Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

Urban Latin America: Aztec Spaces to Modern Places

Instructor(s): Jordana Dym, History & Heather Hurst, Anthropology

This course explores the role of the city in the development of Latin American societies and cultures from ancient times to the present. These cities encapsulate the layered political, industrial, commercial, entertainment, intellectual, cultural, and religious identities of their populations. On their streets, and in their public and private buildings which have been built and rebuilt for hundreds of years, rich and poor, native and immigrant, have worked, celebrated, rioted, studied, created, voted, fought, thrived, suffered, loved, and lived. The course will focus on Mexico City (Mexico), from the capital of the Aztec empire to the present-day megalopolis, as the case study in which to read the evidence of the urban experience. As urban populations grow in the Americas and beyond, the historical, political, social, economic, and cultural life in Mexico City provides insight not only into Indigenous and Spanish Latin America, but also points to the urban experience and future shared by numerous cities throughout the Americas.

Course Offered

• Fall 2011