LALS-Latin American and Latino Studies

Anthropological in approach, concentrates on how Latin America's image is constructed and studied today. Topics include geographies, nationalities, social classes, ethnicities, gender, ecologies, regions, cultural areas, folklore, revolutions, and rural and urban societies.

Focuses on politics of power and resistance regarding major cross-border issues facing Latin Americans and Latinos in the 21st century. Emphasizes migration and migrant organizing; neoliberal free trade and implications for labor; organizing by women's, indigenous, and ecological movements; and for democracy and human rights. Many specific cases drawn from binational Central American experiences.

Applies critical and historical approaches to the study of gender in global cinema. Introduces students to different aesthetic and cross-cultural approaches to representing gender in contemporary film. Focuses on films, documentaries, and video works from the Americas as well as from other regions of the global South.

An introductory lecture and discussion course on literature and history of Mayan people of Mexico and Guatemala in the last 500 years; concentration also on representation of the Maya by westerners since the invasion of 1492.

Discusses impact of illegal drugs in societies and cultures of the Americas. Covers recent debates concerning legalization of drugs, illegal trafficking, state policy calling for eradication, military intervention, and stands of civil society on this issue. Studies origins and history of illegal drugs, causes of their persistence, and evaluates recent reactions to proposals that affect human communities in Latin America and the U.S.

Surveys various musical forms and styles that have developed in Latin America and Latino communities in the U.S. Discusses concept of hybridity and grapples with this as a central issue in the evolution of Latin American/Latino music. Addresses migration of music, which not only contributes to its distribution but also to the evolvement of musical practices of forms, styles and genres across borders. (Formerly Musica Latina.)

Analyzes the range of theory and practice that emerged from and shaped significant social movements during the rise and fall of United States hegemony. Focuses on social struggles and revolutions in five distinct locations across the Americas: the United States (United Farm Workers--UFW), Cuba (Movimiento 26 de Julio--M26J), Nicaragua (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional--F.S.L.N.), Mexico (Zapatistas), and Brazil (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra--MST).

Focuses on social science issues through the interdisciplinary analysis of power relations. Compares diverse analytical strategies, assesses contending explanations, and builds practical research skills in the field of Latin American and Latino Studies. Topics change yearly, but can include environmental justice, access to education, political participation, gender, and migration. Prerequisite(s): courses 100, and satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Enrollment restricted to sophomore, junior, and senior Latin American and Latino studies majors, minors, and combined majors with global economics, sociology, literature, and politics. Students cannot receive credit for this course and course 100A.

Applied course where students learn about broadcast, audiovisual, and digital media. Students compile a media production portfolio of various assignments that have a Latino/Latin American focus. (Formerly Using Media.)

Trains students in the fundamentals of media literacy skills, including preparation, production, and post-production. (Formerly Using Media: Video Laboratory.)

For Latin American and Latino studies students who wish to gain greater awareness of rhetorical modes and the academic essay. Students write several academic essays, each with a different purpose, and master the conventions of revising and editing. (Formerly Advanced Expository Writing Workshop.)

Global and national forces have transformed the 2,000-mile United States-Mexico border region into a site of increased militarization, surveillance, and detention. This course analyzes how increased policing and criminalization has affected borderland communities, identities, and subjectivities. (Formerly The U.S.-Mexican Border Region.)

Comprehensive seminar on notions of the sacred, dealing with the complexities of magic and religious themes in the Americas as seen from an anthropological perspective. Topics include both popular religion as well as non-Christian religious practices. Based on recent anthropological literature, as well as new developments concerning rituals related to the sacred (spiritualism, voodoo, santeria, magical curing, spirit possession, glossolalia, earth feeding, rituals of reciprocity).

Examines the economic experiences of Latinas/os in the U.S. and underlying conditions of Latino workers, Hispanic businesses, and Latino community development. By examining their economic status, profiles Latino workers, the self-employed, and communities by region, cultural differences, age, gender, education, and immigrant make-up.

Historical and contemporary overview of the region. More detailed focus on conditions generating popular and revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala during the 1980s; U.S. policy responses; and peace negotiation processes. Examines prospects for Central America in the 21st century including migration to the U.S.

