Latin American Studies

LATAM 1000 Latin America: Nation, Ethnicity and Social Conflict

This class is an interdisciplinary introduction to the academic study of modern and contemporary Latin America. The course focuses on main issues in Latin American politics, history and culture, both in the continent at large and in the specific regions and sub-regions within it. The class will particularly explore topics such as nation creation, national identity, modes of citizenry, the role of race, ethnicity, gender and class in the region's historical development, as well as social and political conflicts, which have defined the region over the centuries. This course is suggested before taking any other upper-level courses on Latin America or going abroad to other countries, and required for all Latin American Studies majors and minors. Through the course, students gain basic bibliographic knowledge and experience with research tools for a comparative study of Latin American politics society and culture.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 1119 Freshman Seminar: Women in Latin American History

Women have been active players in the construction of Latin American nations. In the last two decades, leading scholars in the field have taken up the challenge of documenting women's participation. This research explosion has produced fruitful results to allow for the development of specialized courses. This course looks at the nation building process through the lens of Latin American women. The course examines the expectations, responsibilities and limitations women confronted in their varied roles from the Wars of Independence to the social revolutions and dictatorial regimes of the twentieth century. Besides looking at their political and economic lives, students will explore the changing gender roles and relations within marriage and the family, as well as the changing sexual and maternal mores.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 1995 Latin American Studies Coursework Completed Abroad

This course is for 1000 level study abroad credit.

Credit 12 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

LATAM 1996 Latin American Studies Elective

This course is for 1000 level transfer credit.

Credit 0 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

LATAM 2995 Latin American Studies Courses Studied Abroad

This course is for 2000 level study abroad credit.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

LATAM 2996 Latin American Studies Elective

This course is for 2000 level transfer credit.

Credit 0 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

LATAM 3020 Survey of Brazilian Cultures: Race, Nation and Society

This course will introduce students to Brazilian culture from the colonial period to the present through literature, art, music, film and other cultural forms. The course gives a historical overview of Brazilian culture and society, exploring major sociohistorical and artistic moments from the colonial, imperial, and republican periods, and their legacies or influences on Brazilian society. Students will learn about the Amerindian, European, and African influences of Brazilian culture through the study of representative texts and cultural practices. The course also illustrates Brazil's place within Latin America and the world. The course will seek to deconstruct and expand preconceived notions of Brazil, such as Lusotropicalism and racial democracy. Classes will combine lectures by the instructor, student presentations, collective debates and cooperative learning, and will entail the use of required bibliography and audiovisual materials. Prereq. None.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 3030 Survey of Mexican Cultures

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of Mexico, with a particular focus on the 20th and the 21st century. The class will cover the main historical and cultural processes of Mexico in this period: The Mexican Revolution; the consolidation of a one-party political system; the construction of Mexican national identity and the arrival of neoliberalism. The course also focuses on the main aspects of Mexico's relationship to the United States: the Free Trade Agreement, the history of Mexican migration and the Drug War. From this framework, the course touches upon questions of race (particularly the politics of racial mixture), modernization, construction of social identities and the unique nature of governance in Mexico, due to the single-party regime. It also touches on Mexico's specificities and particularities due to the uniqueness of situation as the southern neighbor of the United States. PreReq. None.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3040 Survey of Southern Cone Cultures: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay

This course provides an introduction to the culture and society of the region known as the Southern Cone, encompassing Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. The course will follow a long-term chronological approach, from the nineteenth century to the present, and will cover a wide spectrum of cultural production: literature, newspapers, music, cinema, television, as well as other examples of popular culture such as soccer. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we will explore how race, class, and gender interact in different historical periods. The class will cover the main historical and cultural processes of these countries: the formation of the Nation-State and the construction of national identities, capitalist modernization, Afro-descendant and Indigenous activism, Populism -with special attention to the case of Peronism in Argentina-, military dictatorships, as well as the contemporary feminist movement. In doing so, the class engages with questions of media, identity, memory, and labor, as they allow us to understand the historical processes of the region.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3056 Survey of Yucatecan Cultures

