History 400 Encounters in the Americas (Meyer): Home

Welcome to HIST 400: Encounters in the Americas. This course examines the various types of relations and contacts between peoples and states in the Western Hemisphere over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It explores these encounters as possible sites and spaces of negotiations, contestations, and co-operations.   Such investigations can yield insights into nationalisms, statecraft, national identity, racial and ethnic identities, and gender dynamics.

The course is broadly defined so as to accommodate a variety of interests.  It is designed to engage you in the process of history-writing in theory and practice. We will refine our skills in reading critically, writing analytically, and understanding more fully what it means to think as a historian.  The primary goal of this seminar is to produce an original research paper of approximately 18-20 pages in length that is based on primary sources and engaged with relevant historiographical and methodological debates in the scholarly literature.  The final paper should contain original research and interpretative strength that demonstrate academic historical skills in formulating a research problem, drawing on multiple primary sources, deploying evidence to support a significant thesis, and grappling explicitly with the secondary literature.  

The task of finding a final project topic can be simultaneously exciting, intriguing, and stressful given the extent to which the mining of primary sources can be difficult, yet incredibly rewarding.    

In order to explore different repositories of sources, I recommend looking at the various sites:

https://guides.library.yale.edu/c.php?g=296334&p=1974472

https://ucsd.libguides.com/primarysources/latinamerica

https://libguides.bgsu.edu/c.php?g=227239&p=1506266

Sabin Americana

UR has trial access to this database through 10/30/2019. Please use this link and access code to use this resource.

Provides over 14,000 primary source titles based on Joseph Sabin's bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana. Materials describe every aspect of life in the Western Hemisphere from 1500 to the 1890s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.

Latin American Travelogues

https://library.brown.edu/cds/travelogues/browse.html

The goal of this project is to create a digital collection of Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th centuries. Brown University.

Also, if interested, see the following books:

Marjorie Agosín &​ Julie H. Levison (eds.), Magical Sites: Women Travelers in 19th century Latin America (Buffalo, N.Y.: White Pine Press, 1999)

This volume of travel journals reveals the voices of women who traveled in Latin America during the nineteenth century. From French nuns who left their homelands to establish convents in Latin America to English women who accompanied their husbands on business travels, these women discovered a world beyond anything they had known or expected and recorded it in their journals. 

June E. Hahner (ed.), Women Through Women's Eyes: Latin American Women in Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 1998)

This collection of selections from nineteenth century travelogues offers accounts of how U.S. and European women viewed women of Latin America.  Brief introductions contextualize each account.  This work serves as a guidebook for those who want to then examine the full texts of these foreign observers of gender in Latin America.  

History of Science in Latin America

http://www.hoslac.org/

A comprehensive database of  primary sources on the history of science in Latin America and the Caribbean.  The site provides a virtual archive of over 200 primary sources along with introductions based on the latest scholarly findings. 

Documents of 20^th Century of Latin American and Latino Art

http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/

Digital archive with anticipated 10,000 primary-source materials. The first phase includes documents from Mexico, Argentina and the US Midwest.

Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection

https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/latin-american-pamphlet-digital-collection

Bracero History Archive

http://braceroarchive.org/

Oral histories and documents related to the 1942-1964 Bracero program, a guest worker initiative in which millions of Mexican agricultural workers were contracted to work in the U.S. Be aware that the site allows user contributions; these items have not been validated, and are clearly identified.

Castro Speech Database

http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro.html

Includes speeches, interviews, etc., by Fidel Castro from 1959 to 1996. All texts here are in English, but the site offers links to additional multilingual resources.

Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm

Declassified FBI, CIA and other U.S. government documents related to the Chilean military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.

These sites are not meant to be exhaustive.  They should serve as entry points into possible topics to be considered for the final project.