Latin American Authors Encounter the Sciences

This course offers a scientific and literary journey through diverse Latin American landscapes and societies. The readings are focused on the period 1830-1950. We will trace how natural, social, and medical sciences such as geography, psychiatric, ethnology, and archaeology, have discursively created territories and peoples as part of their own process of disciplinary characterization. We will then explore how writers embraced, discussed, and confronted these scientific discourses on topics such as nature, illness, progress, and indigenous people, among others.