas, the Protestant and the Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, the Rise of Absolutism, slavery, the Enlightenment, and Revolutions. Meetings will alternate between lecture and discussion of primary... Read more about HIST 1155: Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789