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This course is an introductory survey of colonial Latin American history, spanning the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Organized chronologically and thematically, it examines developments in Spanish and Portuguese America by reading both secondary and primary sources (available in English translation).
Offered jointly with the Harvard Law School, this workshop will examine some of the most innovative research in European Legal history, conducted by both historians and legal scholars. Classes will alternate between in-group discussions of certain fields, questions or methodologies, and presentations by leading scholars.
This course is open to undergraduates with the instructors’ permission. Students will choose between writing several short response papers or a substantial final paper. Law students who will choose to write a substantial paper will receive three credits upon successful completion of the course; law students who will choose to write short response papers will receive two credits. Whether they write short response papers or a final paper, FAS students who enroll in the workshop will receive four credits upon successful completion of the course. Offered jointly with the Law School as LAW 2876.
Professors Tamar Herzog and Alejandro de la Fuente. The Latin American History Seminar and Workshop is a yearlong research seminar and workshop that meets every other week to study a central question in Latin American history (in the fall) and provide opportunities for scholars to share their own work and learn about the scholarship of others in a workshop form (in the spring). In 2016-2017 we will discuss how differences were defined, negotiated, represented, and challenged in colonial Latin American, creating both inclusion and exclusion. Among differences considered would be distinctions between local and metropolitan; citizens and foreigners; narratives of origin and ancestry based on racial, ethnic, or religious criteria; and gender distinctions. Students must complete both terms of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year in order to receive credit.
This is a survey course of the history of European law from the fall of the Roman Empire (5th century) to the establishment of the European Union (20th century). Organized chronologically, it engages with the sources and nature of Law, the organization of legal systems and the relationship between law and society, law and law-maker, law and the legal professions. Continental and Common Law, as well as Colonial law would be covered.
This course examines how our image of Latin American past(s) changed in last decades in order to introduce students to some of the major debates and recent developments in history and the art of history making. Among other things, it examines issues of periodization, comparative and Atlantic history, the nature of the sources and their interpretation, the use of notions such as "crisis," "decline," and "corruption," the object historians reconstruct, and the contribution of subaltern studies and postcolonialism to the study of Latin America.
Legal history has become a popular pursuit in recent decades, but what does it mean to do legal history? Do lawyers, who routinely review precedent or study the evolution of specific pieces of legislation, do legal history? Do judges, when they reconstruct past events in order to apply the law? Do historians, who use legal documentation? And how is legal history differently done in Europe and in the USA? This section will consider these questions (and others) by analyzing the various ways by which different scholars have approached the relationship between law and history over time, in different locations, and for different ends.