Focuses on the political economy and recent/contemporary processes of social transformation in Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and English-speaking Caribbean countries; U.S. role in the region; Caribbean migrant communities in the U.S.

Multidisciplinary course on the cities of Latin America and Latino barrios in the U.S. Examines how cities have been constituted spatially, economically, and culturally from the Pre-Columbian era to the present.

Studies U.S. policies toward Latin America and hemisphere-wide (primarily since WWII), including Cold War policies and interventions, U.S. response to the Cuban Revolution, the Alliance for Progress, counterinsurgency as the repsonse to revolutionary movements, the crisis in U.S. hegemony, NAFTA, and issues of U.S. policies for the post-Cold War era and the 21st century.

Explores the complex nature of Latino families in the U.S., which like other American families are undergoing profound changes. Placing families within a historical context of post-1960s social transformations, such as feminism, immigration, and multiple-earner households, course examines how family members adapt, resist, and/or construct alternative visions and practices of family life. (Meets the methods requirement in Latin America and Latino studies.)

Lab is associated with course 166, Latino Families in Transition. Students are instructed in the aesthetic and technical production of a short digital slide show that incorporates narration, music, sound effects, and still images.

Interdisciplinary examination of Latin American immigration to the U.S. Topics include history of U.S. as an immigrant nation, economic and political context for migration, immigration process/experience, U.S. immigration/refugee policies, anti-immigrant backlash today, issues facing Latino immigrant communities to the U.S., bi-national communities.

Examines the policies and politics of asylum in the United States, as they relate to Latin American/Latino/a refugee and migrant flows. Focuses on the forced migration and asylum claims of multiple social groupings (e.g., gender asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors) and how these communities confront the U.S. immigration, asylum, and citizenship regimes. (Formerly Immigration and Citizenship: A Global Perspective.)

Traces representations of Latinas in Hollywood cinema. Focuses on cinematic forms of representation (silent films to contemporary features). Beginning with U.S. expansion into the Southwest during 19th century and the early era of film, addresses how Latina sexualities and racialized gender are imagined, invented, explored, coded, and regulated in popular culture forms such as films.

Intensive investigation of major aspects of the ethnography and literature of Mayan people since the Spanish Invasion. Concentration on forms of social life and meaning of discourses such as public performance in fiestas, joking, and tale-telling; and on individual biographic/autobiographic expression.

The rapid acceleration of North-South flows of people, resources, and ideas in the Americas has triggered a rethinking of both Latina/o studies and Latin American studies approaches. By bringing empirical materials and conceptual frameworks from Latin American studies to bear on Latina/o studies and vice versa, this advanced research seminar explores the interlocking social, cultural, economic, and political processes that connect Latin America and U.S. Latina/o communities.

Taught in Spanish. Provides students with an opportunity to critically analyze various national/international impacts of Latino/Latin American social movements. Reviews pertinent social scientific literature and examines conclusions reached by their authors.

Taught in Spanish. Studies the devastating effects drugs have on the Americas and the subcultures they (re)produce. Features critical readings on the impact of drugs in the Americas. Studies the origins of substances (tobacco, coca, marijuana), and looks at how they have been used through time before concentrating on the present.

Taught in Spanish. Interdisciplinary analysis of the interaction between ethnicity, tropical forests, and development policy in Latin America. Historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives on natural resource rights and use, with a focus on Afro-Latin American and indigenous peoples.

Taught in Spanish. Focuses on legacies of Latin America's popular and revolutionary movements since the 1960s, current transformations, and 21st-century prospects. Major emphasis on contemporary leftist or left-leaning parties in power in the early 2000s, as well as new perspectives/re-evaluations/debates about past movements. Also includes cross-border strategies, movements, and alliances for social justice.

Combines a substantive emphasis on social justice issues pertaining to Latinos and Latin Americans with training in essential research and writing skills. Topics include: topic definition; bibliographical sources; interview techniques; fieldwork skills; disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods; and writing, revising, and editing. Course includes peer-to-peer learning and collective discussion of projects. Strongly recommended for students working on senior thesis, project, or expanded paper for the LALS senior exit requirement. (Formerly Seminar in Research Methods and Writing.)