Past courses I have taught

Richard W. Slatta, Prof. Emeritus of History

  • Dr. Slatta Follow Professor Slatta down historical pathways! updated July 4, 2019
  • Earlier in my career, I taught US history surveys and HI 215, Latin America to 1826.
  • My most frequently taught course was HI 216, Latin America since 1826, both in the classroom and online. Why study another region/culture like Latin America? Good question. Let me quote from Craufurd D. Goodwin and Michael Nacht, Missing the Boat: The Failure to Internationalize American Higher Education (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991, p. 113). That they wrote more then 2 decades ago is even truer today: "To a degree far greater than at any time in the past, the world is an integrated whole. This generalization holds at every level. The most urgent problems facing humankind cannot any longer be thought to stop at national borders: Population growth, disease, environmental degradation, arms races, terrorism--none of these can be perceived any longer as someone else's problem or as ours alone. They are ours collectively. . . . Those who persevere in a parochial approach to these subjects cut themselves off from prospective solutions and impose unacceptable costs on themselves and on the world."

    Advanced Classes Taught

  • HI 453: US-Latin American Relations Good Neighbors? Well, not always. Learn why. Analysis of periods, issues, and events in U.S.-Latin American relations since 1823: Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, Mexican and Spanish-American Wars, Dollar Diplomacy, Good Neighbor Policy, anti-Communist crusade since 1945, Alliance for Progress, U.S. responses to revolution. Historical perspective on contemporary inter-American problems on drugs, environment, debt crisis, and human rights abuses.
  • HI 469 Latin American Revolutions Comparative analysis of causes, participants, process, and outcome of revolutions in Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, and Central America.
  • HI 685/885 Teaching History Graduate course on how to teach history. Once required for PhD students in Public History; since dropped from the history dept. curriculum.
  • I also taught special topics senior seminar courses (HI 491) and graduate historical writing courses (HI 685).

    Doing Research at Duke or Chapel Hill?

  • Owing to Cooperative Latin American Collection Development at the UNC and Duke Libraries:
  • UNC takes primary responsibility for: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, insular Caribbean, with emphasis on Cuba
  • Duke focuses on: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, English-speaking Caribbean, and Central America.
  • You may search either catalog using the D. H. Hill library search engine.