The midterm will be held during the normal lecture hour on Thursday, March
17, 2011. This will be a closed-note examination.
The midterm will be divided into two parts:
You will be given four terms drawn from key vocabulary raised in lecture and the assigned readings. You must answer two (and no more than two) of the four options, defining the term within its proper historical context. Each ID should not exceed three sentences.
Two of the following three questions will appear verbatim on the midterm. You will be asked to answer one of the two options. Your essay should draw on the assigned readings, lecture, and discussion. There is no expectation that you incorporate outside reading or research.
1) Ada Ferrer argues that contested notions of race were intimately connected to the struggle for freedom, liberty, and national citizenship in Cuba. Analyze this thesis, assessing how ideas of race and "racelessness" were used by different social actors (e.g., leaders of the insurgency, intellectuals in exile, slaves and freed men of color, the Spanish colonial state, and U.S. occupying forces) in the antislavery and anticolonial struggles of 1868-1898.
2) Develop an argument that explains why violence and warfare were so intimately part of the liberal project in nineteenth-century Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America.
3) The legal end to slavery in Latin America can be firmly dated to the short period between October 1886, when the Spanish government ended the patronato system in colonial Cuba, and May 1888, when the Brazilian imperial government legislated immediate abolition without compensation. However, the history of slavery's gradual destruction in Cuba and Brazil began decades before the legal measures of 1886-1888. Identify and critically analyze the historical significance of three features of the prolonged, piecemeal destruction of slavery in nineteeth-century Cuba and Brazil.
An optional review session will be held on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Location: TYD 2109
Students who wish to participate in the review session must post to the ELMS Discussion Board either an ID or a working hyposthesis for one of the essay options.