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the culture of the Yucatan peninsula. The course will begin with a detailed engagement with Pre-Columbian Maya culture, including its various stages of development and the work of uncovering it through archeology. The second part of the class provides an overview of colonial and modern Yucatecan culture through historical and anthropological sources. PreReq. Enrollment in the Washington University Program in Yucatán. Prerequired language level: L38 202. Taught in Spanish.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM EN: H

LATAM 3080 Hello, Hello Brazil! Popular Culture, Media, and the Making of a Nation

Our image of Brazil has been deeply shaped by its cultural production, from Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes' ever-popular Girl from Ipanema to the spectacular mega-production of Carnival in Rio and from the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira to the international stardom of pop artists like Anitta. This course is an introduction to popular culture in contemporary Brazil. Students will approach the theme through theoretical works that seek to define popular culture, understanding it as a hybrid form of expression that troubles the line between the traditional and the mass-produced. This course will examine how the circulation of sounds and images manifests and shapes Brazilian culture historically and in the present. We will also interrogate the different ways in which culture is produced and received, how it circulates in symbolic markets, and how it comes to be both consumed by diverse audiences and utilized in often unexpected ways. The course will cover topics such as the Tropicalia movement, Afro-centric Carnival blocos, street art such as graffiti, baile funk, forro, favela protest theater, telenovelas (soap operas), the popularization of samba, soccer and the World Cup, and Carnival. Students will use an interdisciplinary lens to approach popular culture in Brazil through music lyrics, TV and film, cultural performances, and graphic novels. These materials will form the basis of our class discussions and written assignments. The course will be taught in English. Prerequisite: L45 165D, L45 304, or another course on Latin America suggested.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 3100 Gender, Sexuality and Power in Brazil

This course examines the nexus of gender, sexuality, and power in Brazil through an interdisciplinary lens. We will aim to understand how varying understandings of gender and sexuality have impacted the development of Brazilian society in history and continue to shape contemporary society and politics. We will pay special attention to the ways in which the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and so on impact people's lived experiences and how heteronormativity and homophobia shape current politics. We will take an intersectional feminist approach to analyze topics such as slavery in colonial Brazil, national aspirations to modernity, authoritarian repression and moral panics, domestic labor, motherhood, sex tourism, Brazilian feminisms, and LGBTQ+ activism. Scholarly work from various fields of study -- with an emphasis on gender studies, history, and anthropology -- will be supplemented by documentaries, film, podcasts, and other media. This is a Writing Intensive and a Social Contrasts class in the IQ curriculum. Prerequisite: L45 165D, or two courses on Latin American or Women and Gender Studies, or permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC, WI Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3110 The Body in Brazil: Race, Representation, Ontologies

This course is an introduction to various ways of understanding, representing, and performing the body in Brazil. Course materials will draw on insights from anthropology, the medical humanities, and science and technology studies in order to approach the body not just as biological material but also in its social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. We will cover topics such as the importance of race and ethnicity since the time of colonization, sexualized media representations of gendered bodies, how some bodies are cast as disposable or out of place in contexts of social inequality, indigenous ways of viewing the body in relation to the natural and spiritual world, the politics of disability and access, and constructions of the body politic in the formation of national identity through ideas such as antropofagia (cultural cannabalism). Throughout, we will pay particular attention to how race, gender, sexuality, and disability shape the lived experiences of Brazilians. Topics will include the impact of slavery in the construction of the body in Brazil, the role played by race in the construction of discourses of corporality, and the development of beauty stereotypes and practices such as the medical industry of plastic surgery, among others. Students will analyze visual materials, ethnographies, historical texts, and internet sources in dialogue with critical theories from the social sciences and humanities, assessing how the body matters in a variety of ways that reflect Brazil's cultural diversity while also starkly highlighting its persistent racialized and gendered social inequities. These materials will form the basis of our class discussions and written assignments. The course will be taught in English. Prerequisite: L45 165D, L45 304, or another course on Latin America suggested.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3120 Mexican Visual Culture

