This course will explore the divergent consequences of the colonial “encounter” for the indigenous cultures and for the Western world. Students will analyze colonial cultural productions (literary texts, paintings, urban architecture, maps, etc.) in order to understand the role of the colonial experience in the economic development of Western Europe, as well as the underdevelopment of Latin America. This possibility has to do not only with inverting a model to suggest the primacy of some historical actors over others, but above all with the need to think about the origins of our modernity. Authors included are Columbus, Las Casas, Hern
