HIST 31941: Citizenship in Latin America at City College

About this course

This course studies modern Latin America through the concept and lived experience of ?citizenship? ? a legal status granting equal rights to all those who are considered full members of a political community. Since the wars of independence, Latin American states have upheld the principle of equality before the law, while often struggling to define who is a citizen and what rights and duties they ought to have. Working at the intersection of legal histories of rights and social histories of belonging, this course examines Latin America from the early 1800s to the early 2000s through the prism of citizenship. It pays special attention to the following issues: the transition from colonies premised on socio-racial distinctions and legal privileges to independent, self-governing republics premised on racial harmony and legal equality; the resilience of, and changes in, racially stratified societies, in the wake of the abolition of slavery and the partial disappearance of ethnic categories; the building of territorially bounded nation-states, undergirded by novel national ideologies, statecraft technologies, and more strict border controls; the expansion of voting rights to women and previously disenfranchised groups; the redefinition of citizenship to include social and economic rightsl; and the reemergence and politicization of Indigenous identities in the context of new ideas about multi-culturalism and pluri-nationalism.