Topics in History (492-0-23)
Topic
Histories of Colombia
Instructors
Lina Britto
Harris Hall 304
Professor Lina Britto is a Colombian historian and journalist. She received her Ph.D. in Latin American and Caribbean History from New York University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University. While still residing in Latin America, she studied at a M.A. program in Anthropology at the Universidad de la Cordillera (La Paz, Bolivia), and at a B.A. program in Journalism at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Medellín, Colombia). Her teaching philosophy is to help students to develop critical reasoning skills, analytical abilities, and organizational capacities. In her courses on 19th- and 20th-century Latin America and the Caribbean, Prof. Britto resorts on all kinds of historical materials, from academic works to pop culture products. She also uses approaches and methods from different disciplines, from history to anthropology and journalism.
Meeting Info
Harris Hall room 101: Fri 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
Located in the northernmost section of South America, between two geostrategic regions, the Panama Canal and Venezuela's oil district, Colombia has been a long-standing bridge between the Caribbean, the Andean, the Pacific, and the Amazon basins, and a key ally in the consolidation of a U.S. hegemonic project in the hemisphere. However, as historian David Bushnell stated in his 1993 seminal book, Colombia is one of "the least studied of the major Latin American countries, and probably the least understood" in the US academia. This course puts Colombia back on the map asking instead how its histories illustrate fundamental questions about modernity and democracy in the Americas. We begin by inquiring how different actors imagined a republic after the wars of independence, then move on to examine the irruption of the masses in the public sphere to shed light on the struggles of the popular sectors to craft citizenship vis-à-vis local and national elites. We also study the legacies and consequences of these conflicts in the 20th century, and the various social and political crises as they unfolded until our present times. We conclude exploring the country's recent history: the neoliberal turn, the persistence of violence, everyday practices of resistance and accommodation, and the labors of memory. We do so by putting the historiography in conversation with the interdisciplinary literature and a collection of primary sources.
Registration Requirements
Graduate students only
Learning Objectives
Students will create their own historiographical and theoretical map on the socioeconomic, political and cultural struggles that have defined the formation of the Colombian nation-state from the 19th century to the present time. Students will also practice their skills to teach about the major historical transformations in Colombia and their impacts and significance in Latin America more broadly.