Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Urban Latin America: Aztec Spaces to Modern Places
Instructor(s): Jordana Dym, History & Heather Hurst, Anthropology
This course explores the role of the city in the development of Latin American societies
and cultures from ancient times to the present. These cities encapsulate the layered
political, industrial, commercial, entertainment, intellectual, cultural, and religious
identities of their populations. On their streets, and in their public and private
buildings which have been built and rebuilt for hundreds of years, rich and poor,
native and immigrant, have worked, celebrated, rioted, studied, created, voted, fought,
thrived, suffered, loved, and lived. The course will focus on Mexico City (Mexico),
from the capital of the Aztec empire to the present-day megalopolis, as the case study
in which to read the evidence of the urban experience. As urban populations grow in
the Americas and beyond, the historical, political, social, economic, and cultural
life in Mexico City provides insight not only into Indigenous and Spanish Latin America,
but also points to the urban experience and future shared by numerous cities throughout
the Americas.
Course Offered