Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies
Department website: https://www.bowdoin.edu/latin-american-studies/index.html
Overview
The Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLaS) Program explores the history, aesthetic production, and contemporary relationships of the diverse cultural groups of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Latinx population in the United States. Its multidisciplinary approach is designed to integrate the scholarly methods and perspectives of several disciplines in order to foster increased understanding of Latin America’s social differences and economic realities, cultural diversity, transnational connections, historical trajectories, and range of popular culture and artistic and literary expression. Competence in a language spoken in the region other than English (such as Spanish, French, or Portuguese) is required, and it is strongly recommended that students participate in an off-campus study program in Latin America.
Learning Goals
Both majors and non-majors will be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the histories, cultures, societies, and intellectual traditions of Latin America, the Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx communities, recognizing both their interconnectedness and regional specificities.
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Identify and critically engage with major themes, debates, and theories relevant to Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies, drawing from multidisciplinary perspectives.
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Students will apply, compare, and critically assess diverse methodologies and disciplinary frameworks in the study of these regions, demonstrating the ability to conduct independent and multilingual research.
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Students will develop strong written, oral, and listening skills; participate in community-based and experiential learning; and prepare for advanced study or careers connected to Latin America, the Caribbean, and/or Latinx communities in the U.S.
- Undertake independent research, particularly on the topics pertinent to their academic and personal interests, and demonstrate capacity to formulate interpretations based on their research.
- Pursue community engagement and service opportunities that foster their own knowledge—and that of Bowdoin's larger community—of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latinx communities in the United States (i.e., talks, symposiums, Alternative Spring Break trips, Latin American Student Organization activities).
- Pursue either graduate study in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies or in one of the disciplines represented in the program.
- Pursue professional training in fields in which knowledge of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latinx communities in the United States is relevant.
Options for Majoring or Minoring in the Program
Students may elect to major in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies or to coordinate a major in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies with digital and computational studies, education, or environmental studies. Students pursuing a coordinate major may not normally elect a second major. Non-majors may elect to minor in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies.
Michele Reid-Vazquez, Program Director
Elizabeth Palmer, Program Coordinator
Professors: Margaret Boyle‡ (Romance Languages and Literatures), Nadia V. Celis (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Associate Professor: Michele Reid-Vazquez (Africana Studies)
Assistant Professor: Irina Popescu‡
Visiting faculty: Yoel Castillo Botello
Contributing Faculty: Ireri Chavez Barcenas, Germán Cárdenas-Alaminos‡, Karime Castillo, Javier Cikota, Elena M. Cueto Asín, Angel Matos, Gustavo Faverón Patriau, Joseph Jay Sosa‡, Krista E. Van Vleet, Hanétha Vété-Congolo*, Carolyn Wolfenzon Niego, Túlio Zillie
Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLaS) Major
Prospective majors should demonstrate competency in a language spoken in Latin America, equivalent to intermediate advanced Spanish, French, or Portuguese. Students may also demonstrate proficiency in languages spoken in this region but not yet offered at Bowdoin including Quechua, Guarani, and Aymara. This requirement may be satisfied through the completion of HISP 2204 Intermediate Spanish II or FRS 2204 Intermediate French II at Bowdoin, placement beyond these courses, or through an oral interview and the submission of a writing sample to the program’s director. The language requirement must be completed by the end of the junior year.
The major consists of nine courses:
| Code | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Required Courses | ||
| Select one course in history covering several countries and/or periods in Latin America, the Caribbean, and/or Latinx communities in the US, such as: | 1 | |
HIST 1512 Modern Latin American History | ||
| Warriors, Missionaries, and Pirates: Colonial Latin America (1491-1700) | ||
| Decolonizing Latin America: A (long) Century of War, 1770-1910 | ||
| Revolutions in Latin America: The People Take the Stage | ||
| Gendering Latin American History | ||
| The Haitian Revolution | ||
| The Afro-Portuguese Atlantic World, 1400—1900 | ||
HIST 3404 Crime and Punishment in Latin America | ||
| Select one course in the humanities (other than history) that focuses on cultural production (such as literature, arts, music, dance, art history, and/or media) and covers two or more countries and/or periods in Latin America, the Hispanic or Francophone Caribbean, and/or Latinx communities in the US, such as: | 1 | |
| Introduction to Hispanic Studies: Poetry and Theater | ||
| Introduction to Hispanic Studies: Essay and Narrative | ||
HISP 2505 The Making of a Race: Latinx Fictions | ||
| Medicine, Literature, and Spanish | ||
| The Southern Cone Revisited: Contemporary Challenges | ||
| The Battle of Chile: From Allende to Pinochet | ||
| Experiencing Latin American Music(s) | ||
| Songs of Race and Power in Colonial Latin America | ||
| Select one intermediate course (2500–2799) in the social sciences (anthropology, economics, government, psychology, or sociology) that focuses on Latin America or Latinx communities in the US, such as: a | 1 | |
| Contemporary Issues of Native North America | ||
| Family, Gender,and Sexuality in Latin America | ||
ANTH 2830 Descendants of the Sun: The Inca and their Ancestors | ||
| Food, Environment, and Development | ||
| Gender, Race, and Citizenship in Brazil | ||
| Select one advanced seminar in Latin American studies, such as: | 1 | |
| Youth, Identity, and Agency in Insecure Times | ||
| Advanced Afro-Modern: Dancing Towards Social Change | ||
LACL 3405 Empathy and Protest in the Americas | ||
| Migrant Imaginaries | ||
| Select five elective courses in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies, four of which should be taken at the 2000, 3000, or 4000 level. | 5 | |
Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLaS) Minor
The minor consists of five courses.
| Code | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Required Courses | ||
| Select one course in Latin American history covering several countries and periods in the region, such as: | 1 | |
| Warriors, Missionaries, and Pirates: Colonial Latin America (1491-1700) | ||
| Decolonizing Latin America: A (long) Century of War, 1770-1910 | ||
| Revolutions in Latin America: The People Take the Stage | ||
| Select one course in the humanities or the social sciences covering several countries and periods in Latin America, the Hispanic or Francophone Caribbean, or Latinx communities in the US. | 1 | |
| Select three elective courses in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies, two of which should be taken at the 2000, 3000, or 4000 level. | 3 | |
Additional Information and Program Policies
- Majors and minors in LACLaS are expected to take courses on different periods of the history of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latin American and Caribbean communities in the United States.
- Majors and minors in LACLaS are highly encouraged to pursue immersion in Latin America or the Caribbean, as well as research opportunities in the region. Students should consult with their advisors and the Office of Off-Campus Study for information about available programs and research travel grants.
- Courses that count toward the major or minor must be taken for regular letter grades (not Credit/D/Fail), and students must earn grades of C- or better in these courses.
- Up to three credits from off-campus study (excluding first- and second-year language courses) may count toward the major. Up to two credits from off-campus study (excluding language courses) may count toward the minor. Approval of the director of LACLaS for those courses is required. Please inquire in advance of enrollment in a program.
- Up to two independent studies (4000-level courses) in Latin American studies may count toward the major or minor.
- Majors may elect to write an honors project in the department with the approval of a faculty supervisor. This involves two semesters of independent study in the senior year and the writing of an honors essay and its defense before a faculty committee.
- Up to three courses outside the program may count toward the major and two may count toward the minor.
- Up to one of the courses outside the program may be a non cross-listed course at Bowdoin, with the approval of the program director.
- Students who receive a minimum score of four on the French Language and Culture AP exam, or a minimum score of six on the French IB exam, are eligible to receive a general credit toward the degree, not the major/minor, if they complete FRS 2305 Advanced French through Film or higher and earn a minimum grade of B-. Students meeting these criteria do not receive credit if they place into or elect to take a course lower than FRS 2305 Advanced French through Film.
- Students who receive a minimum score of four on the Spanish Language AP exam or the Spanish Literature and Culture AP exam, or a minimum score of six on the Spanish IB exam, are eligible to receive a general credit toward the degree, not the major/minor, if they complete HISP 2305 Advanced Spanish: Language, Culture, and Politics or higher and earn a minimum grade of B-. Students meeting these criteria do not receive credit if they place into or elect to take a course lower than HISP 2305 Advanced Spanish: Language, Culture, and Politics.
- In order to receive credit for Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate work, students must have their scores officially reported to the Office of the Registrar by the end of their sophomore year at Bowdoin.
Information for Incoming Students
Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies is an interdisciplinary program with regularly cross-listed courses in the departments of Africana, anthropology, art, dance, history, music, romance languages and literatures, sociology, and gender, sexuality and women’s studies.
Required courses include one cross-listed course in the social sciences, one cross-listed course in history, and one cross-listed course in the humanities – all with focus on Latin America, the Caribbean, and/or Latinx communities in the U.S. The 1000-level courses in the humanities and the 2000-level history courses are often a good place to begin as they offer an excellent overview of the regions and normally have no prerequisites. Students can enter the program through any of its disciplines and at any level, but they may need to take introductory classes such ANTH 1100 Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human?, or SOC 1101 Introduction to Sociology as pre-requisites for some of the classes.
Students are expected to address the language requirement early on. This requirement may be satisfied through the completion of HISP 2204 Intermediate Spanish II or FRS 2204 Intermediate French II at Bowdoin, placement beyond these courses, or through an oral interview and the submission of a writing sample to the program’s Director, Margaret Boyle. Students may also demonstrate proficiency in languages spoken in this region but not yet offered at Bowdoin including Quechua, Guarani, and Aymara.
