Mapping Poverty, Colonialism and Nation Building in Latin America

This course is an introduction to the mapping of colonial and early independent Latin America, as a lens through which students may learn about the process of colonization, state building, and the legacies on those processes on poverty and underdevelopment today. Historical maps are analyzed both as GIS data sources, and as interpretative lenses through which we can glimpse the way human settlements and activity reveal social, political and economic dynamics whose legacies are still present today.