Modernity, Culture and the State in Mexico
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES 4630
This course is an advanced seminar on the process of the cultural, ideological and institutional modernization of Mexico. Drawing on readings from fields such as history, cultural anthropology, political sociology and cultural theory, the course discusses the shaping of various forms of social subjectivity and cultural ideology that sustained the formation and development of the state. The course also engages with the identities and processes that led both to the formation of structures of citizenship and to the contestation of state power. This course is structured chronologically, following the development of three interrelated processes unfolding between 1810 and the present: (1) the creation of state institutions and ideology and their evolution in relationship to events such as the liberal Reforma of the 1850s and the Mexican Revolution; (2) the cultural and social implication of processes of capitalist development, modernization and globalization; and (3) the ways in which Mexico's histories of sociocultural difference led to political and cultural insurgencies and rebellions. This course fufills the seminar requirement for Latin American Studies majors. Prerequisite: L45 165D, L45 305, any other 300-level course with significant focus on Mexico, or permission of instructor.
Course Attributes: EN H; BU Eth; BU IS; AS HUM; AS LCD