Songs are effective mediums to tell stories, communicate ideas, and convey emotions. In this course we will explore the long and widespread practice of singing Spanish Songs. We will engage with a variety of sources and methodologies that trace different forms of preservation, transmission, and circulation from thirteenth-century cantigas to Billboard hits enjoyed today in personal portable devices. The song repertory will give you the opportunity to develop critical thinking and analytical writing as you engage with a variety of ideas including memory, love and desire, race and identity, power and propaganda, cultural resistance and protest. We will consider narratives of music, musicians, and musical instruments that illustrate transcultural musical encounters around the globe, covering topics from the Spanish Reconquista to the Latinx and Caribbean diasporas in the US. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: MUS 1018)
Provides an introduction to the 1612 novel Don Quixote, widely celebrated as the first modern novel and translated across languages. Through study of the novel and its contemporary adaptations in literature, film, television, and popular culture, students will consider the lasting social, cultural, and political impacts of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel. Students will focus especially on the depiction of readers and books, consumption of information, and censorship. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HISP 1020)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
What is social justice? What are human rights? Where did they begin and why? How do literature, art, history, and other methods of cultural production in North and South America engage with social justice and human rights discourses? How do different genres of cultural production document social justice, power, and inequity in the Americas? This course explores the concepts of social justice and human rights within the Americas. In this course we will read historical accounts, novels, poems, short stories, and critical race and gender scholarly articles, as well as view visual performances, photographs, and films. Students will learn how struggles of culture, gender, and race work to shape human rights discourse in the Americas, from colonialism to present-day immigration issues. The major goals for this seminar are to improve students’ skills in close reading, critical thinking, communication, and analytical writing and to explore the relationships between the four skills. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 1045)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
First-Year writing seminar. Delves into the lives of everyday people facing the Inquisition. They were accused of witchcraft, heresies, sexual deviance, and other offenses. The stories they left behind through court records offer a unique insight into the lives of everyday people who do not make it into historical records otherwise. These “microhistories” make a single individual the center of the story, placing them in their historical context, to understand social and cultural structures. Microhistories are particularly well-suited to showing how non-elite individuals understood their own place in society, how they contested existing power structures, and how their own identities were constructed in relation to those structures. Assignments include critical essays, revisions, an exploration of microhistories in the College, and a student portfolio. The course is focused on Latin America but does not require any prior knowledge of the region. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HIST 1047)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Explores how the Black Caribbean scholars transformed race, nation, and class; expanded Blackness as a political stance and identity; and brought together Black radical traditions across the globe. The trans-Atlantic slave trade and capitalist expansion in the Caribbean radically altered notions of race, class, nation, and Blackness. Since then, Caribbean scholars have contributed new social theory through their critique and engagement with race and capitalism, exchange of ideas with Black scholars in the U.S., Europe, and Africa, and commentary on events across the world. Using the Caribbean as a starting point, the class seeks to define, interrogate, and expand what is meant by race, nation, and class through the lens of Blackness and introduces Caribbean scholarship as a site of global political, social, and cultural thought. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: SOC 1018, AFRS 1048)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Introduces students to the processes and forces shaping the material realities and the ideas encompassed by the terms Latin America, the Caribbean and Latinidad, their geographical and symbolic boundaries, and the identities of those belonging (or not) to such spaces and concepts. Main units—race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, land and the environment, and border and migrations—guide students through key events and debates in the intellectual history of these regions. Through primary and secondary sources—from historical monographs to testimonial literature and fiction, film, music, and theory—students are exposed to main themes in regional scholarship and to the contributions that scholars in the fields of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx studies have made to other fields (i.e. postcolonial studies, Third World feminisms, and ethnic studies).
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
This course introduces students to connective concepts and issues in locations throughout the region, such as Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. The course engages a combination of historical and qualitative analysis to provide a deeper understanding of the Caribbean’s complex history, cultural vibrancy, and global connections. Topics may include Indigenous and African enslavement, degrees of freedom within slave systems, rebellion and revolution, anticolonial and social movements, contemporary migration, and social justice issues. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 1215)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
This course is an opportunity to engage with the history, heritage, and culture of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latin American and Caribbean communities in the US through music. We will explore issues of race, identity, religion, and politics from a broad temporal span of around five hundred years—from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. We will cover a broad variety of regions, contexts, and musical genres from classical, folk, and popular traditions, such as salsa, Cuban son, hip-hop, Latin polyphony, rock, villancicos, protest song, chamber music, reggaeton, vallenato, and more. This course is not meant to be comprehensive but will reflect on the many ways in which music has been used in different cultural and historical contexts, offering a close examination of its characteristics, means, and meanings. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: MUS 1271, AFRS 1271)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
A chronological survey of the arts created by major cultures of ancient Mexico and Peru. Mesoamerican cultures studied include the Olmec, Teotihuacan, the Maya, and the Aztec up through the arrival of the Europeans. South American cultures such as Chavín, Nasca, and Inca are examined. Painting, sculpture, and architecture are considered in the context of religion and society. Readings in translation include Mayan myth and chronicles of the conquest. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: ARTH 1405)
Do people have more or less power when government is weak? Borderlands between empires, nations, and indigenous groups offer a window into the ways legitimacy and power are deployed. How were structures of race, class, and gender established, maintained, and negotiated in places without political, cultural, or economic control by a single group? The long nineteenth century—when European empires in the Americas gave way to aggressive independent nations, offers a unique entry into the worlds of fragmented power, of shifting identities, and unexpected alliances. This course helps you challenge simple narratives of national progress, of indigenous barbarism, and genocide, by focusing on the experiences of “borderlanders” (the everyday people living in borderlands). Explore the Patagonian desert, where young women eager to marry, pitted their overbearing fathers against government officials. Or follow indigenous canoers as they lead imperial officials deep into the Amazon exploring for resources and weakening their own communities in the process. Or discover how Comanche cattle raids gave rise to Texan independence and the Gold Rush. You will analyze a children’s story through theories of frontier expansion, help shape weekly conversations on the assigned readings, lead a seminar discussion, and sharpen your ability to write decisive and compelling analysis of different essays (what we call historiography). The final assignment includes a significant component of independent reading on a course topic of your interest. Note: This course is part of the following field of study: Latin America. It contributes to the non-Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors. It fulfills the history requirement for LACLaS majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HIST 2900)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Since the 1980’s, Latin American countries have experienced transitions to democracy after periods of extreme violence. To deal with legacies of human rights abuses and international crimes, governments have adopted a wide range of mechanisms such as the establishment of commissions of inquiry, judicial prosecutions, and reparations of victims. This course will explore the violence that preceded these transitions in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, as well as the different measures endorsed by these countries to combat impunity and to allow its societies to move forward. It will also analyze the efficacy of these measures, as well as the difficulties faced in its implementation. Likewise, it will study the continual demands of the victims of past atrocities for truth, justice, and reparations from the 1980s to the present.
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
This course will study the history, politics, and culture of soccer in the Americas, from the twentieth century to the present. By selecting key moments and actors, from Pelé and Diego Maradona to Pablo Escobar and Rafael Videla, we will examine how the sport has been sometimes instrumentalized by countries, corporations and other stakeholders for political goals, military strategies, and economic profits. Indeed, because soccer cannot be extrapolated from its surrounding context, we will also analyze pivotal events in the history of the Americas, including dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, armed conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala, and the war on drugs in Colombia, among other situations across the continent, that have shaped the way the game is played since its origins. Overall, this course will enable us not only to understand soccer as a sport, but also as a lens to learn and evaluate pressing cultural and political issues of our time.
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Seminar. This course is a study of race and ethnicity in Latin America, focusing on how Latin Americans themselves have understood and articulated these categories, as well as how scholars have interpreted their articulations. We will cover topics from African slavery to indigenous activism and mass immigration. Our focus will be on peoples of indigenous and African descent—the majority of Latin Americans—which will allow us to address questions of national identity, racial mixture, and cultural exchanges. We will trace themes familiar to students of the broader Atlantic world (themes such as race and nation, freedom and slavery, citizenship, and inequality) across the less-familiar setting of modern Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, and even Argentina. This course will tackle fundamental questions about the intersection of race, identity, and power in Latin America. Besides reading some of the classic analyses, we will look at some of the cutting-edge scholarship to assess how ideas of race and national belonging have changed through the centuries and across national contexts. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Latin America. It fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HIST 2910)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Traditionally written history has been dictated by the victors. This statement implies that written history has been authored by the white male elites that hold power in any given territory. On the contrary, oral history compiles the voices that are often left out of the predominant narratives. This course will present students different methods developed to address and document these realities. It will introduce students to the distinct aspects of the interview process, including general oral history theory and methodology, in-person and remote interviewing techniques, legal and ethical issues, transcription practices, and other relevant topics. It will also discuss the power of testimonies when attempting to understand the world through the perspectives of the marginalized and the underprivileged. Finally, it will allow students to juxtapose dominant ideas with marginalized views to rewrite Latin American history. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: HIST 2412)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Seminar. Examines one of the most significant and yet neglected revolutions in history. Between the years 1791-1804, Haitian revolutionaries abolished slavery and ultimately established a free and independent nation. Explores the Revolution’s causes and trajectory and connects Haiti to the broader Atlantic world. Likewise, studies the revolution's aftermath and its impact on world history. This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Latin America, Atlantic Worlds, and Colonial Worlds. It fulfills the premodern and the non-Euro/US requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: HIST 2862, AFRS 2862)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
A survey of Brazilian history from colonization through the present day. Topics include colonial encounter between Africans, Portuguese, and indigenous peoples; transitions from colony to empire to republic; slavery and its legacy; formation of Brazilian national identity; and contemporary issues in modern Brazil. Particular attention paid to race, religion, and culture. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: HIST 2270)