This course will explore the ways in which different aspects of visual culture were used to construct national, regional, political, social and cultural identities in Mexico. The omnipresence of the visual in the everyday life of Mexicans -including state-sponsored muralism, cinema, photography, graphic press, wide-circulating comic books and nationalist architecture- allows for the study of different ways in which citizens become embedded both in official national projects and in projects of political dissidence. The class will thus use the Mexico in the 20th and 21st centuries to introduce students to the study of the visual as a social practice, through theoretical discussions that will run parallel to the study of different visual manifestations. The course will discuss the changing social and political role of art, the influence that Mexican visual culture exerts in other parts of the world and the way in which visual culture allows Mexicans to think about their identity.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: VC BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 3160 Cultures of Health in Latin America

This course is a survey of the cultural and political-economic aspects of health, illness, and embodied difference in Latin America. We will approach these themes from an interdisciplinary perspective with an emphasis on anthropology and history, exploring how local, national, regional, and global factors affect health and healthcare and how people experience and respond to them. Topics will include interactions between traditional healing practices and biomedicine; the lasting impacts of eugenic sciences on contemporary ideas about race and disability; the unequal impacts of epidemic disease; Indigenous cosmologies and healing systems; the politics of access to healthcare; the cultural and political specificities of reproductive health; and the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, class, and bodily capacities in the pursuit of well-being. This course is designed for students of all levels interested in health and/or Latin American cultures. It will be taught in English.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: BA, ETH, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 3200 Humans and Others in Latin America: Natures, Cultures, Environments

What does it mean to inhabit the world with other beings? How are we to cultivate life -- both human and nonhuman -- in toxic environments? What does it mean to be human, and what would it mean to decenter humanity? This course addresses these questions through an exploration of more-than-human worlds in Latin America. Students will examine a variety of Latin American thought and practices through the interdisciplinary lens of environmental humanities and social sciences, unsettling presumed boundaries between human and nonhuman, real and imaginary, native and culture. We will engage primarily with ethnographic and other scholarly texts, which will be supplemented by short works of fiction, documentary film, podcasts, and works of art. In the first part of this course, students will be challenged to think about what defines the limits of the human and engage with the concept of more-than-human worlds. We will then examine the dark side of such worlds, namely, the ways in which extractive capitalism and environmental destruction demonstrate the permeability of bodies and comprise a kind of slow violence against the most vulnerable communities. In the next unit, students will consider Black and Indigenous ecological knowledge and these communities' struggles to care for their lifeways and the environments that sustain them. In our final section, we will explore multispecies entanglements through Indigenous cosmologies and the nexus of science, history, and art. Students will complete several assignments throughout the semester that have been designed to make them think imaginatively and critically about the course themes, including weekly reading responses and in-class discussion facilitation. The final assignment for this course is a creative independent research project where students will synthesize what they learned over the course of the semester and extend it through independent research. Prerequisite: L45 165D or permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, ETH, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3253 Introduction to Gender Studies in Latin America

The course offers a critical and theoretical introduction to gender studies in Latin America, focusing on the most relevant aspects of this topic. The first part of the course will be devoted to the definition of key terms, historical processes and critical directions. Binary concepts such as gender/ sexuality, rationality/aGectivity, femininity/masculinity, hetero/homosexuality, public/private sphere, and so on will be explained and deconstructed. Also, terms such as identity, subjectivity, identity politics, patriarchy, homosociality, intersectionality and the like will be analyzed from cultural and political perspectives. After these preliminary sessions, the course will concentrate on various aspects of gender studies in Latin America:
1) The development of the field and the main critical directions it assumes in modern and contemporary times. Gender as critical category. From essentialized perspectives to gender as a social construction.
2) The connections between gender studies and the concepts of power, sexuality, aesthetic/discursive representations of the body. Gender roles, counter-normative practices and critical positions. Students will be introduced to issues on gender in the colonial period (e.g., the position of women in religious environments, women in the court). Relevance of class and race in connection with gender; countercultural practices.
3) Visual, literary and theoretical interpretations and depictions of gender and the body, representative cases related to the performance of gender in the public space will be analyzed, for instance: Women and the Church (Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz); modern women in politics (Eva Peron), women and violence (femicides; author Selva Almada); symbolic constructions in visual arts (Frida Kahlo and/or Ana Mendieta), fictional elaboration of transgender subjectivity (e.g., Camila Sosa Villada).
The goal is to familiarize students with basic historical and cultural developments as well as with the vocabulary and main concepts used in the field of gender studies today, thus preparing them for more advanced studies on these topics.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC BU: HUM

