This seminar is designed to introduce students to new historical approaches to the Cold War in Latin America. It responds to new research and debates that have arisen in recent years regarding the meaning of the Cold War in a Latin American context. Students will examine the conflict’s origins, who its protagonists were, the extent to which the superpowers were involved in it and its significance at a local, regional, and global level. In this respect, the course places particular emphasis on the role of ideas and ideological struggles; the relationship between these ideas and the challenges of modernity and economic development; the significance of gender, race, and religion in the Cold War; the causes of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary upheaval; the manifestations of violence and its effects; and the cultural Cold War. Students will be especially encouraged to explore the intra-regional and transnational dynamics of the Cold War in Latin America. They will study how events in one part of Latin America (for example, the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, the Cuban Revolution, the Brazilian and Chilean coups or the Central American crises in the 1980s) impacted upon other areas of region. The seminar will also devote three weeks to looking at Latin America’s experience of the Cold War from a global comparative perspective, particularly in contrast to other parts of the Third World. Although the seminar will mostly involve intensive reading and discussion of secondary sources, students will also be encouraged to reflect on new online archival material, published writings of principal thinkers and oral histories as a means of understanding key concepts and ideas.