Brazil is a country of paradoxes. Often hailed as an example of egalitarian race relations and a model for accepting difference, Brazil is also frequently cited for its economic inequality, incidence of violence, and uneven development—all of which cut along the lines of race and class. Explores the unique contradictions shaping Brazilian society, from the colonial period until the present. Discusses the visual representations of conquest, slavery, the creation of republican symbols, authoritarianism, race and racism, and social movements, as well as the construction of a national identity though music and other artistic expressions. Pays close attention to the ways in which Brazilian culture and society have been shaped by race, class, and other relations of power and exclusion. This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Latin America. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: HIST 2287)
Explores the legacies of colonialism in modern Latin America and archaeologists’ current efforts to decolonize Eurocentric interpretations and discourses of the colonial past. Focuses on indigenous and community archaeology as a means of reframing our understanding of the past and present. Discussions address the impact of colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, including how contemporary relationships in the region are structured by colonial history. Students work with case studies grounded in archaeological, ethnographic, and historical sources to learn how archaeology can help contest and subvert dominant narratives derived from colonialism. Indigenous resistance and resilience will be addressed along with cultural continuities and change. Topics may include identity and the construction of ethnicity, gender, and race; religion; slavery and diaspora; and art, architecture, and technology. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: ANTH 2178)
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
Survey of the making of North America from initial contact between Europeans and Africans and Native Americans to the creation of the continent’s three largest nations by the mid-nineteenth century: Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Topics include the history of native populations before and after contact; geopolitical and imperial rivalries that propelled European conquests of the Americas; evolution of free and coerced labor systems; environmental transformations of the continent’s diverse landscapes and peoples; formation of colonial settler societies; and the emergence of distinct national identities and cultures in former European colonies. Students write several papers and engage in weekly discussion based upon primary and secondary documents, art, literature, and material culture. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: United States, Atlantic Worlds, Colonial Worlds, and Latin America. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: HIST 2180, ENVS 2425)
This course examines the history, politics, and cultures of the Hispanic World, from the 20th century to the present. Key moments include the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Cuban Revolution, dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, and Latinx movements in the US. Through the study of a wide variety of literary and cultural icons from La Malinche and Octavio Paz, Pedro Almodóvar and Carmen Laforet, to Nancy Morejón, Julio Cortazár and Luís Valdez, students will reflect on individual experiences and collective movements. The course provides students with advanced practice in grammar, reading, speaking, listening, writing and research in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 2305)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Examines oral and written traditions of areas where French is spoken in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America from the Middle Ages to 1848. Through interdisciplinary units, students examine key moments in the history of the francophone world, drawing on folktales, epics, poetry, plays, short stories, essays, and novels. Explores questions of identity, race, colonization, and language in historical and ideological context. Taught in French. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 2409, AFRS 2409)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Examines questions of power and resistance as addressed in the literary production of the French-speaking world from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Examines how language and literature serve as tools for both oppression and liberation during periods of turmoil: political and social revolutions, colonization and decolonization, the first and second world wars. Authors may include Hugo, Sand, Sartre, Fanon, Senghor, Yacine, Beauvoir, Condé, Césaire, Djebar, Camus, Modiano, Perec, and Piketty. Students gain familiarity with a range of genres and artistic movements and explore the myriad ways that literature and language reinforce boundaries and register dissent. Taught in French. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 2410, AFRS 2412)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
This seminar examines contemporary (post-2000) representations of queer Latinidades and experiences in US fiction and film, focusing on matters of nation, age, kinship, assimilation, and healing. Considers the cultural, aesthetic, historical, and ideological elements that inform the representation of queer Latinx experience across different genres and contexts. Explores emerging themes, tropes, and imagery used to represent the intersection of gender, queerness, and Latinidad. Using course readings and media, students disrupt normative understandings of what it means to be queer and Latine in a nation with rapidly evolving sociocultural circumstances. They will develop presentations, actively participate in class discussions/workshops, and develop a substantial research-based project. Content warning: the texts and films in this class represent sensitive topics such as death, suicide, physical violence, sexual assault, child and domestic abuse, and illness. This seminar satisfies the African American, Asian American, Indigenous, Latine, Multiethnic American or global literature requirement for English majors. This course is U.S.-based. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: English and Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GSWS 2303, ENGL 2907)
Designed for heritage speakers (who grew up speaking Spanish in the home), bilinguals, and other Spanish-speaking students. The class will examine nonfictional accounts of current events and issues in the Hispanic world written by leading Spanish and Latin American authors and journalists. Throughout the semester, students will conduct research on a given topic or a particular environment of their choosing, writing their own nonfictional accounts of their research. Students will gain valuable real world experience researching, reporting, and working with speakers of Spanish in Brunswick or the surrounding communities. Through work specifically tailored to individual needs, students will hone their writing skills and build confidence in the language. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 2306)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Designed for students who were exposed to Spanish at home or had extended exposure in a Spanish-speaking community or country. Builds on the linguistic and cultural competence students already have in order to expand their language skills in a wide variety of contexts, with particular emphasis on writing skills in Spanish. Throughout the semester, students will engage in a critical exploration of the (socio)linguistic and cultural diversity of Latinx and diaspora communities in the US by looking at themes such as language and migration, language use and variation in multilingual communities, and language and identity, among other topics related to the dynamic situation of Spanish in the US Students will also strengthen their command of specific grammar points and achieve more confidence using Spanish through the implementation of projects in which they deepen their knowledge and understanding of communities while reflecting on their individual experiences. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HISP 2308)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
What are feminisms? Is there more than one feminism? What is the relationship between feminisms and constructions of race, gender and ethnicity in Latin America? How has feminist discourse shaped human rights discourses in the region? This course explores the complex network of feminisms in 20th-21st century Latin America. It covers feminist movements, theories, and scholars/artists from a variety of Latin American countries and regions, including Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. Students will learn how intersections between constructions of race and ethnicity, as well as gender, impact feminisms in the region. Students will also explore how early and more recent contributions of indigenous and women of color, continue impacting ideas, discussions, and recent debates concerning feminisms and women's social mobilizations in Latin America. Note: This course fulfills the GSWS requirement for either Queer Theory or Feminist Theory. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GSWS 2006)
This class investigates the central feminist concept of difference—in sex, gender, race, class, ability, and nation—centrally through the history of women of color and Third World feminist coalitional organizing from the 1970s to the present. Taking as its spine central anthologies of feminist writing including The Black Woman Anthology (Bambara, 1970), This Bridge Called My Back (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1981), and Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Mohanty 1991), the course considers theoretical approaches to feminist formations of difference alongside the difficult and crucial work of relational feminist praxes. Proceeding thematically through questions of sex, gender, race, and colonial/civilizational difference among other formations, we will draw on the works of thinkers such as Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Cherri Moraga, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Rita Segato, Adrienne Rich, Iris Marion-Young, Wendy Brown, Suzanne Césaire, Angela Davis, and Mariame Kaba in order to develop a historically and theoretically grounded conception of our own feminist praxes and liberatory political responses and responsibilities in context. The course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies, Government and Legal Studies, and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. (Same as: GSWS 2014, GOV 2930, AFRS 2314)
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
What motivates political battles over sexuality and gender? Often described as disputes over culture, morality, family, or lifestyle, these struggles more often have to do with concerns over national belonging, distributions of care labor, and enforcement of race, class, and gender norms. In this course, we first learn about feminist and queer frameworks for studying gender and sexuality politics: culture wars, backlashes, and moral panics. We draw on case studies that outline the histories of anti-reproductive and anti-LGBT movements in Brazil and in the United States. And we will consider the social dynamics of recent “anti-gender” movements in Latin America. Over the semester, students will research a particular case study of a culture war, backlash, or moral panic, where they use journalist and NGO reporting, and write a term paper that applies the frameworks learned in class. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GSWS 2215)
Latin American philosophy is a philosophy born of struggle, a body of thought whose metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and political identity is tied up with the problems of colonization, decolonization, and liberation in a Latin American context. This course will philosophically assess classical and contemporary thought in Latin American Philosophy, and will discuss issues such as immigration, xenophobia/racism, liberation, racial and ethnic identity, assimilation/acculturation, the black/white binary, Latinx feminisms, and the Spanish language. Our primary textbook will be Robert Eli Sanchez’s edited anthology and topical introduction, Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction (2020). Though the course is arranged topically, we will begin by establishing the historical context of Latin American thought. We will read excerpts from Bartolome de las Casas and Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Classical philosophers we may read include Simon Bolivar, Leopoldo Zea, Jose Marti and Jose Vasconcelos. Contemporary scholars may include Enrique Dussel, Gloria Anzaldua, Jose Antonio-Orosco, Jorge J. E. Gracia, and Richard Delgado. This course originates in Philosophy and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: PHIL 1352)
Investigates the construction of girlhood through the lens of global feminist resistance, centering the writings and struggles of young women and femmes in the experience and practice of colonized, transnational, and refugee girlhood. With groundings in race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality, the course will engage with not only academic writing but also media and cultural production by and concerning girls. The work of this course is to interrogate (neo)colonial histories by centering not only what empire wants and takes from girls (how their images are deployed, how their reproductive labor is extracted), but also what girls want and do in the course of their living with, under, and against colonial power(s). This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Asian Studies; Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GSWS 2245, AFRS 2322, ASNS 2322)
Rage is a political act. Feminists have turned to rage politics to fight against gender violence, misogyny, and institutionalized patriarchy for decades. This seminar explores when, why, and how women-identifying subjects in the Americas organize collectively to challenge political, economic, and social injustice. During the semester, students will learn how de-colonialism, civil rights and labor movements in the United States, the rise and fall of dictatorships in Latin America, and hemispheric neoliberalism continue impacting contemporary feminist cultural production and activism in the hemisphere. By exploring contemporary women-led activist movements, a wide range of contemporary feminist artistic practices, and contemporary feminist literature and film, this course asks students to consider the relationships between feminism and political activism, rage as a political act, and cultural production as a method of healing and revising history. Students who have taken this course at the 3000-level (LAS 3900 / GSWS 3900) are not eligible to take this course. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GSWS 2325)