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 3256 Medical Traditions in Yucatan and Health Systems in Mexico

This course explores traditional Maya medicine in Yucatán, including its foundations, healing practices and its relationship to modern biomedicine. There are discussions of Maya knowledge and its relationships of power and resistance in relationship to Western systems, and their evolution from the Pre-Columbian era to the present. The course also engages the ways on how Maya medicine has influenced and shaped modern Mexican health systems in Mexico and the evolution of Maya medicine towards its current practices. PreReq. Enrollment in the Washington University Program in Yucatán. Prerequired language level: L38 202. Taught in English. Readings in English and Spanish.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, SSC EN: S

LATAM 3410 Film and Revolution in Latin America

This class is a Writing Intensive course focused on the study of the way in which four landmark Latin American revolutions (The Independence Wars, The Mexican Revolution, The Cuban Revolution and The Bolivarian Revolution) are represented in cinema. Each one of these revolutions will constitute a unit of study, and students will be expected to work with historical texts, films and works of film theory and criticism for each one of them. The course will engage in subjects such as the difference between fiction and nonfiction films when representing history; the politics that underlie specific representations; the way in which cinema questions and revises ideas developed by historians; and the uses of film in creating popular views of history in Latin America. Students will develop a research project comparing two revolutionary processes over the semester. Prereq. L45 165D (Latin America: Nation, Ethnicity and Social Conflict) for LAS majors. Otherwise none.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, WI BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3420 Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Market Economy, Social Injustice, New Technologies

This class studies the relationship between cinema and society in Latin America between 1988 and the present. Latin American cinema in this period has gone to a period of deep crisis to the consolidation of industries and production with significant global recognition and impact. In this, cinema has strong correlations with neoliberalism, the political doctrine tied to free-market reform, democratization and privatization, among other ideas. The class will be based on the study and discussion of key films of the period to develop two themes. First, we will study the way in which cinema has become a cultural practice central to the discussion of the effects of neoliberalism in the region, as well as the opposition to neoliberalism. Topics in this regard will include: the social impact of free market reforms, growing economic and social inequality, the emergence of working class, Black and indigenous communities, the rise and fall of the New Left, the creation of new elites and other related themes. Second, we will study the way in which films are made and distributed and the changes on film production over the past decades. Topics will include the privatization of production and exhibition, the role of home video and streaming, the importance of film festivals and the move from national to translational scenes of production. Prereq: L45 165D or L53 220 or other coursework in Latin American Studies, or Film and Media Studies, desirable but not required. Students without this background are encouraged to contact the instructor.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 3570 Latin American Subcultures

This course has been planned as an introduction to the interconnections between “high” culture, popular culture and mass culture, with particular emphasis on the formation of urban subcultures in contemporary Latin America. The topic of subculture and counterculture will be analyzed taking into consideration the influence of factors of class, race, and gender, in the construction of alternative cultural identities. Some of the connections to be studied are between political power and cultural resistance, affect, violence, and symbolic value, hegemony and marginality. Distinctions will be made between culture, subcultures, traditions, and lifestyles, as well as between multiculturalism and interculturality. While the first part of the course will introduce critical concepts, theories and methodologies, the second half will focus on specific articulations between cultural practices and the domains of belief, sexuality, violence, and social media, including uses of music, video and films. Students will prepare a final paper on a Latin American subculture of their choice and analyze it using the critical and theoretical tools discussed in class.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 3995 Latin American Studies Coursework Completed Abroad

This course is for 3000 level study abroad credit.

Credit 12 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

LATAM 3996 Latin American Studies Elective

This course is for 3000 level transfer credit.

