University of Texas Arlington

US History after the Civil War until the present

History of Latin America from Indpednence to the the present.

This course examines Mexican history both as grand narrative and as a series of problems viewed from local, national, and transnational perspectives. We use a variety of readings, images, films, and discussions to develop our understanding of the ideas, people, processes, and critical moments that have driven more than five hundred years of history. The study of the Mexican past sheds light on a number of vitally important developments that shape the modern nation and its diaspora.

While debating the causes of change over time, we will examine how events and individuals have been remembered in Mexico and around the world. This focus on memory and how the past weighs on the present is vital to understanding the multiple uses of the past by various actors in the Mexican present. If “memory is satisfied desire,” as Carlos Fuentes argues, then how do Mexicans desire to see their past? How does the past inform the present? What does this mean for the future? 

This course examines the final century of slavery, abolition, and emancipation in North and South America. It focuses on two questions: 1. Which ideas, individuals, and processes best explain abolition and emancipation during the period historians have referred to as the Second Slavery? 2. How have historians formulated, argued, and explained the answers to these questions?  While exploring these broad parameters, we will address a number of related topics. How did events in Africa drive these changes? What was the relationship between the rise of industrial capitalism and the expansion of chattel slavery in places such as Cuba, Brazil, and the United States? Why did the “odious commerce” end during this period in countries and colonies as varied as Jamaica, Mexico, Argentina, Peru? How can historians examine the contraband slave trade? Did policies such as the Monroe Doctrine expand and shorten the life of chattel slavery in the western hemisphere? What was the role of public opinion and the public sphere? How did the practice of slavery mold subsequent challenges for and forms of citizenship?

            This course will also focus on professionalization: grant writing, digital humanities, and conference paper writing. Students will create an original, primary source-based research paper on some aspect of slavery, abolition, and/or emancipation in the nineteenth century Atlantic World. The instructor will consult on each phase of the research project. These papers should be written with a potential conference presentation in mind.

American History after the U.S. Civil War.

How historians write history in the present and how this process has evolved over time.

A graduate level historiographical course.

A survey of Modern American History.

Modern Latin America survey.

A survey of Mexican History.

A survey of Colonial Latin American History

History of Mexico.

This course examines the tumultuous creation and evolution of new nations in Latin America from the Wars of Independence till the present (c. 1800-2010).  Politically, this period saw the emergence of empires and monarchies, republics and dictatorships.  It was characterized by civil wars, struggles for emancipation, racial wars and genocides, and the problematic establishment of neo-colonial relationships with global and regional economic and military powers.  Culturally, Latin American nations forged new identities out of the combinations of African, European, and American roots.   Out of this process, what the Cuban intellectual Fernando Ortiz called “transculturation,” emerged Modern Latin America:  a place of opposite extremes and intensities, diversities, and unique modern challenges.

We will focus on the interplay of ideas and social actions, individuals and social groups, historical periods and culminating events.  This is a survey of an extraordinarily diverse range of political systems, languages, cultures, geographies, national and regional identities, classes, races and genders.  The student will be challenged to think critically about a range of contentious popular and scholarly information provided by a diverse range of readings, lectures, discussions, films, and visual material. 

Cuba, Mexico, and the United States examines the political, cultural, and economic aspects of the relationship between the United States and Latin America as it has evolved over the last two hundred years.  While focusing on key events in Mexico and Cuba, we will also identify underlying processes and power relations that have molded these encounters.  Among the questions we will ask:  How can we account for the starkly different histories of Mexico and Cuba since Independence?  What effect has the United States had in terms of their political, economic, and cultural development?  How have they influenced the United States?

The student will be challenged to think critically about a range of contentious popular and scholarly information provided by a diverse range of readings, discussions, films, and visual material.  As an upper division seminar, students will be responsible for developing their own interpretations of the information and should be able to engage in meaningful debate and discussion of often controversial topics and events.