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Goods, Ideas, and People: Modern Latin America from a Global Perspective (1810-1910) - HIS00174M

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  • Department: History
  • Module co-ordinator: Dr. Ana Otero-Cleves
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
    • See module specification for other years: 2023-24

Module summary

This module examines the political, social, and cultural history of Modern Latin America (1810-1910) from a connected and global perspective. It invites us to explore the history of the region, through the hemispheric and transatlantic circulation of goods, ideas, and people. Studying the history of Latin America from this perspective will allow us to counterbalance scholarly interpretations that place excessive emphasis on individual processes of nation-building and to reconsider Latin America’s role within larger global frameworks. The exploration of a range of primary sources alongside a survey of recent historiography will be a particular feature of this course. Thus, drawing on a great variety of primary sources —including commercial correspondence, consular reports, travel writing, literature, visual sources, and objects— as well as a comprehensive selection of secondary material, the module invites us to critically question not just the bounty by the costs of interdependence for the region’s socially, ethnically, and racially divided societies.

Among some of the topics to be considered are: the region’s revolutionary experience from an Atlantic perspective, the scope and impact of Latin America’s liberalism and republicanism in a global context, the development of transatlantic intellectual networks in the region and beyond, the place of Latin America within global economic systems, the impact of transatlantic migrations during the second half of the nineteenth century, the reconfiguration of ideas about race in the Americas and Europe, and the emergence of imperial and anti-imperial discourses in the hemisphere.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 2 2024-25

Module aims

The aims of this module are to:

  • Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
  • Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
  • Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

  • Demonstrate a knowledge of a specialist historiographical literature;
  • Present findings in an analytical framework derived from a specialist field;
  • Solve a well-defined historiographical problem using insights drawn from secondary and, where appropriate, primary sources.
  • Set out written findings using a professional scholarly apparatus.

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing (RAW) weeks during which there are no seminars, and during which students research and write a formative essay, consulting with the module tutor. Students prepare for eight seminars in all.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

  1. Intellectual Networks, Global Debates
  2. Entangled Revolutionary Histories
  3. Popular Republicanism in the Atlantic World
  4. Moving Across the Americas and the Challenges of “Freedom”
  5. Plebeian Consumers, Global Goods
  6. Latin America’s Transatlantic Migrations
  7. Race, Imperialism, and Anti-Imperialism in the Americas
  8. Latin America and Global History: A Critical Approach

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Long Essay		 N/A 100

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

Students submit a 2,000-word formative essay in week 9.
A 4,000-word summative essay will be due in the assessment period.

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
Long Essay		 N/A 100

Module feedback

Students will typically receive written feedback on their formative essay within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative essay during their tutor’s student hours—especially during week 11, before, that is, they finalise their plans for the Summative Essay.

For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For reading during the module, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

  • Sabato Hilda. Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Princeton University Press 2018.

  • Moya, José C. "Introduction: Latin America—The Limitations and Meaning of a Historical Category." The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History. Oxford University Press, 2012.

  • Sanders James E. The Vanguard of the Atlantic World: Creating Modernity Nation and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Duke University Press 2014.


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.