HIST 356: Culture & Identity in Latin America

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  HIST 356: Culture and Identity in Latin America
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: These open resources are being utilized in a History course for undergraduate or graduate students by Miriam Riggs at California State University, San Marcos. The open resources provide primary and scholarly sources related to major historical cultural trends in Latin American from the precolonial period through the relative present. The main motivation to adopt open resources was to save students money and to focus more specifically on cultural expressions in their historical contexts, as required by the course description. Most student access the materials through the CSUSM Kellogg Library website and supplemental materials through Canvas learning management system.

Culture & Identity in Latin America, HIST 356 
Brief Description of course highlights:  Exploring indigenous, European, and African elements, this course encompasses Latin American nations which trace their origins to the Spanish and Portuguese empires. The theme of identity guides the discussion of cultural expressions in the aural, literary, plastic, and visual genres. The goal of national cultural unity contrasts with alternative notions of diversity, and the nation-state is the terrain where this cultural debate takes place. The time-period will be limited to the 19th and 20th centuries, allowing students to study contemporary cultural expressions as well as current historical analysis. https://www.csusm.edu/history/degreerequirements/courses.html

Student population: History majors, but also general education upper division students—a range of preparations and history knowledge. No prerequisites.

Learning or student outcomes:  Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate comprehension of major themes in Latin American history, especially regarding cultural expression and identity as well as relationships between tradition and modernity.
2. Demonstrate a variety of skills in the discipline of history (historical methods) appropriate for the upper-division level of university studies, such as close reading and analysis of primary and secondary sources, research and evaluation, contextualization, comparison, and interpretation.
3. Construct clear and effective written analyses of historical sources by using preliminary organization techniques, receiving and processing feedback, and improving written work over the course of the semester.

Key challenges faced and how resolved: It was sometimes difficult to find free online resources that do not violate copyright restrictions, especially in English (because of translation copyrights). I used online digitized collections of sources wherever possible and relied heavily on what was available online through our CSUSM Kellogg Library databases.

Syllabus and/or Sample assignment from the course or the adoption: Students had weekly Reading Responses in which they had to combine textbook and primary source readings with information from lecture to answer specific questions.
Example: Students read: Library of Congress, Exploring the Early Americas Exhibit, Pre Contact. (Five sections on Urban Landscapes; Rituals, Ceremonies, and Celebrations; Language and Context; Recording History; and The Heavens and Time.) And Hofman, Corinne L., Jorge Ulloa Hung, Eduardo Herrera Malatesta, Joseph Sony Jean, Till Sonnemann, and Menno Hoogland. “Indigenous Caribbean Perspectives: Archaeologies and Legacies of the First Colonised Region in the New World.” Antiquity 92, no. 361 (February 2018): 200–216. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.247.

They answered these questions, using these materials and lecture/discussion:

• What are at least TWO specific strengths of using artifacts and archaeological remains to study the precolonial societies of the Americas?
• What are at least TWO specific limitations of using these sources to study the history of the Americas?

Miriam Riggs Name 
I am a lecturer in the History Department at California State University, San Marcos.  I teach History of Brazil, Culture & Identity in Latin America, Mexico: Past and Present, Chicana/o Experience in the Borderlands, U.S. History (survey), and World History (survey).

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://www.csusm.edu/history

Please describe the courses you teach.  I teach courses in Latin American, World, and U.S. history. I tend to focus on social and cultural patterns and changes as well as how historical themes continue to resonate in the present.

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests
related to your discipline or teaching.  I have consistently emphasized the need for students to improve their research, writing, and communication skills as a more general element of their education. In every class, I try to achieve balance between teaching content and form—between discussing the historical concepts, continuities, and changes within the subject matter at hand and helping students hone the skills necessary for research and communicating their understanding to others. I believe that it is important for students to receive a range of readings on a topic, and I regularly assign work from a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Knowing the limits of my own subject position, I include articles and videos by scholars from different backgrounds and world regions as well as primary sources (speeches, photos, paintings, music, and political and literary writings) in course readings and lecture as much as possible. I have found that classroom discussions of primary sources have been particularly robust and that showing examples of different artistic and cultural movements helps bring to life the underlying social contexts in which these works have been produced. I stress the importance of historiography and interpretation: I note changing ideas about historical patterns and point out contemporary uses of history in popular culture, places where history continues to resonate in the present. I want students to see the complexity of historical study as well as how that complexity has often been flattened or erased in the public sphere to serve a particular agenda or status quo. I endorse an attitude of healthy skepticism, suggesting that students look at what authors (and their teachers) argue as well as at the kinds of evidence, methods, sources, and assumptions they make use of in their arguments. I likewise emphasize the continuity of the classroom with the wider world, asking students to apply their analytic and reasoning skills to all aspects of their lives, especially regarding representations of history and their own community and environment that they come across on a daily basis. My own research studies representations of history in the present, and so I like to bring in contemporary representations of history like memes and contemporary popular culture references to have students analyze the way we as a society remember history in comparison and contrast to supposed formal historical research and learning.

