HIST-LIT 90HJ: Theories of the Tropics

Instructor: Dennis Hogan
Meeting time: Tuesday, 3:00-5:00 pm

This course considers the tropics, a zone spanning more than one hundred countries and housing nearly forty percent of the human population. What are the histories and cultures of the tropics and how have they been imagined, experienced, and struggled over by residents and visitors alike? How have the tropics been racialized in ways that justify and naturalize colonialism? We will organize our inquiry geographically and climatologically, zooming in on three moments: the eighteenth century, when Europeans sought to perfect agricultural and extractive enterprises founded in slavery and imperialism; the nineteenth century, when tropical nations won independence despite being subjected to forces of environmental determinism and scientific racism; and the twentieth century, when tropical cultures and motifs established themselves in the global mainstream. Readings include writing by Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and José María Samper; political and social theory by Charles Mills, Sylvia Wynter, Eduardo Galeano, and Antonio Benítez Rojo; and literature by Amitav Ghosh, Jean Rhys, and Miriam Warner-Vieyra. We’ll also listen to music, by Bad Bunny as well as the tropicália band Os Mutantes, and consider architecture from Havana to Singapore. Though focused on the Americas, our inquiry will extend to Africa, Asia, and across the Pacific.