CSP 67 Describing Nature in the Atlantic World: Race, Breed and Species

Spanish and Portuguese expeditions charted courses across the Atlantic Ocean that forced unprecedented contact among the peoples of Europe, Africa and North and South America beginning in the fifteenth century. The multitude of novel and diverse peoples, animals, and plants provoked wonder, fear, and curiosity--a challenge that Fernandez de Oviedo acknowledged when attempting to describe the plumage of an exotic bird: “Of all the things I have seen, this is the one which has most left me without hope of being able to describe it in words.” Descriptions of the natural world generated by Atlantic encounters provided both material evidence and problems for systems classifying people, plants and animals. This course explores the ways that the confrontation of difference serves simultaneously as a barrier between cultures justifying the use of violence, and a bridge attempting to understand and generate knowledge about the world beyond our own.