To master and think critically about classic and contemporary work in critical race theory, especially the work of Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Tommy Curry, we will critically examine such topics as intersectionality, gender and black male studies, social dominance theory, the racial wealth gap, reparations, hate speech, the black/white binary, and revisionist history, among other topics. We will take a distinctively philosophical outlook on these topics: identify value assumption and analyze and evaluate arguments. Finally, we will ponder the relationship of critical race theory (a domain of critical legal studies) to contemporary philosophy of race (a domain of moral and political philosophy). Students will come away with a better understanding of both the conceptual and political issues involved in discussing contemporary issues of race. This course originates in Philosophy and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: PHIL 2326, AFRS 2326)
This seminar explores diverse song traditions in Colonial Latin America. Attention will be given to manifestations of musical globalization and will incorporate the study of sources that reveal the circulation and transmission of Iberian and African musicoliterary genres in the vast transatlantic Spanish empire, including Portugal, Italy, the New World, and Asia. We will pay special attention to complex representations of ethnic and religious others (indigenous people of the Americas, African slaves, Muslims, Jews) in relation to literary conventions and early modern ideas about religious devotion and racial, gender, and class difference. We will approach these topics through a close engagement with materials in special collections and archives. This course is part of the following fields of study: Colonial Latin America, transatlantic studies, Spanish Golden Age Poetry, and early music. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: MUS 2296)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester
How “African” is Latin American music? Although the size, nature, and significance of the Black population in Spanish America is often dismissed, the massive forced migration of African peoples to transatlantic Portuguese and Spanish dominions changed not only the soundscape but also tastes and musical practices in the entire Western Hemisphere. This course explores the legacies of Western African traditions in the music of Latin America. The scope and diversity of Afro-Latin, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Latinx musical traditions is immense, but we will explore specific historical narratives, regions, music genres, and sources and will engage with diverse scholarly approaches for the study of African roots in Latin American music(s). Some examples include seventeenth-century negrillas, eighteenth-century songs and dances for the Luso-Brazilian viola, Afro-Dominican salves, Mexican spirituals, Colombian vallenato, Brazilian samba, Cuban timba, Puerto Rican bomba, and Caribbean reggae, reggaetón, rap, and hip-hop. This course originates in Music and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: MUS 2297, AFRS 2336)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
This course examines how hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality structure everyday life in Latin America's largest nation, Brazil. Twentieth century elites described Brazil as a racial democracy and a sexual paradise, but this vision is increasingly contested in the twenty-first century by Black, feminist, and LGBT social movements. Reading ethnographic accounts and watching film portrayals of daily life in Brazil across a number of case studies, we will examine how Brazilians encounter social inequality in a variety of intimate settings. Potential topics include: domestic labor, sex work, queer activism, plastic surgery and reproductive rights. Students will complete short response papers during the semester and complete a final research project on a self-selected topic that includes primary or secondary sources on Brazil. This course originates in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and is crosslisted with: Anthropology; Latin American Studies. (Same as: GSWS 2200, ANTH 2200)
This course will survey the history of modern Central America, from the Nicaraguan revolution and the Salvadoran and Guatemalan armed conflicts, through film. In addition, this class will examine broader region-wide experiences such as the ownership of the Panama Canal and the assassination of key figures in Central America including Berta Cáceres in Honduras. Mainly through a variety of film genres, including historical drama, adaptations, and documentaries, this course will analyze the role of the United States in Central America, including the long history of military occupation in Nicaragua, the CIA-backed coup in Guatemala in 1954, and the financial aid provided to El Salvador and Guatemala during their civil wars. Finally, this course will explore the legacy of the violence from the twentieth century in the present. As a result, this class will address key topics such as transitional justice, migration, gangs, drug trafficking and organized crime, gender relationships, and neopopulism. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Cinema Studies. (Same as: CINE 2117)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
An introduction to ongoing and more contemporary topics in colonialism, racial thinking, African Diaspora Studies (including the Caribbean and Latin America) alongside studies of ‘the environment,’ and dispossession. Readings will examine how race, gender, and class operate under racial capitalism and settler colonialism both in "the past" and in "the contemporary." Readings will center on the works of critical geographers, Caribbeanists, and scholars of the African Diaspora, among other critical, anti-capitalist, decolonial, and environmentalist scholars. Reading in this course will take up the question(s) of land and landmaking; race, racialization, and racial thinking; alongside questions of space and place as they all relate to the various processes, projects, and methods of (dis)/(re)possession. We will examine temporal binaries and notions of "progress." Weekly in-class discussions will be combined with guest lectures to provide the opportunity for exploring how race, space, and (dis)(re)possession can be understood geographically, and to also explain how a range of these territorializing processes operate and can be understood geographically. Sample topics include the following: indigeneity and Blackness; dispossession and accumulation; environmental imperialism, war, genocide, and colonial resistance. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2361, AFRS 2361)
Terms offered: 2025 Fall Semester
What is the relationship between activism and human rights in Latin America? How have the battling constructions of race, gender, and ethnicity sparked social justice movements in the region? This course offers a general introduction to the development of contemporary discourses and activism on human rights in Latin America. It covers activist and justice movements in a variety of Latin American countries and regions including Brazil, Guatemala, the Southern Cone, and Mexico. Students will analyze how cultural production, in the form of film, literature, testimony, and art, by Afro-Latinx and indigenous subjects, women, and members of the LQBTQI+ community led to the “making,” of human rights in the region. As an IRBW course, students in this course will also develop and practice their critical writing and research skills throughout the semester with plenty of research development writing workshops, one-on-one writing mentoring, and feedback. (IRBW) This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2705)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
A continuation of modern dance principles introduced in Dance 1211 with the addition of African-derived dance movement. The two dance aesthetics are combined to create a new form. Technique classes include center floor exercises, movement combinations across the floor, and movement phrases. Students also attend dance performances in the community. This course originates in Theater and Dance and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: DANC 2241, AFRS 2236)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
The world changed forever when the Europeans arrived in the Caribbean. This course considers the worlds that were made and destroyed when Europeans and Indigenous people met. Why did Indigenous elites join Europeans in subjugating their neighbors? What happens to societies when epidemic diseases and new forms of knowledge destroy the legitimacy of their rulers? Why did pirates risk their lives to sail around the Caribbean raiding ports and waiting for gold? How can we begin to understand what Aztec warriors might have felt when they ceremonially wore their defeated rival’s skin over their own? Why are steak burritos the quintessential example of cultural hybridity? During the semester we will grapple with the implications of complicity with colonial rule, learn how to piece together incomplete sources to imagine incomprehensible lives, try to foreground indigenous agency without ignoring structural violence and systematic oppression. Working in a collaborative environment that embraces uncertainty and intellectual playfulness, this course equips you with the tools to understand how people came to grapple with the end of the world. You will discover the story of how a handful of Spaniards managed to defeat the mighty Indigenous empires in Mexico and Peru. You will also come to understand how that story was a myth, created to frame an “intolerably cruel” conquest and you will become familiar with how that story continues to be used to justify subjugation of “others.” You will work with your classmates to critique modern representations of colonial relationships in film with your own video production. Using 500-year-old documents by indigenous people, you will hone your ability to analyze primary sources and practice how to use them to advance your own historical interpretations. In one fateful class meeting, you will recreate a scholarly debate from 1553 about the shared humanity of Europeans and Americans, laying the ground work for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Note: This course is part of the following field of study: Latin America. It meets the pre-modern requirement, and contributes to the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. It fulfills the history requirement for LACLaS majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. (Same as: HIST 2401)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
This course surveys the 'long nineteenth century' in Latin America. This is a period characterized by conflict, racist policies, and indigenous dispossession, but it is also a period of radical political imaginings, of economic development, and profound social change. Topics covered include the efforts by Spain and Portugal to reform their colonies in the Americas; the independence movements of the 1810s-1820s & the ensuing 'post-colonial Blues'; the end of slavery & campaigns against independent indigenous peoples; the development of export-led economic models; the implementation of social policies to 'whiten' the population; the US invasion of Mexico, the destruction of Paraguay by its neighbors, and a war between Peru and Chile over guano; the triumph of liberalism and the Mexican Revolution of 1910. This is the second in a series of three surveys of Latin American history, but no prior knowledge or prerequisites necessary. This course is part of the following field of study: Latin America. It fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HIST 2402)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Examines revolutionary change in Latin America from a historical perspective, concentrating on four successful social revolutions-- Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, and Bolivia-- as well as several revolutionary movements that did not result in social change-- including Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Popular images and orthodox interpretations are challenged and new propositions about these processes are tested. External and internal dimensions of each of these social movements are analyzed and each revolution is discussed in the full context of the country’s historical development. This course fulfills the non-Euro/US requirement This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Latin America. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HIST 2403)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
An introduction to the cultures of various French-speaking regions outside of France. Examines the history, politics, customs, cinema, and the arts of the Francophone world, principally Africa and the Caribbean. Increases cultural understanding prior to study abroad in French-speaking regions. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 2407, AFRS 2407)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Examines theater and poetry in Spain and Latin America from the eleventh-century verses of Jewish and Muslim authors to the twentieth-century works of Nobel Prize winners. Through class discussions and critical analysis, students will discover how the structure, form, content, and performance of poetry and theater relate to a work’s aesthetic movement, historical context, and contemporary adaptations. Some of the topics for discussion include: religious conflicts and their influence in literary forms; the cultural and political implications of the colonization of the Americas, its legacy, and the resistance to it; the Baroque, its innovative aesthetic techniques, and its transatlantic influence; the mechanisms used by writers to subvert discourses of patriarchy; the importance of Indigenous cultures in the development of Latin American nations and cultural traditions; and the political and artistic relationships with the US and other European avant-garde movements. Conducted in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 2409, THTR 2409)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Examines narrative forms and essays in Spain and Latin America from pre-Conquest times until the twentieth-century works of Nobel Prize winners. Through class discussions and critical analysis, students will discover how the structure, form, and content of narratives and essays relate to a work’s aesthetic movement, historical context, and contemporary trends in Hispanic cultures. Topics include religious conflicts and their influence in literary forms; the cultural and political implications of the colonization of the Americas, its legacy, and the resistance to it; the aesthetic and social renovation of Early Modern Spain, including the first modern novel, Don Quixote; the mechanisms used by writers to subvert discourses of patriarchy; the importance of Indigenous cultures in the development of Latin American nations and cultural traditions; and the political and artistic relationships with the US and other European avant-garde movements. Conducted in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 2410)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Spring Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Spring Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
