American Uprisings: The Culture and Politics of Latin America and the Caribbean

Application deadline is May 16, 2014. Tuition is $160 and must be received by May 30, 2014.

Though Ralph Waldo Emerson’s line “the shot heard round the world” has permanently fixed the exceptional nature of the American Revolution in the U.S. popular imagination, the persistent ubiquity of Che Guevara T-shirts reminds us that it was not the only revolution that fundamentally shaped the political and cultural landscape of the Americas.

Throughout the hemisphere, the promises, pitfalls, and mythology of revolution have continued to serve as powerful mobilizing forces. In Mexico, issues from energy and education reform to migration and trade are still debated in reference to the ambiguous legacies of a century-old revolution. Revolutionary movements in Bolivia, Guatemala, Cuba, and Nicaragua brought the Cold War into the so-called “backyard” of the U.S. and made even murkier the meaning of terms like socialism and communism. The continued debate over defining the recently deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez –as dictator, democrat, or revolutionary – underscores the aptness of one scholar’s definition of revolutions as “big, messy, contested phenomena.” What does it mean to win or lose a revolution? Does a revolution end with the cessation of violence? From the Haitian Revolution to the Twitter Revolution, the Institute will grapple with these questions and the interconnected themes of race relations, ideology, immigration, religion, trade, gender and sexuality.

In addition to lectures, the Institute will also feature classroom resource sessions led by the Institute’s Curriculum Advisor and Yale Library’s Digital Humanities Experts. These hands-on sessions will both guide participants in the crafting of curricular units and introduce new methods of collecting, presenting, and analyzing historical and contemporary primary sources. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend film screenings and explore the collections of several museums and cultural centers during a fieldtrip to New York City.

Complete on-line application.

Application deadline is May 16, 2014. Tuition is $160 and must be received by May 30, 2014.

Sponsored by PIER and the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale University with generous support from the Title VI National Resource Center Grants from the United States Department of Education.

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