HIST 281 - Young Lives: Youth and Childhood in Latin American History

People often remark, “children are the future,” but they are also the past. This course examines the history of youth in Latin America from the colonial era to the present. We will center children and adolescents as historical protagonists, as participants in the shaping of Latin America. To do so, we will analyze how the meanings of childhood and youth have been constructed, contested, and transformed across different historical moments and geographical contexts throughout the region. Beginning with Indigenous and colonial conceptions of childhood and the impact of colonialism on young people’s lives, we will then trace the evolving experiences and roles of Latin American youth through independence movements, nation-building projects, modernization, revolution, dictatorship, and democratization. We will examine how children and youth navigated and challenged structures of power related to class, race, gender, and citizenship, while also considering how they created their own cultures, identities, and forms of expression. Engaging primary sources by and about Latin American youth and secondary scholarship, students will develop analytical skills to interpret how young people both experienced and shaped Latin American history. This seminar emphasizes discussion, critical reading, and historical interpretation, preparing students to understand youth not merely as subjects of history, but as historical actors in their own right.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.