Berkley Center

The Spanish conquest and colonization of America generated a centuries-long negotiation about rights: the rights of the colonizers, the rights of the colonized, and the rights of all rational humans. This course will explore the debates around the intellectual capacity and political status of the Amerindians in the Spanish Empire through various historical, religious, and legal texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will examine both indigenous and Spanish accounts of the most polemical events and practices of the period in an attempt to understand how the Empire achieved (or failed to achieve) the incorporation of non-citizens and non-state actors into the Spanish polity. In the final project, students will trace one of these arguments in recent reporting on the challenges of incorporating or resettling migrants, displaced persons, and/or refugees in Europe or the Americas. This course (SPAN 307) was taught by Molly Borowitz as a Doyle Seminar in fall 2020. Please refer to the current course catalog for an up-to-date description of the course.