Introduction

Welcome to the History Department's seminar on "Citizen, Nation, State in Latin America." This course will take advantage of technology to explore the intersections between individuals and groups, on the one hand, and the changing configurations of authority in Latin America over the course of the colonial and national eras.

In a special approach to this reading seminar, you will gain intellectually while attaining computer skills that will serve you in all your other academic endeavors. You will be trained both in content and in the technological skills needed to make the most of it. The objectives are also dual, involving both the intellectual and the behavioral. You are expected to extend your conceptual understanding of the matrix of rights and obligations between individuals and authority. And you are expected to achieve and maintain skills and habits of data entry and manipulation to facilitate your research in general, not just in this course..

The hardware and software components for this special seminar are made possible with funds provided by Dr. John McGowan, Vice-Provost and Chief Information Officer, and the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. This collaboration, a joint effort between University Technology Services and the College, aims at enhancing educational technology and exploring new ways in which technology can enrich the learning environment for advanced students in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Research combines with technological skills in this course. Skills learned here will change the way in which you will engage other courses, particularly in matters dealing with critical reading, research and writing. Masters-level students will find the skills useful in researching and writing their theses and research papers; doctoral students will strengthen significantly their preparation for comprehensive examinations, and beyond, to dissertation research and writing. And regardless of your progress along the graduate path, studying and writing for any course will be considerably less onerous.

Content and Technology

This symbiosis between content and skills will result in new organizational habits, strenghened working skills, and, most important, more sophisticated cognitive processes that will re-shape the way you go about your studies. Technological skills and software used in this seminar will be of special value to all who have to conduct research, write papers, or prepare for comprehensive examinations.

Content. The seminar's detailed contents are on the course syllabus on this website. In general, the temporal coverage will roughly span the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. We will focus on several themes, including corporate and individual representations, communal affinities, regionalism, nationalism and internationalism, mystical constructions, and contested appropriations of the state, among others.

Technology. The use of technology is an integral component of the course, as is software training. Because integration of content with technology is embedded in the course, the effective use of the hardware and software represents a significant component of the grade, as is performance related to content.

The technology tools used in this course are:

• Palm Handhelds -- required: hardware is provided by the University
• Palm keyboards -- required: hardware is provided by the University
• Nota Bene -- required: software is provided by the University
• WordSmith -- required: software is purchased by the student
• BookWhere -- optional: software is purchased by the student

You will be required to use word-processing software designed for the Palm (Wordsmith), along with desktop software especially tailored to academic research and writing (Nota Bene). For reasons dealing with software copyright protection, you will sign a software contract and a hardware contract, stipulating your understanding of your rights and obligations in these matters. You will need to download Wordsmith for the Palm Handheld and Palm keyboard. Wordsmith can be downloaded from the BlueNomad website. Nota Bene will be distributed on CD's at the start of the semester. The Nota Bene website will apprise you of software updates, which can also be downloaded. Technical support can also be provided through the website, although you will receive both training and support as part of the course.

Also on the Nota Bene web site, you will see information on BookWhere, a desktop software application you may choose, at your option, to use in this course. BW is an internet-based application that searches the holdings of university and research libraries from around the US and the world. BW works together with Ibidem, the bibliographic management application that is part of the Nota Bene suite. Results of library searches through BookWhere are automatically incorporated into Ibidem databases.

You will find vital information in the pages of this website. Some of the contents deal with software training. Other areas contain the syllabus, and still others contain some of the assigned readings. In order to read assigned articles placed on this site, you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. This is available as a free download from the Adobe Corporation's website. Click on the icon to Get Acrobat Reader to begin the downloading process.

Finally, the graduate track in Latin American History is a special strength within FIU's Department of History. The extraordinary resources in Latin American History include a nationally recognized group of scholars, special depth in library resources, the federally-funded Latin American and Caribbean Center, and a University dedicated to international studies, particularly the study of Latin America, capitalizing on the comparative advantage of Miami as a gateway to the region. Click on Bienvenidos for further information.