Schedule and Readings

Week One – Course Introduction (19 Jan)

• Film: Columbus Didn’t Conquer Us (1992)

Week Two – Paradigms of Conquest (26 Jan)

• Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest.
• Kahn, Seminaring Letter (1971).
• Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), selections.
• Tompkins, “Fighting Words: Unlearning to Write the Critical Essay.” (1988)

Part 1: Foundations

Week Three: – Chronicles (2 Feb)

• Diaz de Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico

Week Four: – Letters (9 Feb)

• Cortés, Letters from Mexico
• Selections from Lockhart and Otte, Letters and People of the Spanish Indies.

Week Five: – Narratives (16 Feb)

• Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico.

Week Six: The Social History of Conquest (23 Feb)

• Lockhart, Of Things of the Indies.
• Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule, selections. (Part 1. Part 2.)

Week Seven: – Indigenous Views (2 Mar)

• Restall, et. al. Mesoamerican Voices.
• Restall, et. al. Invading Guatemala.

Part 2: Recent Works

Week Eight: SPRING BREAK (9 March)

Week Nine: Regional Histories (16 March)

• Kippner-Martinez, Rereading the Conquest.

Week Ten: Gender, Sex and Conquest (23 March)

• Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices.

Week Eleven: Gender, Sex and Conquest (30 March)

• Sigal, Moon Goddesses to Virgins.
• Trexler, Sex and Conquest.

Week Twelve: Gender, Sex and Conquest (6 April)

• Gutierrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away.

Week Thirteen: Atlantic Cultures of Conquest: Ceremony and Meaning (13 April)

• Seed, Ceremonies of Possession.

Week Fourteen: Atlantic Cultures of Conquest: Spirit of Conquest (20 April) + presentations

• Cañizares, Puritan Conquistadors.

Week Fifteen: Legacies of Conquest (27 April) + presentations

• Elizabeth Archuleta, “Memorializing Po’Pay and Oñate, or Recasting Racialized Regimes of Representation,” New Mexico Historical Review (Summer 2007):317-337.
• Kathy Freise, “Contesting Oñate: Sculpting the Shape of Memory,” in Expressing New Mexico: Nuevomexicano Creativity, Ritual, and Memory (233-252).
• Phillip Gonzales, “History Hits the Heart”: Albuquerque’s Great Cuartocentenario Controversy, 1997-2005,” in Expressing New Mexico: Nuevomexicano Creativity, Ritual, and Memory (207-232).
• Alfredo Jiménez, “Don Juan de Oñate and the Founding of New Mexico: Possible Gains and Losses from Centennial Celebrations,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 7.2 (Spring 1998): 109-128.
• Menchú, Rigoberta. “The Quincentenary, a Question of Class, Not Race: An Interview with Rigoberta Menchú, Latin American Perspectives, 1992.
• Stern, Steve. “Paradigms of Conquest: History, Historiography, and Politics. Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 24 (1992), 1-34.
• Vargas Llosa, Mario. “Questions of Conquest: What Columbus Wrought, and What He Did Not,” Harpers Magazine, December 1990.