Anthropology of Latin America & Caribbean
The Americas serve as a crucial laboratory for understanding how Indigenous innovations shaped world history and how colonial encounters created modern racial systems. These anthropological perspectives reveal the complexity behind simplified conquest narratives.
Indigenous Foundations & Colonial Encounters
Indigenous peoples across the Americas built sophisticated societies that fundamentally challenged European assumptions about civilization, government, and human possibility. Colonialism then created new racial categories through violence and legal frameworks that continue shaping contemporary life.
The lecture on Indigenous Peoples in the Americas is from my 2024 course on Colonial Latin America using Latin America in Colonial Times as a textbook
Lecture on Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest to begin my 2023 course on Latin America and Caribbean anthropology
Racial Formation & Legal Systems
From colonial caste systems to contemporary critical race theory, the Americas pioneered legal mechanisms for defining and controlling racial categories. These frameworks reveal how law transforms social difference into systematic inequality.
This has been one of my most popular lectures from my 2021 course based on Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean
This 2021 lecture draws on Latina/o Studies and White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race.