SPAN 561 Aesthetics of the Encounter: Exploration and Conquest of Latin America
The arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 to the Americas marked the beginning of the age of exploration and conquest of the continent. We will examine the cultural encounters between the ancient Latin American civilizations and the Europeans. This course will focus on the cultural artifacts - poetry, songs, pictorial representations, and chronicles - that both Spaniards and indigenous people of the Americas produced to record these events. Conflicting views and diverse artistic expressions blend to represent the cultural tension inherent in what we will call the aesthetics of the encounter.