As part of one of my classes- History of the Spanish Conquest– the professor is having us respond to each week’s reading on a blog. I personally enjoy this approach; it certainly beats having to write formulaic book reviews, which I’ve never particularly enjoyed. This format allows more freedom of form and content, and presents a platform for working out thoughts and ideas in a ‘semi-formal’ that I’ve long found useful for working towards more polished ideas and projects. Anyway, if you would like to read my musings on the Spanish Conquest of Central America (no Peru, unfortunately- time and size constraints), they are here: The Conquest, Considered. Latin American history is a fair distance (though not too terribly far) from my usual stomping-grounds of Islamic and Eastern Christian medieval matters, but I enjoy the topic, and so far the readings have been interesting and profitable, if long (this week’s was a monster of nineteenth century work). My posts don’t provide a lot of context, so some are probably going to be fairly worthless outside of the class’ setting. Some, however, I think might be interesting, including this week’s, which, if nothing else, has some lovely examples of nineteenth-century geographical determinism.