HIST 1460

FWS: Papers of Empire: Writing and the Colonization of America from Columbus to Lewis and Clark

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

When Christopher Columbus left what Europeans believed to be the known world in 1492 in quest of empire his decision to keep a journal established a critical link between writing and the colonization of the "New World."  For the next three centuries Europeans strove to establish and maintain authority over peoples and territories via networks of information that flowed back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean (and later, the continental United States) in bundles of paper.  This course examines the relationship between writing (considered broadly to include journals, letters, diaries, books, reports, maps, and drawings), and European nations' expropriation of millions of prior inhabitants of the western hemisphere.  How did Europeans, and later, Americans use writing to facilitate the process of conquest?

When Offered Fall.

Satisfies Requirement First-Year Writing Seminar.

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