Please use categories or tags when writing your blog posts. Use categories to indicate the week (Week 3 or Week 10 etc.), and tags for key concepts or topics covered.
The Cuban Revolution
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When I think of Cuba, I think of old cars and sandy beaches. An image of an old friend who... read full post >>
Week Eleven – The Terror
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The reading this week focused on a particularly bloody and divided time in Latin American history, between the 1960s and 1980s, where guerrilla warfare reined. Newly formed socialist groups fought against their states, with civilians, and rural peoples in particular, becoming the main targets of the violence. These groups rose out of a political climate… Continue reading Week Eleven – The Terror read full post >>
The Terror
Posted by: feedwordpress
As is true with all people, I understand the world as a combination of what I have been taught by... read full post >>
The Terror
Posted by: feedwordpress
As is true with all people, I understand the world as a combination of what I have been taught by... read full post >>
Week 11: The Terror
Posted by: feedwordpress
As Dawson attempts to find words apt for the period of time dubbed the “dirty war”, I can’t help but feel how relevant this is in current governments and cultures across the world. The labels like “dirty war” and “war on terror” are “unconventional forms of warfare where the enemy is within, and rarely in … read full post >>
Week 11 – The Terror
Posted by: feedwordpress
This week the chapter covers information about the “dirty wars” that occurred within Latin America in the late twentieth century. The text describes this period as “one of the bloodiest periods since independence” and even goes to the extreme of describing it as the era of holocaust. Reading through all the texts and documents one […] read full post >>
Week 11: The Terror
Posted by: feedwordpress
As I was reading the pages of Dawson’s text, I found myself increasingly horrified by what I was reading. I could not imagine living through the ‘dirty wars’ that struck Latin America during this time period. Living in constant fear, but the part that struck me as particularly horrifying was the fact that you did not know what or who the threat was. I think that is what made it a ‘dirty war’. “It is in part an allusion to the fact that critics condemned the increasing use of torture...read more read full post >>
Ideology and Violence in the 80’s
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Violence in Latin American countries spread as ideological influence emanated out of the Soviet Union and the United States. Political violence throughout Latin America became the grounds for a proxy war between cold war superpowers with support for right capitalist governments coming from the USA, and funds for left-leaning guerrilla warfare coming from the USSR. The […] read full post >>
Research Assignment: The Meeting of the "Modern" and "Unmodern"
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Source 1: n.a. Christopher Columbus - Voyages to the New World. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2016, from <http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/columbus-christopher-voyages-to-new-world.html>
This particular source outlines the four expeditions to the New World Christopher Columbus embarked on. The author’s list the four ships that accompanied Columbus into the New World and explain each expedition in detail. They provide a chronicle of the location, date and time, and summary of the events that occurred once Columbus landed in the New World. The website also includes a historical perspective of Columbus’ voyages. It situates his journey in the landscape of what was occurring at the time, i.e. Columbus was not the first person to travel to the Americas but his expeditions mark the European’s continuous attempts to navigate and colonize the Americas. They also include the ongoing discussion of Columbus’ legacy — whether or not he should be lauded as a hero or a villain in contemporary retellings of his life. This source is crucial to my group’s presentation because it gives us the starting point of Christopher Columbus; from all of these excerpts about his journeys, his successes and failures, and historical perspectives we can begin to piece together a presentation about the meeting of the two worlds. We can seek out the nuances in the story rather than brute overgeneralizations.
Source 2: Todorov, T. (1999) The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York, New York: Harper & Row.
The second source I used was Tzvetan Todorov’s “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.” Todorov, a French-Bulgarian philosopher and author writes that Christopher Columbus’ actions marks a profound moment in the creating of identity of the European self. Although his analysis has its flaws, it’s a good place to situate the context of Columbus in our presentation. Todorov stamps the European self as the founder of modernity while the starting point of modernity began on an isolated island in the Caribbean; we acknowledge this idea is problematic as it’s centered around European perspectives however… he does offer our presentation a different rhetoric rather than the constricting colonial subject and colonial power discourse. Todorov points out the uselessness in such a narrative as it destroys the nuances in history which are critical to understanding it; he claims that the “discovery” of America was an attempt by Europeans to destroy the “other” — a means for Europeans to identify themselves as modern and natural while the Americas were unmodern and unnatural. This analysis gives us a much more complex understanding of history which aids us as we address the many issues in Todorov’s philosophy and Columbus’ actions and voyages.
read full post >>Research Assignment: The Meeting of the "Modern" and "Unmodern"
Posted by: feedwordpress
Source 1: n.a. Christopher Columbus - Voyages to the New World. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2016, from <http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/columbus-christopher-voyages-to-new-world.html>
This particular source outlines the four expeditions to the New World Christopher Columbus embarked on. The author’s list the four ships that accompanied Columbus into the New World and explain each expedition in detail. They provide a chronicle of the location, date and time, and summary of the events that occurred once Columbus landed in the New World. The website also includes a historical perspective of Columbus’ voyages. It situates his journey in the landscape of what was occurring at the time, i.e. Columbus was not the first person to travel to the Americas but his expeditions mark the European’s continuous attempts to navigate and colonize the Americas. They also include the ongoing discussion of Columbus’ legacy — whether or not he should be lauded as a hero or a villain in contemporary retellings of his life. This source is crucial to my group’s presentation because it gives us the starting point of Christopher Columbus; from all of these excerpts about his journeys, his successes and failures, and historical perspectives we can begin to piece together a presentation about the meeting of the two worlds. We can seek out the nuances in the story rather than brute overgeneralizations.
Source 2: Todorov, T. (1999) The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York, New York: Harper & Row.
The second source I used was Tzvetan Todorov’s “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.” Todorov, a French-Bulgarian philosopher and author writes that Christopher Columbus’ actions marks a profound moment in the creating of identity of the European self. Although his analysis has its flaws, it’s a good place to situate the context of Columbus in our presentation. Todorov stamps the European self as the founder of modernity while the starting point of modernity began on an isolated island in the Caribbean; we acknowledge this idea is problematic as it’s centered around European perspectives however… he does offer our presentation a different rhetoric rather than the constricting colonial subject and colonial power discourse. Todorov points out the uselessness in such a narrative as it destroys the nuances in history which are critical to understanding it; he claims that the “discovery” of America was an attempt by Europeans to destroy the “other” — a means for Europeans to identify themselves as modern and natural while the Americas were unmodern and unnatural. This analysis gives us a much more complex understanding of history which aids us as we address the many issues in Todorov’s philosophy and Columbus’ actions and voyages.
read full post >>