E-Newsletter
Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto (LAS@UofT) is a programme for students in the social sciences, humanities and sciences who seek a deeper understanding of the Latin American regions, their histories, cultures and societies. LAS@UofT seeks to inspire knowledge and experience across the University’s three-campus community and beyond. The programme’s courses encourage students to complement special interests in fields such as Anthropology, Political Science, Geography, History or Sociology with a broader interdisciplinary framework, while at the same time committing themselves to an emphasis upon the languages and the historical and cultural experiences of Spanish and Portuguese America.
LAS@UofT exists to bring together the energy and insights of a multi-disciplinary collection of individuals and units, to develop innovative courses and to stimulate exchange. The programme’s research and pedagogical mission encompasses everything from the ancient American civilizations and the ideas, peoples and commodities that came together and emerged within a wide Iberian world, through the archaeology, geography, history, languages, literatures, politics, societies and cultures of the Latin American regions and countries, to the natural sciences and transnational investigation of Latin Americans and their descendants in Canada and elsewhere.
About the LAS@UofT logo
Our logo is the creation of local artist Liliana Rodríguez. Among its features is a lettering inspired by the hand of early seventeenth-century native Andean chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Guaman Poma wrote El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno of 1615, a 1,200 page letter to the king including 398 full-page illustrations, that is a testament to his learning and witnessing of the world around him. An online digital edition of the original manuscript at the Royal Library of Denmark is there for you to consult.
What else do you see in Ms. Rodríguez's creation?
Learn more about the art of Liliana Rodríguez -- liliana.rodriguez@rogers.com
About the Director
Kenneth Mills, a Professor of History, was appointed Director of LAS@UofT in July, 2005. Professor Mills taught at Oxford, Liverpool and, for a decade at Princeton University, before joining the faculty at the UofT in 2003. He is a specialist in the history of colonial Latin America and the early modern Spanish world, with a current emphasis on religious change and the proliferation of local Christianities in Spanish South America. His publications include An Evil Lost to View? 1994, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Extirpation and Colonial Andean Religion, 1640-1750 1997, two sourcebooks of translated primary texts and visual images for the classroom, Colonial Spanish America 1998 with William B. Taylor, and Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History 2002, with William B. Taylor and Sandra Lauderdale Graham, and, most recently, two co-edited collections with Anthony Grafton Conversion: Old Worlds and New and Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing , both 2003. He has served on the Editorial Board of the Colonial Latin American Review since 1998. Professor Mills is currently writing a book around the transatlantic journey of a Castilian image-maker and alms-gatherer, Diego de Ocaña (c. 1570-1608).