Heading South: Voyages to Latin America

This course is concerned with two interrelated topics: 1) the long, complicated history of voyages to Latin America; and 2) the myriad and evolving ways voyagers to the region have portrayed its landscapes, people, food, festivals, and more. The course will move chronologically from the 15th century to the present, with each week devoted to grappling with a type of voyage characteristic of a given era, including:

• conquest voyages undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés
• settler-colonial voyages undertaken by Iberians seeking new lives in the New World
• captive voyages undertaken by Africans destined for enslavement in households, cities, and rural environs
• freedom voyages undertaken by African Americans escaping from slavery
• sex-tourism voyages undertaken by North Americans and Europeans

We will view these topics through a combination of different forms of media (such as letters, travel accounts, features, and films) and traditional scholarly sources that will help contextualize them.