When learning about history, what seems to stick with me the most is how historical events and ideas manifest themselves in the present day. When reading about casta paintings this week from Susan Deans-Smith’s article, I kept thinking about how these … Continue reading →
One of the great ways to learn about the history is to observe the art pieces during that era. Casta Paintings are therefore could be used as handy tools to better understand the situation in South America following colonization. As I understood through the videos, racial difference was a huge matter during that period and […]
I find colonization as one of the most Interesting subjects. Once again, we can see that the Spanish intentions were never those of converting the natives into Christianism but to use them as slaves, this is represented in the “castas” system as the different pictures showed the different “new races”, and because in every one … Sigue leyendo Week 3 – Who are we →
This week we peaked into what the early times of post-colonization looked like and the ways in which identities were changed, erased and created. We did this through examining the popular artworks known as casta paintings and through the life of Catalina de Erauso. Casta paintings are a series of panels that each depict a […]
The journal of Columbus reminded me of a reading I had to do in a History course last year that was about Marco Polo’s travels. Both explorers were very rich in description about the places they traveled to and how wonderful and beautiful the places were. Their observations seem a bit over the top at … Continue reading “Week Two”
There are few memoirs that read as if they were a work of fiction. Catalina de Erauso’s is one of them. After escaping the dominican convent where she was a nun, Erauso, fled the Basque country, traveled Spanish territories, and ended up in the New World. Erauso then returned to Spain, where she was […]
It depresses me to read Christopher Columbus’ journals. These journals demonstrate a true sense of entitlement coming from Columbus and his crew, and it’s this entitlement that begins a violent era of colonization. Columbus’ journal’s express a true lack of empathy towards a group of people who possessed a culture, physical appearance and language, different […]
One concept that I found particularly interesting was from this weeks’ video when Alexander Dawson said that nobody ‘wins’ a revolution. People win wars but not revolutions. Something else that came up for me during this weeks’ discourse was the question of what do we do now – what do we do TODAY – to … Continue reading Week Eight
The voyage of Christopher Columbus is very important to us today. It continues to be a very controversial subject as he was the first explorer to have lasting impacts on the America’s and their societies. We first learnt that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and then we are informed about the impacts that this had […]
