Courses

The course is a survey of the canonical texts of the Early Americas, with emphasis on how those writers experienced the natural world of their new country. Some of them had to cope with extreme cold, others with tropical heat. Some of them encountered abundance, others sparsity and famine. They all encountered new life forms – from marine life to birds, reptiles and animals. They had to cope with frequent earthquakes and hurricanes, and classify newly discovered species of vegetal life. What they saw, however, they read not only through the lenses of natural history, but also theologically and politically. For some, the natural world was rich with signs sent by God for them to interpret, for others it was a political space that they organized according to the logic either of a theocracy or the plantation. Addressing the early natural histories of the Americas, the class will also pay special attention to their politics, and investigate how the ecological spaces that the colonist encountered shaped their politics and ethics.