Empires and Colonies of the Atlantic World

Undergraduate / Graduate

This graduate-level reading colloquium explores classic and emerging scholarship that examines the rise and consolidation of European overseas empires and colonies in the early modern Atlantic world (c.1400-1850). While we will analyze transatlantic European imperial structures, the course will pay particular attention to the perspectives of the colonized peoples (such as enslaved and freed people of African descent, creole populations, and Indigenous peoples) and places (such as the Caribbean, West Africa, Latin America, and North America) in the Atlantic World. Among the thematic topics we will discuss include: colonization; the rise of slavery and the slave trade; cross-cultural and political connections; the consolidation of race; gender, sexuality, and the family; the environment; the plantation complex; work and economy; social life; anti-colonial and anti-slavery struggles, revolution; abolition; and the reconstitution of colonial and imperial structures after slave emancipation. Upper-level undergraduates may enroll with instructor consent.