HIST 421 - Topics in Historiography

The “New” Labor Historiography of Latin America
This course studies the largely Anglophone “new” Latin American labor historiography of the 1980s and 1990s, with its emphasis on lived experience and the actions and beliefs of workers. Primarily responding to earlier structuralist and institutionalist literature, this new historiography continued to emphasize material relations and the oppression of labor by state-capital alliances. However, it challenged historical meta-narratives and ideological orthodoxy, and instead embraced anthropological and sociological methods - above all, interviews and oral history - to tell histories of 20th-century industrial labor in Latin America. Through a series of monographs and supplementary readings, we will study both the social history of 20th-century Latin American industrial workers, and the methodological and ethico-political project of this historiography.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): Two history courses at Reed, one of which must be at the 300 level
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Repeatable for Credit: May be taken up to 2 times for credit if different topics.
Notes: Not all topics offered every year. Review schedule of classes for availability.
Not offered: 2026-27
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.