Nicola Miller (UCL)

In this MA option, students will have the opportunity to test the claims and approaches of global intellectual history on the rich material created in Latin America about key questions of the modern era. We will explore how best to understand the intellectual history of Latin America: does it suffice to focus on outstanding individuals and canonical texts, or do we need to assemble a far broader range of evidence? We will test the purchase of terms such as global and transnational, and seek to identify what really happens when ideas are translated from one society to another, especially when they move from more powerful to less powerful societies (in this period, mainly ideas from Europe). We will analyse how political systems first developed in Europe – such as modern republicanism, liberalism, nationalism or Marxism – were interpreted and reinvented in Latin America, and also look at the extent to which Latin American experiences and ideas contributed to debates in Europe and elsewhere.

We will explore bodies of thought from Latin America, such as a theory of colonial liberation (not found in any of the European Enlightenment thinkers but elaborated by Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) and radicalised by José Martí (1853-1895), plus a range of ideas about race, nature, spirituality and human sociability. We will analyse some of the canonical texts (in translation) but will also look beyond them to understand the wider intellectual field.

This course is not only for historians of Latin America, but for anyone with an interest in the relationships between politics, literature and ideas. You will be invited to reflect upon the role of ideas in the modern world and to discuss the contribution that global and transnational approaches can make to understanding them.