Answer the questions and write the References Under Every question in word

Europe and the New World

Things to Consider:

• Timeline:
  • 1492: Columbus arrives in New World
  • 1521: Cortes completes conquest of the Aztecs
  • 1533: Pizarro completes conquest of the Inca
• See Essay, "Arts of the Contact Zone"

• What, according to the editors, were the consequences of Spain's conquest of Mexico?
• Explain: "Columbus reads his surroundings largely by denying all evidence of culture" (1902).

• What factors, according to the editors, made the Spanish conquest of the New World a long and complex process?
• Who is Bartolome de las Casas ?
  

1904:

• Describe the process by which the Europeans collected and preserved information about the cultures they encountered in the New World.

Christopher Columbus (1450-1506)
"Letter Concerning the First Voyage" (1493)
Homework Questions:
1921:

• What are the main points of this letter?
• What is evangelization? How does it function in Columbus's interaction with the people he encounters?
  

1922:

• Explain the names Columbus assigns to the different islands.

1922-25:

• How does Columbus describe the people he encounters?

1923:

• Explain the process of gift exchange in which Columbus and his men participate.

1924:

• Explain: "The island is without personal danger to them if they know how to behave themselves" (124). To whom is Columbus referring?

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547)
Homework Questions:
1926:

• How, according to the editors, does religion function in Cortes's conquest of the Aztecs?

"The Second Letter to Charles V" (1520)

1927:

Who is Moctezuma?

1928:

• Explain Moctezuma's reasons for his subservience to Cortés.

• Why does Cortés decide to imprison Moctezuma?

1930-32:

• How does Cortés describe Tenochtitlán?

1932:

• Explain Cortés's treatment of the idols and the temples.

1933-34:

• Why are the Spanish so unsuccessful in the battle against the natives?

• How does Moctezuma die?

Mary Louise Pratt

"Arts of the Contact Zone" (1981)

Terms to Know:

Homework Questions:
34:

• What does Pratt mean by an "unreadable text" (34)?
  
• What does Pratt mean by a "contact zone" (34)?

• What is the difference between an "autoethnographic text" (35) and an "autochthonous text" (35)?
• Explain: "Guaman Poma mirrors back to the Spanish (in their language, which is alien to him) an image of themselves that they often suppress, and will therefore surely recognize" (35).

• What is transculturation? How does Poma engage in it?
• Explain the significance of the spatial symbolism of the three figures in the text.

• What does Pratt mean by "imagined communities" (37)?

• Explain: "In keeping with autonomous, fraternal models of community, analyses of language use commonly assume that principles of cooperation and shared understanding are normally in effect" (38).

• Explain: "Internal social groups with histories and lifeways different from the official ones began insisting on those histories and lifeways as part of their citizenship, as the very mode of their membership in the national collectivity" (39).

• What does Pratt mean by "safe houses" (40)?

• What is the significance of the story about Pratt's son and his baseball card collection? How does it illustrate the points she makes in the rest of the essay? Refer to specific statements in your response.
• What are "the sociocultural complexities produced by conquest and empire" (34)? How does Guaman Poma exemplify those complexities? What other examples of writers who do so can you identify?
• Explain: "If one thinks of cultures, or literatures, as discrete, coherently structured, monolingual edifices, Guaman Poma's text, and indeed any autoethnographic work, appears anomalous or chaotic. . . . If one does not think of cultures this way, Guaman Poma's text is simply heterogeneous" (36).
• Explain: "Modern views of language as code and competence assume a unified and homogeneous social world in which language exists as a shared patrimony--as a device, precisely, for imagining community" (38). Look especially at "code," "competence," and "shared patrimony."
• Explain: "If a classroom is analyzed as a social world unified and homogenized with respect to the teacher, whatever students do other than what the teacher specifies is invisible or anomalous to the analysis" (38). How do the sentiments in this quote relate to the rest of the essay? How do power relations influence his situation?
• In what ways can Morgan be identified as a "contact zone"? In what way is it a "safe house"? Explain. Refer to specific parts of Pratt's essay in your response.

Florentine Codex (1547-79)
1936:

• In what ways can this text, according the editors, be considered "the first work of modern anthropology" (1936)?

1937:

• How do Moctezuma's messengers describe the Spaniards?

• Who is Mariana? What purpose does she serve?
• How does Moctezuma respond to the news of the approaching Spanish?

1939:

• Why do the Spanish attack the Cholulans?

• How, according to the emissaries, are the Spaniards like monkeys and pigs?

1941:

• Describe the interaction between Moctezuma and Cortés.
• How does this description compare to Cortes's?
  

1942:

• What happens in the Great Palace?