This seminar explores the history of the Americas (primarily outside the United States). May be repeated when topic is different.

Topic for Winter 2023: Disasters that Shaped the Americas
Prerequisites: Junior Standing
Students will explore how societies across the Americas reacted to major crises, such as epidemic diseases, earthquakes, and fires from long before contact with Europeans through to the modern era. We will investigate how these incidents shaped, and were shaped by, culture, class, race, and state power. Our studies will reveal how moments of great crisis often exposed long-standing challenges faced by these societies, and consider how responses to these disasters might inform decision making today.