An introduction to Latin American history between 1400 and the present, using the lens of gender to reinterpret the region's history. Some key events include the arrival of Europeans, mestizaje, honor and race, independence, civil wars, liberalism, populism, dictatorship, and issues of memory and redemocratization. This course works on two registers. The first is that of “women’s history.” Here, we will survey the experiences and impact of women in Latin America from the pre-conquest period to the present, through the lenses of cultural, social, and political history. In other words, we will tell the stories of Latin American women and investigate how changes small and large affected their everyday lives. The second register is “gender history.” In other words, we will not just discuss women’s experiences, but also the ways that gender ideologies have influenced Latin American history. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Latin America. It fulfills the non euro/us requirement for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: HIST 2430, GSWS 2430)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
This course explores the range of issues inspiring Latinx activism and its diverse expressions across the United States from the turn of the 20th century to the present. It introduces students to the intellectual traditions and analytical approaches that inform both Latinx and Afro-Latinx activism in the US During the course of the semester students will ‘travel’ to U.S. cities (and regions) such as San Antonio and the Texas Borderlands, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Chicago, and the Central Valley in California. As we ‘travel’ to these locations, we will explore diverse expressions of Latinx activism, including labor activism, cultural activism, political activism surrounding citizenship rights, and the struggles for gender and sexuality rights. Students will also learn about the many similarities and differences among Latinx communities in the United States, including Afo-Latinx communities, specifically Afro-Cuban in Miami, and Afro-Puerto Ricans and Afro-Domincans in New York. We will explore how these communities have used and continue to use activist practices ranging from labor strikes to literary texts, to gain visibility and negotiate their rights within the country. This course will also draw connections between Latinx and Afro-Latinx and other activist movements in the US, from civil rights to labor rights and the formation of worker’s unions. Drawing from various disciplines including history, law, literature, sociology, and cultural studies, students will explore how Latinx activism has shaped understandings of race and inclusion, gender, sexuality, and citizenship in the United States. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: AFRS 2721, GSWS 2720)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Afro-Latinx are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the United States—among the sixty million Latinos in the US, almost one quarter embrace their Blackness and identify as Afro-Latino. The course examines Afro-Latinx communities—African-descended peoples from primarily Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin America and the Caribbean who reside in the United States. The class begins with an overview of Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx studies, explores historical perspectives on African enslavement in Latin America, and examines the development of racial ideologies in post-emancipation societies. Next, the class looks at the historical relationship between the US and Latin America and how this has shaped migration. We also examine the spectrum of Black identity through the contemporary experiences of Afro-Latinxs in the US by analyzing the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, politics, and representation through historical, textual, oral, and visual sources. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 2722)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Focuses on the visual culture of central and south America during the period of colonial control. Looks especially at paintings, sculpture, architecture, and decorative objects in the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru. Begins with an examination of pre-Hispanic visual culture of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca empires and analyzes the way Indigenous artists adapted and responded to the imposition of new forms of artmaking under Spanish rule. Major themes include the relationship between art, conquest, and resistance; visual culture and religious belief; assimilation and identity; and the contributions of Indigenous and Afro-Latin American artists, patrons, and audiences to the form and function of art in the Spanish Americas and the reception of this artwork in Europe. As a course about the early modern period, this class fulfills the Renaissance and Baroque requirement for the Art History major. This course originates in Art History and is crosslisted with: Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. (Same as: ARTH 2445)
Explores the emergence of social complexity and state-level societies through a focus on ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador). Among the diverse peoples and cultures that populated this region prior to the Spanish invasion, the Maya and the Aztec are among the most famous. This course challenges popular misconceptions about these and other societies who occupied this region over the course of 3500 years. Asks how cities rivaling in size those of the old world rose, collapsed, and sometimes disappeared. Considers the political structure and economic systems of these societies, their technologies, and their relationships with the environment. Explores ancient worldviews, belief systems, and political and religious power. Incorporates various types of evidence, including the archaeological material record, art, monumental architecture, and ethnohistorical sources, and the ways archaeologists analyze and interpret that evidence. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: ANTH 2158)
Explores the nexus of food, environment, and development in global environmental politics. Examines the interconnected challenges of governing across trans-boundary socio-ecological systems amidst competing demands on scarce natural resources—to sustain a global food system, foster economic development, and promote equity and justice. Prepares students to engage with interdisciplinary scholarship from political science, international development, public policy, and food studies. Draws on comparative cases from local to global scales, with an emphasis on Maine, the U.S., and Latin America. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Government and Legal Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2313, GOV 2492)
From debates over the value of indigenous life, slavery, emancipation, and citizenship, to the extrajudicial executions under the dictatorships of the 1960’s and 70’s, Latin America has been a battleground for the definition of human rights, and “humanity” as the condition to claim such rights. This course traces the discourses, laws, and practices of Human Rights emerging in Latin America, with special focus on Central America, the Southern Cone, and the Caribbean. Readings and discussions will address how human rights have evolved in Latin American history, from the abolition of slavery and the founding of the nation-states in the 19th century, and through the establishment of both military and democratic regimes in the 20th-century. Students read historical monographs and first-person testimonies, while also exploring cultural production across the region, including art, literature and film, and studies from a variety of disciplines, including critical race and gender theory. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St. (Same as: GSWS 2721)
Examines the relationship between Latin American societies and the environment, and the multiple factors that mediate this relationship, from commodity production and property systems to representations of nature, race, and gender. In focusing on this interface between humans and the environment, asks: (1) how environmental conflicts and change are linked to differences in social power and, (2) how nature plays an active role in the social world of humans. Case studies include, among others, sugar production in colonial Haiti, water privatization in Bolivia, conflicts between indigenous communities and forestry corporations in Chile, and the implementation of carbon-offset forestry programs in Ecuador. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2335)
How does the environment influence the practice of democracy? How does the use of natural resources shape the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the nation? Interrogates this interplay of environment and democracy through the lived experiences of different social groups in Chile. Not only has Chile long depended upon its natural resources -- from nitrates and copper to fruits, forests and fisheries -- it has also been a key site of debate about the meaning and practice of democracy. Case studies include nitrate mining and the birth of the labor movement, private eco-reserves and national sovereignty, the 2011 student movement and its demands on copper profits. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2436)
From the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to the assassination of environmental activists in Honduras, the news is filled with stories of environmental contamination, conflict, and climate change. Enables students to evaluate different understandings of key environmental issues using a political ecology framework. A sub-field of geography, political ecology is an approach to understanding human-environment interactions that puts difference in social power at the heart of environmental conflict and change. Studies the origins and methodology of political ecology and applies this framework to case studies from across the globe, but with a particular emphasis on the US and Latin America. Case studies include, among others, environmental racism in the Bay Area, the global food sovereignty movement, and indigenous struggles for land rights in Chile. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2537)
This course explores the contemporary politics of dissent in Latin America. To do so it goes beyond conventional institutional and electoral settings, since dissent is not simply a moment of protest or resistance, nor the collective plea for rights. Instead it can be the moment when a given way of living or social order is unexpectedly modified and challenged with the introduction of a new agenda for action. Topics covered may include: Latin American intellectuals and decolonial theory, the challenges to development discourse by indigenous peoples, the role of music and the arts in resistance against political violence, the importance of social media in contemporary movements for political change, and the contestation of established notions of identity and citizenship (e.g., by queer minorities.) We will draw from cases in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico, as well as including Latinx peoples and cultures in the United States. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: GOV 2465)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2022 Fall Semester; 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
In light of the ecological crisis exacerbated by climate change, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have become increasingly preoccupied with the relationship between humans and nature, in a field of study loosely termed “political ecology.” Central to this field are critiques of the separation between humans and nature in modernity and how we should understand this relationship. This course expands the current debates in this field beyond the intellectual circles of Europe and North America—which have focused on science and technology studies and new materialisms—to consider contributions that have remained marginal (for example, indigenous political thought and decolonial theory). The course will include authors from various disciplines ranging from indigenous intellectuals and activists to academics, with a focus on the Global South, including the work of Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Indian activist Vandana Shiva, and Martinican writer Édouard Glissant. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Environmental Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: GOV 2470, ENVS 2340)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
This course provides a broad exploration of contemporary Latin American politics, emphasizing critical themes, which may include but are not limited to: environment and climate change; race, gender, and identity; colonial legacies; indigeneity; challenges to democracy; social movements and human rights; political economy; and South-South relations. The course will approach these key topics from interdisciplinary perspectives in addition to those of political science, such as anthropology, environmental studies, and history. It will also use various source formats, including academic articles, ethnography, film and artwork. Focuses on in-class discussions. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GOV 2466)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
Globalization is often defined as the increasing integration of the world through technological innovations in finance, communication, and transport starting in the 1990s. Explores beyond this traditional account by considering: 1) deep histories of global integration informing the present, and 2) how social boundaries constructed around difference articulate with im/mobilities across space. Readings in human geography, science studies, and science fiction guide these explorations. Although global in scope, focuses many case studies on Latin America and students are required to select a research topic linked to Latin America.
