Evan Fernandez

Themes in the Atlantic World, 1492-1900
Linking the Americas with Europe and Africa, the Atlantic has been a major conduit for the movement of peoples, ideas, technology, foods, and customs. This course will explore four themes from the rise of European imperialism and African Slavery to the dawn of national consciousness and minority rights across the Americas. We will study four major themes: (1). Comparative European Colonization and the First Peoples; 2) Comparative Slavery and the Black Experience (3) Decolonization, National Consciousness, and Ideas of Freedom; and (4) Pseudoscience, Migrations and Creolization. We will draw on primary and secondary sources from the Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone, and Hispanophone worlds to give us a broad comparative perspective. Pre-1800. 2hr/disc. with periodic film screenings.

Democracy, Dictatorship, and Drug Smuggling: Latin America in the Cold War
The Cold War is often framed as a superpower conflict defined by ideological struggles between Left and Right. This perspective, however, overlooks how the Cold War in the Global South was anything but “cold.” This course highlights Latin America’s experience as a consequential and complex theater of the global conflict. It illustrates how issues seemingly externally imposed were also distinctively Latin American, as a variety of state and non-state actors advanced nuanced rationales for democracy, revolution, and dictatorship. For example, alongside the stories of revolutionaries and diplomats, we will trace the history of drug smugglers who combined tremendous violence with elaborate economic and political projects that profoundly shaped the outcomes of Cold War state-building. While surveying the region broadly, the course is anchored in case studies in Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, illustrating key patterns from the 1910s through the 1990s.