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. I wanted to save students money, and I wanted to put together a list of readings to focus on primary sources from a variety of perspectives, some of which I felt have been absent from published materials.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? I put together readings based on the weekly course topics, based on what resources I could find online and through the CSUSM Kellogg Library databases.

Sharing Best Practices: There are many websites from museums and institutions of higher learning that offer digitized materials for free. Scholarly articles about specific cultural or artistic movements often have images of important primary sources that can prompt strong in-class discussions. Play!

Describe any challenges you experienced, and lessons learned.  Sometimes it’s not easy to find free English-language sources about specific topics, which means that I either have to provide a translation or a different work around.

Chasteen, John Charles, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. 4th ed. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co, 2016. 

Brief Description:  This work provides an overview of Latin American history from the colonial period to the relative present. It focuses on major themes throughout the region but also gives specific country examples and “countertrends” in each chapter. I chose this book because it is readable and concise, giving students many historical people and events to research further.

In addition to the textbook, I provided weekly readings, based on free online resources and articles available through the CSUSM Kellogg Library databases.
Please provide a link to the resource  Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America

Authors:  Various Authors

Student access:  Students access the readings and assignments through Canvas learning management system. Many of the readings come through database access through the CSU San Marcos Kellogg Library.

Additional Online Readings:

• Ryan, Edwin. “What Is ‘Latin America’?” The Americas (Washington. 1944) 3, no. 4 (1947): 487–492. https://doi.org/10.2307/978732
• Library of Congress, Exploring the Early Americas Exhibit, Pre Contact
• Hofman, Corinne L., Jorge Ulloa Hung, Eduardo Herrera Malatesta, Joseph Sony Jean, Till Sonnemann, and Menno Hoogland. “Indigenous Caribbean Perspectives: Archaeologies and Legacies of the First Colonised Region in the New World.” Antiquity 92, no. 361 (February 2018): 200–216. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.247. 
• Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America
• Simón Bolívar, "Address at the Congress of Angostura," 1819
• Osorio, Alejandra. “Postcards in the Porfirian Imaginary.” Social Justice 34, no. 1 (March 2007): 141–54. 
• William Rogers, "The First Spadeful," 1903
• Rubén Darío, "To Roosevelt," 1904
• OPTIONAL: Rubén Darío, "To Roosevelt," 1904 (bilingual translation, turned into a comic--just for fun)
• Working on the Panama Canal: PBS Photo collection, 1904-1914
• Flores, Tatiana. “Strategic Modernists: Women Artists in Post-Revolutionary Mexico.” Woman’s Art Journal 29, no. 2 (2008): 12–22.
• Juan Domingo Perón, "What is Peronism?” 1948, and “The Twenty Truths of the Perónist Justicialism,” 1950
• Eva Duarte de Perón, Speech, 1950
• Eva Duarte de Perón, "History of Perónism," excerpts, 1951
• Journey to Banana Land, 1950
• Central Intelligence Agency Information Report, “Personal Political Orientation of President Arbenz/Possibility of a Left-Wing Coup,” October 10, 1952
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, The American Republic, volume IV, “Telegram: The Ambassador in Guatemala (Peurifoy) to the Department of State,” December 17, 1953
• “Arbenz Pits Reds Against U.S.?” Christian Science Monitor, January 11, 1954, page 10.
• Central Intelligence Agency, Transcript of President Arbenz’s Resignation Speech, June 27, 1954
• Lowenthal, Abraham. "Chile Prepares for Yes-Or-no Vote that could Send Pinochet Packing." Los Angeles Times (1923-1995), Sep 18, 1988.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  About $40 – reduced 40% (I used to use the companion Latin American Voices, a collection of primary sources, edited by Chasteen. Now I use only free resources available online.)

License: Textbook is copyrighted. Additional readings are open access or copyrighted and available through library databases.