What brings people of Hispanic/Latin American heritage together? What do half a billion people have in common socially and politically, and how does the political context shape how individuals place themselves in position to other groups in society? As the course title suggests, terminology can be a focal point: why do we use terms like “Hispanic,” “Latin-American,” or the more recent “Latinx” and how does that relate to the characteristics of this diverse category? This course focuses on the political experience of people who call themselves Hispanics or Latinos. We take an agnostic yet inclusive approach to the definition of this population, and explore the construction of this group as the only census-recognized ethnicity in the United States. Our course explores socio-demographic factors that lead to collective action as well as political attitudes and behaviors among this diverse group. We focus mostly on Latinos within the United States of America but also look at politics in Latin America in an effort to better understand this heterogeneous population. This course originates in Government and Legal Studies and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: GOV 2054)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Introduction to the sociological study of race and ethnicity in the contemporary United States. Examines prominent theories pertaining to the social and cultural meanings of race and ethnicity, causes and consequences of structural racism, relationships between race and class, how immigration and assimilation shape and are shaped by social constructions of race and ethnicity, dynamic representations of race and ethnicity in the media, formation and shifts of intra-group and inter-group boundaries, and more. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: SOC 2208, AFRS 2208)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Religious beliefs and practices intersect with processes of social change at various historical moments, illuminating the power dynamics of (trans)cultural encounters. Using cases from the Andean and Amazonian regions of South America, explores local indigenous cosmologies, rituals, and concepts of the sacred in relation to expansive regional and global religions, including Catholicism and Protestantism. Focuses on twentieth– and twenty-first-century social issues. Includes examples from pre-Columbian, Inca, and Spanish colonial periods to highlight the continuities and transformations in local and global institutions. Forefronts religion, as a facet of identity and inequality, intersecting with gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Scholarly and popular texts introduce topics like religious syncretism; sacred landscapes; human-supernatural relations; religious violence and ritual protest; global capitalism and citizenship; everyday moralities, embodiment, and faith-based humanitarianism. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2723)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
Globally, a large portion of life is devoted to work. The type of work that people perform reflects global inequalities. Introduces the history of wage-labor and theoretical concepts used to understand the shifting dimensions of work and its implication for the global workforce. Particular focus on labor in the United States, Latin America, and Asia; manufacturing and service work; migration and labor trafficking; the body as the site for transforming labor into wage-labor; and forms of labor resistance. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: SOC 2225)
Explores the multifarious ways that families are created, maintained, and reconfigured in cultures throughout the diverse region of Latin America. Drawing on anthropological perspectives on kinship, gender, and relatedness, the course reframes how intimacy, affect, and inequity are produced and performed by individuals in their everyday social lives. Incorporates the broader social, political, and economic contexts and contemporary issues circulating in the region. Using a comparative perspective, asks how kinship practices and discourses--from companionate marriage to compadrazgo ('spiritual kinship') to sumaq kawsay ('living well')--may shape power hierarchies in local cultural worlds, and offer possibilities for transformation. Incorporates attention to the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, and age through a variety of sources including ethnography, film, fiction, essay, and narrative. Topics may include indigenous and Hispanic family forms; state and intimate violence; sexual and reproductive justice; new reproductive technologies; machismo and masculinity; religion and spirituality; LGBTQ+ and chosen families; migration, labor, and transnational families; marriage. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2737, GSWS 2237)
Explores the anthropology and history of the Andes, focusing on questions of cultural transformation and continuity among Native Andeans. Examines ethnography, popular culture, and current events of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Topics include the Inca state and Spanish colonization; Native Andean family and community life; subsistence economies; gender, class, and ethnic inequalities and social movements; domestic and state violence; religion; tourism; coca and cocaine production; and migration. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2729)
Looks at comparative lessons in global immigration to understand the political, economic, and social causes of migration--the politics of immigrant inclusion/exclusion--and the making of diaspora communities. Specific topics will include: the politics of citizenship and the condition of illegality; the global migrant workforce; and how class, gender, race, and sexuality influence the migrant experience. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: SOC 2370)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
Explores research on children as a window into issues of individual agency and social, political, and economic inequality in the contemporary world. Children move between families, communities, and nations; claim belonging to divergent communities; create distinct identities; and navigate hierarchies. Highlights the circulation of children as structured by broad relationships of power. Forefronts youth as social actors. Considers culturally specific notions of childhood and methodological and ethical implications of research with children. Topics include adoption, migration, human trafficking, child labor, tourism, and social movements in the Americas, Asia, Oceania, and/or Africa. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: ANTH 2371)
Knowledge of the history of the slave trade to the Americas has grown immensely. This course pivots from viewing the Atlantic World through the lens of the trade in slaves to how a diverse Atlantic World developed through Afro-Portuguese encounters from the age of Henry the Navigator to the formal abolition of slavery in Brazil and the extension of colonization in Portuguese-ruled Africa. How and why did early modern Africans and Portuguese participate in the Atlantic trade? What other forms of commerce, such as ivory and rubber, proliferated? What cultural systems, cosmologies, religions, and identities emerged through these Atlantic World exchanges, including the formation of Afro-Portuguese identities? What are the legacies of the early modern Afro-Portuguese Atlantic world? In exploring these and other questions, this course introduces students to the histories of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil. It fulfills the non-Euro/US and premodern requirements for history majors and minors. This course originates in History and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HIST 2824, AFRS 2824)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
An introduction to ongoing topics in colonialism, racial thinking, environmental studies, global, and Caribbean studies. Examines how race, gender, and class operate under racial capitalism and settler colonialism. Readings will center on the works of critical geographers, Caribbeanists, and scholars of the African diaspora (including Latin America), among other critical, anti-capitalist, decolonial, and environmentalist scholars. Reading in this course will take up the question(s) of land and land-making and race, racialization, and racial thinking alongside questions of space and place, as they all relate to the various processes, projects, and methods of (dis)/(re)possession. Weekly in-class discussions will be combined with guest lectures to provide the opportunity for exploring how race, space, and (dis)(re)possession can be understood geographically, and to also explain how a range of these territorializing processes operate. Sample topics include the following: indigeneity and Blackness, dispossession and accumulation, and environmental imperialism, war, and colonial resistance. The course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. (Same as: ENVS 2360, AFRS 2350)
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
Explores the creation, representation, and marketing of US Latino/a identities in American literature and popular culture from the 1960s to the present. Focuses on the experiences of artists and writers of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican origin, their negotiations with notions of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the United States, their role in the struggle for social rights, in cultural translation, and in the marketing of ethnic identities, as portrayed in a variety of works ranging from movies and songs to poetry and narrative. Authors include Álvarez, Blades, Braschi, Díaz, Hijuelos, Ovejas, Pietri, and Quiñones. Readings in English, discussions and writing in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3005)
What do gold, tomatoes, and ants in the sixteenth century have to do with U.S. Latina/os today? This class reads colonial Latin American authors (e.g. Bartolomé de las Casas, el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega) alongside writers who focus on Latinas/os in the US in the last two centuries (e.g. María Ruiz de Burton, Sandra Cisneros, Arturo Islas) to explore this question. By reading works from different historical periods, considers how objects connect long histories of colonialism in the Americas to nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideas of national belonging. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3006)
By looking at the history of key cities and the challenges of urban life in Latin America, this seminar examines how the city has served as a site of contestation and politics throughout the region. Topics discussed in the seminar will include top-down efforts to impose order and discipline on the city and the response of urban dwellers; planned and unplanned urban spaces; the rise of slums; marginality; informality; and the formation of urban identities. We will also analyze the role of cities in the construction of social and political rights and explore the city as a site of creativity. The course will focus primarily on twentieth-century cities but will also explore urban life in the nineteenth century and the colonial period, to a lesser extent. Special attention will be paid to the following cities: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Caracas, and Brasilia. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: History. (Same as: HIST 2294)
Explores the professionalization of Spanish theater, starting in Spain with the development of the three-act comedia and moving across the Atlantic within public theaters, courtyards, convent theaters, and the streets. Examines the topic of performance, considering staging, costuming, set design, the lives of actors, and adaptation in both historical and contemporary contexts. Playwrights of special focus include: Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, María de Zayas, Ana Caro, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies; Theater. (Same as: HISP 3110, THTR 3503)
Enslaved Africans who fought against oppression through escaping the European plantation system in the Caribbean for freedom in the mountains are called maroons, and their act, marronnage. Except for Queen Nanny of the Jamaican Blue Mountains, only male names have been consecrated as maroons and freedom fighters (the Haitians Makandal or Toussaint Louverture, the Martinican Louis Delgrès, the Jamaican Cudjoe or the Cuban Coba). The course examines the fictitious treatment French-speaking Caribbean authors grant to forgotten African or Afro-descended women who historically fought against enslavement and colonization. The literary works are studied against the backdrop of “Douboutism,” a conceptual framework derived from the common perception about women in the French Caribbean as expressed in the Creole say “fanm doubout,” which means “strong woman.” Authors studied may include Evelyne Trouillot, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, André Schwarz-Bart, Suzanne Dracius, and Fabienne Kanor. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 3211, AFRS 3211, GSWS 3211)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
Aesthetics—the critical reflection on art, taste, and culture; as much as beauty, the set of properties of an object that arouses pleasure—are central to all aspects of society-building and human life and relationships. Examines the notions of aesthetics and beauty, from precolonial to contemporary times in cultures of the African, Caribbean, and Western civilizations as expressed in thought and various humanities and social sciences texts, as well as the arts, iconography, and the media. Considers the ways Africans and Afro-descendants in the American region responded to Western notions of aesthetics and beauty and posited their own. Authors studied may include Senghor, Cheick Anta Diop, Mudimbe, Gyekye Kwame, Anténor Firmin, Jean Price Mars, Damas, Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, René Ménil, Fanon, Glissant, Socrates, Plato, Diderot, Montesquieu, Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Ronsard, Erasmus, de Grenailles, and Hugo. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 3213, AFRS 3213)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Through the exploration of art, literature, architecture and the unique worldview of the ancestral Andean societies, this course will take a look at the different ways in which the three main countries in the Andes—Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia—have dealt with processes of social, political, and cultural modernization since the late nineteenth century until the present day. Readings will include works by Peruvian, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian writers to examine modernist, avant-garde and postmodernist aesthetics. Students will analyze how internal migration to the cities of Lima, Quito and La Paz has reconfigured them, changed their urban dynamics, and impacted the economy and the natural environment. One example students will engage with includes architecture from iconic Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani ,who invented the construction of the Cholets in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. Cholets offer a unique way of connecting urban space to Aymaran identity (an identity that is very connected to the land in Boliva). Students will also address the issue of migration and the reconfigurations of Andean identities in the United States, through the works of Bolivian author Edmundo Paz Soldán and the Ecuadorian-American writer Ernesto Quiñónez and his experience living in Harlem. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St; Urban Studies. (Same as: HISP 3211, URBS 3211)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Examines how cinema portrays urban spaces in Latin America, Spain and USA from an aesthetic point of view that facilitates discourses on Hispanic history and identity. It looks at the city (Barcelona, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Habana, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mexico DF and New York) as a cinematic setting for narratives on crime, immigration, political activity and romance, and how it conveys utopic or distopic views of physical and social urban development. Also considers how cities lend themselves as transnational subjects for directors who cross national boundaries, such as Luis Buñuel, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Conducted in English. Writing assignments in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3117)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
