Verónica Salles-Reese
Office Hours: TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS 2:00-3:30 and by appointment
Office: ICC 404
Phone: x 75884
Email: sallesrv@georgetown.edu
Class Time: THURSDAY from 4:15-6:45 in ICC 118

Table of Contents:
Overview
Methodology
Text and Materials
Requirements
Evaluation

Overview

The core of this course is to examine how in everyday life the European and indigenous cultures interacted, collided, and/or compromised. The chronicles, letters, and treatises written during the Spanish occupation of Peru will be the historical sources used to document how the Colony was established, how Europeans perceived and represented the peoples and cultures they encountered, and how indigenous peoples viewed, adapted to, and/or resisted the invading culture. Yet none of these sources illustrates how ordinary people –Indians, Europeans, and Mestizos– specifically coped with the conflicting allegiances of colonial existence. To bridge that gap, this course intends to study colonial daily life based on archival documentation, which provides a wealth of information about the specific dynamic of transculturation. Through these documents we will reflect on material culture and analyze the entire network of social, economic, religious, and political links of individuals to the hegemonic society. We will concentrate on the specific patterns of negotiation, adaptation and resistance in which those individuals engaged as they transacted among sometimes compatible, but often conflicting, cultural codes.

In order to pursue the above analysis we will attempt to construct or reconstruct a narrative of urban life in the Audiencia de Charcas in the Viceroyalty of Peru as can be inferred from several sources that were produced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As if they were pieces in a puzzle, we will analyze what are the connections among them, and how they can serve us as new windows through which we can look into the early years of Spanish colonization.

Although this is the primary goal of the course, there are others no less important. In order to have access to the manuscript sources, students will have to learn and practice the basic paleography that will enable them to transcribe them. Reading manuscripts is the best, and sometimes the only way, to first hand knowledge and understanding of certain periods of history. This is a skill that even some historians do not possess.

If the manuscripts can be seen as using a technology of the past, we will also have our hands in the present and future technology. Most of our materials will be available electronically in a web page. Our aim in this area is for students to explore and learn new pedagogies that point to innovative ways of teaching and learning. Students will not only learn how to work with multimedia resources but, as part of their work, will construct a web site for his or her individual project.

The selection of materials and the connections established among them will hopefully be supported by a theoretical scaffolding that the students will acquire, adapt and sometimes even challenge. The theoretical component is an essential part of the course.

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Methodology:

The main goals of the course can be thought of as belonging to three categories: a. content, b. analytical, and c. technological. It is expected that during the semester the student will achieve a certain degree of competency in each of them.

A. Content: The specific information related to the daily life during the colonial period is to be extracted from the primary manuscript sources. This involves learning how to do the paleography and the transcription of the archival documents. Students will have individual as well as collective assignments. Tutorial help to learn to read manuscripts will be provided.
This information will be contextualized within the a historical and cultural frame that can be inferred from official colonial printed texts as well as secondary sources written about the period.

B. Analytical: The first and most important method to make sense of, and study our materials will be a close reading of them. We will also avail ourselves of theoretical works to analyze the texts from different perspectives.

C. Technological: Students will learn the basics of web page construction, acquire certain competency in using research databases, and take advantage of information now available through the web.
Students will be encouraged to reflect upon ways to understand, analyze and connect knowledge about distant peoples (in terms of time, place or culture) with the new tools of the technological age. At the same time, students will familiarize him or herself with the old technology and implications of a manuscript culture.
Students will have a technology class which will provide them with the necessary knowledge and tools for the construction of their individual projects and the effective participation in the class.

Students have to come to class having prepared the readings and reflections assigned for a particular date. Active participation is essential.

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TEXTS AND MATERIALS:

In our course we will use the term "text" in the Barthian sense of the word; thus it will include written (manuscript and published) materials, plastic representation (painting and sculpture), cartographic examples (maps and orbs), music (audio as well as scores), and film.
All these texts correspond to three distinct but complementary categories.

I. Primary Sources

1. Manuscripts:
a. Testaments
b. Dowry Letters
c. Marriage Contracts
d. Religious Fraternities
e. Inquisition's trial

2. Digitized Texts:
a. Relaciones Geograficas de Indias
b. Arzanz y Vela, Nicolas de Martinez - Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosi.
c. Leyes de Toro

3. Printed Texts:
a. Recopilacion de las Nuevas Leyes de Indias
b. Alfonso X. - Siete partidas

II. Secondary Texts

1. Studies and Criticism directly related to Colonial life, the Viceroyalty of Peru and the Audiencia de Charcas produced in the different disciplines of Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Ethnography, History, Literature or Sociology.

2. Theoretical Works

The basic texts are cited in each of the topics covered and will be either placed on reserve or xerox copies will be given to the students in class. Part of the work of the seminar will be to enrich these bibliographies.

III. Images:
Specific images are assigned to particular classes, and they also constitute texts to be discussed in class.

IV. Music:
Each student will receive a CD with samples of Viceregal music.

V. Video:
The history and view of the modern city of Potosi. On CD, given to each student in class.

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1. Indiviual Projects
Students will either construct their own web projectfocusing on a city of their choice, or will contribute to enlarging an aspect of one or more of the cities featured in the course.
Students are required to do two class presentations on specific issues related to the core content, the theoretical implications or the learning technologies.

2. Presentations
All students must prepare the texts under the heading "reading." Individual students will be assigned specific texts from the "supplementary" readings to be presented in class. Two students will be responsible for a given text, one as a presenter and the other as respondent. Each student will take both roles twice during the semester.

3. Participation
An active participation in class is essential. Having read and prepared the materials assigned for class is an important – although not sole– component in participation. The construction of an annotated bibliography, and the contribution of additional sources of data (primary as well as secondary) are also key aspects of their participation.

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Evaluation

Project construction 50%
Presentations 20%
Participation 30%
____________________________
Total 100%

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