# HISTSCI 1845: Histories of Science and Technology in Latin America Semester: Spring | Year offered: 2027 | Link: [Course Website](https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/178965) Wednesday - 3:00-5:45 PM with Professor Gabriela Soto Laveaga This course examines the role that science and technology—as understood by both governments and individual citizens—played in the formation of modern Latin American countries. While focusing on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century, the course will also lay the groundwork to understanding different knowledge systems and what happened to these with the arrival of Europeans to the Americas. Examples will span, for example, the measurement of indigenous women’s pelvises as evidence of a supposed inferior Indigenous race, to recent use of drones by cartels, to hydro technologies in climate-changed regions, to agrotechnology to end global hunger. --- [### Gabriela Soto Laveaga ](/people/gabriela-soto-laveaga) Professor of the History of Science Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico Areas of Research: Modern Latin America; intersection of science and culture; public health; scientific and medical exchange in the Global South I research, write, and teach about the role of unacknowledged protagonists —both individuals and countries— in... ![Gabriela Soto Laveaga wearing glasses smiling in front of greenery](/sites/g/files/omnuum9516/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2026-09/GSL%20Sep%202026.jpeg?h=f300dbc7&itok=dcZgI_NZ)