Studies the main topics, techniques, and contributions of Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez as presented in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Explores the actual locations and the social, cultural, and literary trends that inspired the creation of Macondo, the so-called village of the world where the novel takes place, and the universal themes to which this imaginary town relates. Contemporary authors include Fuenmayor, Rojas Herazo, and Cepeda Samudio . This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3218)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester
Explores the concept of madness and the varying ways in which mental illness has been represented in twentieth-century Latin American fiction. Readings include short stories and novels dealing with the issues of schizophrenia, paranoia, and psychotic behavior by authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Horacio Quiroga. . Also studies the ways in which certain authors draw from the language and symptoms of schizophrenia and paranoia in order to construct the narrative structure of their works and in order to enhance their representation of social, political, and historical conjunctures. Authors include César Aira, Roberto Bolaño, Diamela Eltit, and Ricardo Piglia, . This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3219)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
This course explores a range of literary and cultural texts related to the theory, practice and experience of medicine, health and healing in the early modern Hispanic world. Students will analyze how early Spanish literature impacts our understanding of contemporary health practices and examine how health histories provide insight into racial and ethnic health disparities and general inequities in health care systems. Topics include drug trials, herbalists and apothecaries; health and spiritual practices; gardens and gardeners; diet and food; healer and patients; and race, ethnicity, gender and medicine. The course provides an introduction to the topics of narrative medicine and the health humanities. Course is taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3220)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
Focuses on literary texts written by women from French-speaking West African, Central African, and Caribbean countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Themes treated—women and/in colonization and enslavement, madness, memory, alienation, womanhood, individual and collective identity, war, democracy, gender dynamics, women and tradition, women and modernism, social, cultural, racial and ethnic hierarchies—are approached from a critical discourse analysis and comparative prism contextualized by historical, cultural, political, sociological, and gender frameworks. Works studied may be by Mariama Bâ, Aminata Sow Fall, Ken Bugul, Fatou Diome (Senegal), Tanella Boni (Côte d’Ivoire), Calixthe Beyala, Léonora Miano (Cameroun); Marie Chauvet, Évelyne Trouillot, Marie-Célie Agnant (Haïti); Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Gisèle Pineau (Guadeloupe); Suzanne Lacascade, Françoise Éga, and Fabienne Kanor (Martinique). This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 3201, AFRS 3201, GSWS 3323)
Discusses the historical, social, and political consequences of the clash between tradition and modernity in Latin America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as seen through novels, short stories, and film. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which the processes of modernization have caused the coexistence of divergent worlds within Latin American countries. Analyzes different social and political reactions to these conflictive realities, focusing on four cases: the Mexican Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and Andean insurgencies in Perú. Authors to be read may include Reinaldo Arenas, Roberto Bolaño, Simón Bolívar, Jorge Luis Borges, Cromwell Jara, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, José Martí, Elena Poniatowska, and Juan Rulfo, among others. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3223)
Who speaks in a text? What relationship exists between literature and identity? How can we portray ourselves in specific political contexts? Addresses these and other questions by studying contemporary Southern Cone literary texts that deal with problems of subjectivity and self- representation in poetry and novels. Concentrates on texts that display a literary “persona” in contexts of violence and resistance (the dictatorships of the 1970s) and in more contemporary Latin American ones. Some authors include Borges, Gelman, and Peri-Rossi. Films and contextual historical readings used. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3225)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester
What kind of stories do bodies tell or conceal? How does living in a gendered and racialized body effects the stories told by women? How do bodies and their stories converge with History or complicate historical “truths”? These are some of the questions addressed in this study of contemporary writing by women from the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States Latinx/Chicana communities. Feminists of color frame the analysis of literature, popular culture and film to guide an examination of the relation of bodies and sexuality to social power, and the role of this relation in the shaping of both personal and national identities. Theorists include Alexander, Barriteau, Curiel, Mendez and Segato. Novelists include Álvarez, Buitrago, García, Indiana Hernández, and Santos-Febres. Taught in Spanish with readings in Spanish and English. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3226, AFRS 3226, GSWS 3226)
Questions what is meant by 'avant-garde': how it was manifested in the Hispanic world in the first half of the twentieth century; how contemporaneous politics shaped or became shaped by it; how this relates to the world today. Focuses on poets such as Aleixandre, Garcia Lorca, Borges, Neruda, Huidobro, Storni, Lange, Novo, and Vallejo, while also considering a wide array of manifestos, literary journals, films, and other art forms from Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Brazil. Taught in Spanish with some theoretical and historical readings in English. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3227)
From the first chronicles of Columbus, who believed he had arrived in "The Indies,” to the fantasies of global visitors lured by the comforts of secluded resorts, imagination has been a defining force impacting both the representation and the material lives of Caribbean people. Explores the historical trends that have shaped Caribbean societies, cultural identities, and intellectual history through a panoramic study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction, essays, and films, with a focus on authors from the Hispanic Caribbean and US-Latinas of Caribbean descent. Engaging with the responses from Caribbean intellectuals to the challenges of the distorting mirror, addresses: how writers and artists have responded to the legacy of colonialism, slavery, and the plantation economy; how literature and art have depicted dominant trends in the region’s more recent history such as absolutist regimes, massive migrations, the tourist industry, and even natural disasters; how the Caribbean drawn by artists and intellectuals relates to global representations of the region. Authors include Piñera, Padura, Santos-Febres, and Chaviano. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3228, AFRS 3228)
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
Did feminism exist in the early modern period? Examines key women authors from the early Hispanic World, considering the representation of gender, sexuality, race, and identity in distinct political and social contexts. Focuses on Mexican author Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695) and Spanish author María de Zayas (1590-1661), alongside other prominent women writers from the period. Students read short stories, essays, poems, and personal letters. Conducted in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3231, GSWS 3231)
Terms offered: 2022 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester
Why does Mexican literature have so many ghosts as characters? What distinguishes the representation of ghosts in Mexican literature from their representation in American gothic literature? In this seminar we will read contemporary Mexican literature through the figure of the ghost. I argue that the ghost in Mexican literature allows us to think and analyze a variety of topics such as immigration (US-Mexico), exile, politics, trauma, race and environment. Readings may include works by Rulfo, Fuentes, Tario, Nettel, Luiselli, Mendoza, Herrera, and Bicecci. The course is conducted in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HISP 3234)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Explores the representation of Mexican history in literature by Mexico’s most canonical writers of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Key moments in the history of Mexico discussed include the Mexican Revolution and its legacy, the struggles for modernization, the 1968 massacre of Tlatelolco, the concept of the border from a Mexican perspective, immigration to the United States, and the War on Drugs. Literary texts in a variety of genres (short stories, novellas, novels, theater, essays, chronicles and film) are complemented by historical readings and critical essays.. Authors include: Mariano Azuela, Sabina Berman, Rosario Castellanos, Luis Humberto Crosthwite, Carlos Fuentes, Yuri Herrera, Jorge Ibarguengoitia, Octavio Paz, Valeria Luiselli, Elmer Mendoza, Guadalupe Nettel, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Daniel Sada, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, and Helena María Viramontes This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3235)
An investigation of the short story as a literary genre, beginning in the nineteenth century, involving discussion of its aesthetics, as well as its political, social, and cultural ramifications in the Spanish-speaking world. Authors include Pardo Bazán, Borges, Cortázar, Echevarría, Ferré, García Márquez, and others. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3237)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester; 2025 Spring Semester
Examines terrorism and the way it is represented in literature and the arts through the study of one particular case--the war between the State and the Shining Path Maoist guerrilla that has taken place in Peru during the last three decades. Authors include Daniel Alarcón, Fernando Ampuero, Alonso Cueto, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Ortega, as well as filmmakers such as Francisco Lombardi, John Malkovich, Josué Mendes, and Pamela Yates. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3238)
An examination of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’s work, focusing not only on his short stories, poems, essays, film scripts, interviews, and cinematic adaptations, but also on the writers who had a particular influence on his work. Also studies Latin American, European, and United States writers who were later influenced by the Argentinian master. An organizing concept is Borges’s idea that a writer creates his own precursors. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3239)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester
In order to explain the present we look at the past. But how do we choose the regions of the past pertinent for our understanding of the present? Latin American writers seem obsessed with one particular period: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which hundreds of novels have been set. Studies a variety of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American novels set in the Colonial period. Focuses on fictions that establish connections and implicit comparisons between sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political, cultural, and social phenomena and current conjunctions in diverse Latin American nations. Topics include: theories of postcolonialism, historical and collective memory, discourses on history and literary representation, and historical continuities between the Colonial period and five contemporary Latin American countries (México, Colombia, Cuba, Argentina, and Peru.) Authors include Reinaldo Arenas, Carmen Boullosa, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, and Abel Posse, among others. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3248)
How do artists distinguish their contemporary moment from the past? What challenges does it pose to literature and film? Building on ideas by Agamben, Benjamin, and Didi-Huberman, explores these questions in the context of contemporary Argentinean, Chilean, and Uruguayan poetry, short stories, novels, and films. Topics include post-dictatorship societies, text/image dynamics, new forms of subjectivity, human/post-human interactions, and economic and bio-political violence, as seen in works by Sergio Chejfec, Cristina Peri Rossi, Nadia Prado, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Pedro Lemebel, Fernanda Trías, and others. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3249)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
