What is Colonialism? Archives, Texts and Images

Through a close reading of a variety of texts and images from 16th-19th century we will study the transformation of lands and people into appropriable objects and the formation of political regimes in and through different colonial projects. We will follow the encoding of slavery in literary works, in the corpus of laws, in travelers’ visual renditions and in the bodies of people. We will use the archive as a source and a site for the production of knowledge. Students will create small textual and visual archives around different topics, and will use them in writing their final work.