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ST: Latin American Intellectual History II

Nation Building in 19th Century Latin America
The goal of this course is to allow students to encounter the complex intellectual forces at work throughout Spanish and Portuguese speaking America as it came to grips with the essential post independence task of nation building. The course’s core readings are clearly philosophical but also historical, culture critical, political, religious and sociological, as is typical of the best Latin American intellectual writing. One might best characterize them as bringing philosophical and methodological considerations to bear on concrete issues of nation and society building. The readings are selections from some of the most influential, creative thinkers of the nineteenth century anywhere in the world. All of the thinkers we will read and discuss are exemplary writers of Spanish and their voices even shine through in English translation.

Although entitled Latin American Intellectual History II, the course does not presuppose knowledge of the Latin American intellectual history from before the Encuentro to the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The course is a seminar in which we will discuss substantively and analytically each week’s assigned reading. Students will write two analytical papers, each approximately 3,000 words, discussing the views of two or more of the thinkers whose writings we read and discuss.

The course will count for credit toward the certificate in Latin American Studies and the certificate in Philosophy, Politics and Law. I intend to seek cross listing for it in the departments of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies.

1. Course Reader, to be supplied by the instructor, consisting of selections from eighteen seminal Latin American pensadores. It includes materials not previously available in English or newly translated into English by Dr. Janet M. Burke and Professor Ted Humphrey.

2. David Bushnell and Neill Macaulay, The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN: 0-19-508402-0.

3. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, trans, Kathleen Ross, University of California Press, 2003. ISBN0-520-23980-6.

4. Simon Bolivar, El Libertador: Writings of Simon Bolivar, Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN, 0-19-514481-3.

5. Andrés Bello, The Writings of Andrés Bello, trans. Frances Lopez-Morillas, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 019510546x.

6. José Marti, Selected Writings, trans Esther Allen, Penguin Books, 2002. ISBN: 0-14-24.3704 2.

If you would like further information about the course, please be in touch with me at ted.humphrey@asu.edu or 965-5656 or stop by my office Irish A 220.

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