The enduring armed conflict in Colombia has nurtured a culture of violence, with effects in every sector of society. Among its better-known actors are the leftist guerrillas, the right-wing paramilitary forces, and the national army, all influenced by the rise of drug trafficking in the Americas and by United States interventions. This course focuses on how contemporary Colombian writers and artists have responded to war, and how they resist the erasure of memory resulting from pervasive violence. In light of the most recent peace process, the course also examines how artists, activists, and civil society are using aesthetics, arts, and performance to face challenges such as healing the wounds of conflict and inventing peace in a society whose younger generations have no memory of life without violence. Materials include articles in the social sciences, movies, and TV series, along with literary works (Abad, García Márquez, Restrepo, and Vásquez, among others). This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3251)
In 1970, the Chilean Salvador Allende became one of the first Marxists in the world to be democratically elected president of a country. His attempted reforms led to years of social unrest. In 1973, a right-wing military coup led to what would be General Augusto Pinochet’s seventeen years of brutal dictatorship. This course discusses that period of Chilean (and Latin American) history through locally produced sources, both from the social sciences and the arts, with a focus on literature (Bolaño, Meruane, Lemebel, Neruda, Lihn) and cinema (Ruiz, Larraín), with the goal of understanding the ways in which Latin American nations deal with their historical past with regard to issues of memory, collective memory, postdictatorial political negotiations, human rights, and social reconciliation. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3252)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester
Is poetic form political? How is subjectivity displayed in literary works that do not include narrations or “coherent” autobiographical plots? What connection does a museum of natural history have with poetry? How can language resist violence? This course explores these and other questions by studying different ways in which the relationship among subjectivity, language and politics has been rethought in contemporary Latin American poetry. We will address questions regarding self-figuration and the construction of a poetic persona through topics such as: biopolitical crisis; intersections of different genres and mediums (i.e., text/image relationships); post-human subjectivities; family genealogies; and writings about disease and death. Although we will read mainly poetry, the course will also include some fiction and films, as well as several theoretical readings. Some of the authors that we will read include Kamenszain, Gelman, Berenguer, Montalbetti, Watanabe, Lihn, and Prado. Taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: HISP 3254)
The 1960s Latin American Boom changed world literature, opening global book markets to writers of the postcolonial world and their distinctive styles. Yet it centered on male writers. “A New Boom?” explores the conditions favoring the last decade’s apparent “explosion” of Latin American women writers in world literature. Discussions focus on key authors and the context of their works, their themes, and aesthetic innovations, and the market forces affecting the dissemination of women’s cultural production. Topics include the ambitions of twenty-first-century women in Latin American cities, and the obstacles they face (i.e., violence and marginalization); the role of editors and other stakeholders in featuring women’s voices; the place of readers in advancing new tastes and sensitivities; and the intersection of gender with race, ethnicity, sexuality, education, and other factors fostering the inclusion of some writers over others. Readings include Melchor, Ojeda, Quintana, Reyes, and Shweblin. Course will be taught in Spanish. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HISP 3257, GSWS 3257)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester
An introduction to some of the main intellectual productions from the French-speaking Caribbean from the nineteenth century to the present, such as the Haitian post-Revolution thought, Indigénisme and Spiralisme or Martinican Négritude, and Diversalité or Tout-monde. Examines theoretical and literary texts by Louis Joseph Janvier, Anténor Firmin, Jean Price-Mars, Frankétienne, René Depestre, Marie Chauvet, René Maran, Léon Gontran Damas, Bertène Juminer, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, René Ménil, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Joseph Zobel, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, Vincent Placoly, or Patrick Chamoiseau. Questions addressed include history, memory, ethics, humanism, freedom, relation, Caribbean epistemology, dignity, justice, existence, political theory, identity, race, and cultural autonomy. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: FRS 3219, AFRS 3219)
Terms offered: 2023 Spring Semester
Examines the contemporary cultural productions of the Mapuche people, an Indigenous group who primarily reside in the nations today known as Chile and Argentina. In particular, this course will explore contemporary Mapuche poetics and aesthetics through the lens of translation. Offering an introduction to the most important voices in Mapuche literature over the last fifty years, this course will consider the role and place of translation in Mapuche cultural production, where practices of self-translation, hybrid writing, and oralitura between Spanish and Mapudungun, the Mapuche language, have served as important means of self-decolonization and linguistic revitalization in the face of ongoing forces of colonization. Students will learn about the history, culture, and cosmology of the Mapuche people, gain an appreciation for the community’s artistic productions, particularly as they relate to translation, and undertake some translations of their own. All discussions and assignments will be in Spanish with some theoretical perspectives in English; many of the primary texts assigned will be in both Spanish and Mapudungun, or some combination of the two. Students will also gain an introduction to the Mapuche language through the course readings. This course originates in Hispanic Studies and is crosslisted with: Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. (Same as: HISP 3260)
The course is designed as a cultural history of Spanish language and cultures through its dictionaries, across time periods (early modern to more contemporary) examining questions of power and authority, collection practices, and how dictionaries change over time. The class will approach asymmetrical relationships between Spain and Latin America, Spanish and Spanglish in the US, and the political, social, and commercial value of language in these contexts. Bringing in the vocabularies of indigenous, enslaved Africans and immigrant languages, students will engage in an in-depth exploration of lexicographers including Antonio de Nebrija, Sebastián de Covarrubias, Andres Bello, and Maria Moliner. Key works include: Tesoro de la Lengua Española o Castellana, the Diccionario de Autoridades, the Diccionario de la Lengua Española, the Moliner, Larousse, and Clave. Course is taught in Spanish and will feature opportunities for collaboration with Ilan Stavans (Amherst) and his students on this topic. This course originates in Romance Languages and Literatures and is crosslisted with: Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St. (Same as: HISP 3007)
Terms offered: 2021 Fall Semester
Dance—an art form whose medium is the body—and ethnography—the study of people and their cultures—are great tools for addressing some of the ways different dancing bodies have been historically policed for “dancing sex(y).” Other tools, such as critical dance and Black theories, in addition to queer and feminist approaches, will also be utilized to comprehend the uneven ways these bodies are further racialized, sexualized, and gendered throughout the Americas. In particular, students will learn about various dances (such as the Argentine tango, the Martinican bélè, US vogueing, and the Trinidadian wine) through readings, lectures, and actual in-studio dancing/embodiment. Ultimately, the intention here is to understand dancing as both a meaning-making activity and a way of understanding the world. In turn, it is an important lens for critically thinking, talking, researching, and writing about politics of identity (especially regarding nationality, gender, race, and sexuality). (Same as: DANC 3505, AFRS 2293, GSWS 3104)
Terms offered: 2025 Spring Semester
This course fuses Afro-Diasporan aesthetics and cultural concepts with critical dance studies and US modern/post-modern/contemporary concert dance traditions. Students will engage with various Afro-based dance practitioners (such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar), cultural praxes (such as Sankofa), and improvisational structures (such as Jamaican Dancehall and Haitian Yanvalou) to deepen their ability to create, rehearse, and perform original choreography, specifically for the purposes of advocating for social change and cross-cultural understanding. Using virtual, archival, digital, embodied, and scholarly research, students will learn about and generate performance material that is deeply connected to the histories, spaces, and places that we remember, take-up, and occupy. Students will also be expected to execute collaborations with each other and those within their communities as they create and perform movement for their final dance projects. This course originates in Theater and Dance and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Latin American Studies. (Same as: DANC 3242, AFRS 3242)
Terms offered: 2022 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
The course addresses connective topics in Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx studies, fields that center the historical and contemporary experiences of the African diaspora in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their transnational communities in the US Students will examine issues, dialogues, and solidarities among Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx communities across the hemisphere, such as invisibility, representation, civil rights, social and/or environmental justice; intersectionality, and digital spaces. This course originates in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies. (Same as: AFRS 3360)
Terms offered: 2024 Spring Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Considers Dr. Guess’s (2021) concept and theory of a “rebel ecology '' by asking, more broadly, what other socioecological models exist? Weaves together a study of differing, yet often converging or synergistic traditions of Black/Womanist eco-feminism that often confront the social constructions of race, gender, class and sexuality, dominant religion as a means of social control, imperialism, capitalism and colonialism; Indigenous ecologies and perspectives on resistance to capitalist extraction, genocide, imperialism and colonialism; as well as eco-socialism, which often frames ecology in terms of a mode of production beyond or outside of capitalism and the prison industrial complex. Given ongoing struggles against the extraction of land and labor, the urgent calls raised in the 'climate strike' the COVID-19 pandemic, Black-led pandemic rebellions, and long(er) histories of land-based peoples, globally, opposing environmental degradation, broadly defined. This course originates in Environmental Studies and is crosslisted with: Africana Studies; Ltn Am, Caribbean & Latinx St.' (Same as: ENVS 3917, AFRS 3517)
Terms offered: 2024 Fall Semester; 2025 Fall Semester
Explores the variety of practices, performances, and ideologies of sexuality through a cross-cultural perspective. Focusing on contemporary anthropological scholarship on sexuality and gender, asks how Western conceptions of sexuality, sex, and gender help (or hinder) understanding of the lives and desires of people in other social and cultural contexts. Topics may include third gendered individuals; intersexuality and the naturalization of sex; language and the performance of sexuality; drag; global media and the construction of identity; lesbian and gay families; sex work; AIDS and HIV and health policy; migration, asylum, and human rights issues; ethical issues and activism. Ethnographic examples are drawn from United States, Latin America (Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba); Asia (India, Japan, Indonesia) and Oceania (Papua New Guinea); and Africa (Nigeria, South Africa). Presents issues of contemporary significance along with key theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches used by anthropologists. Integrates perspectives on globalization and the intersection of multiple social differences (including class, race, and ethnicity) with discussion of sexuality and gender. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Gender Sexuality and Women St; Latin American Studies. (Same as: ANTH 3100, GSWS 3100)
Examines how immigrants view and transform the world around them in the United States. While normative approaches to the study of immigration construct migrants as objects of inquiry, this course instead will draw primarily on migrant perspectives and experiences in the diaspora that originate from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. This course originates in Sociology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: SOC 3410)
Explores research on youth as a window onto broader questions of identity, agency, inequity, and social transformation in the contemporary world. Youth and children move between families and nations; claim belonging to divergent communities; create and transform senses of self; and navigate power hierarchies related to age, race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and citizenship. Highlights the experiences of young people in contexts of insecurity shaped by globalization and neoliberal capitalism. Attends to culturally specific meanings of youth and childhood. Draws on theoretical approaches to agency, subjectivity, and power in anthropology and discusses methodological and ethical issues in ethnographic research with youth. Topics may include self and personhood; labor and waithood; migration, family, and citizenship; gender, sexuality, and romance; media and activism; creativity and (re)making worlds in diverse cultural contexts including Latin America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. This course originates in Anthropology and is crosslisted with: Latin American Studies. (Same as: ANTH 3320)
Terms offered: 2023 Fall Semester; 2024 Fall Semester