Credit 0 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

LATAM 4120 Gender and Modernity in Latin America

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the particular forms modernity assumes in Latin American countries and to the ways in which national cultures, identity politics, and gender issues interweave during the 20th-century. The course will discuss three particular articulation of this topic: 1) Gender and the national question in Argentina: Eva Peron; 2) Gender and Visual Arts: Frida Kahlo; and 3) Gender and Ethnicity: Rigoberta Menchu. Through these iconic figures students will be introduced to the specific features that characterized three very different but representative cultural scenarios in Latin America. In each case, the context for the emergence of these highly influential public figures will be studied from historical, social and cultural perspectives. In order to explore the cultural and political significance of Eva Peron, Frida Kahlo and Rigoberta Menchu, the course will utilize literary texts (speeches, letters, diaries, etc.), visual materials (photography, films, and paintings) and critical bibliography.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4130 Latin-American Cultural Studies: Critical and Theoretical Approaches

The goal of the course is to provide students with critical and theoretical tools that could be used for the analysis of Latin American cultural history from a transdisciplinary perspective, from colonial times to the present. Some of the concepts to be discussed in class are: colonialism and coloniality, national culture, dependency theory, cultural antropofagia, lettered city, miscegenation, heterogeneity, hybridity, transculturation, peripheral modernity, media and mediation, postmodernity, postcoloniality, and collective memory.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4170 Nation and Desire in Latin America

The purpose of this course is to analyze the process of nation formation in Latin America, since the imaginaries of the Creole nation to the first half of the 20th century. Class discussion will encompass the study of theories on nation formation and nationalism as well as textual representations of national projects, such as Simon Bolivar' letters and discourses, selections from Facundo, Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo F. Sarmiento, selected texts by Andres Bello, Alfonso Reyes, et al, Ariel, by J. E. Rodo, Pedro Henriquez Urena's Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expresion, Jose Vasconcelos' La raza cosmica, Jose Carlos Mariategui, Siete ensayos de interpretacion de la realidad peruana, Jose Marti's Nuestra America and other essays. Some of the main topics to be discussed are the leading role of Creole elites in the consolidation of national cultures, the marginalization of women as well as indigenous and Afro-Hispanic populations, and the role of nationalism in the shaping of modern societies. Colonialism, Occidentalism, liberalism, positivism, nationalism and modernity are some of the concepts that will be explored both theoretically and in their particular discursive usages. Finally, the concept of nation(alism) will be studied as a political/rhetorical device and as the resulting expression of agency, interest, and desire, in peripheral societies.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4180 Latin American Subcultures

This course has been planned as an introduction to the interconnections between high culture, popular culture, and mass culture, with particular emphasis on the formation of urban subcultures in contemporary Latin America. The topic of subculture and counterculture will be analyzed, taking into consideration the influence of factors of class, race, and gender in the construction of alternative cultural identities. Some of the connections to be studied are between political power and cultural resistance, affect, violence, symbolic value, hegemony and marginality. Distinctions will be made between culture, subcultures, traditions, and lifestyles as well as between multiculturalism and interculturality. While the first part of the course will introduce critical concepts, theories, and methodologies, the second half will focus on specific articulations between cultural practices and the domains of belief, sexuality, violence, and social media, including uses of music, video, and films. Students will prepare a final paper on a Latin American subculture of their choice and analyze it using the critical and theoretical tools discussed in class. Prerequisite: L45 165D. This course fulfills the seminar requirement for Latin American Studies majors and minors.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4190 Media Cultures in Latin America

One of the key topics in Latin American Studies today is the history and theory of media and the way in which media cultures have shaped the nation, social subjectivities and the reigion's relationship to modernity. This course is a study of both the history of key audiovisual media in Latin America (print, radio, television, cinema, cybermedia) as well as of the key paradigms for media studies regarding this production. After discussing foundational concepts (media, mediation, cultural industry, popular culture), the course proceeds by in-depth studies of the role media played in different countries from the 19th century, through the different national processes of the 20th century to the present. In doing so, the class engages with questions of technology, identity, indigenous culture, urbanization and other theoretical concerns. This course fulfills the Seminar Requirement for Latin American Studies majors and minors. PreReq L45 165D or a 300-level course on Latin American culture.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4200 Modernity, Culture and the State in Mexico

This course is an advanced seminar on the process of the cultural, ideological and institutional modernization of Mexico. Drawing on readings from fields such as history, cultural anthropology, political sociology and cultural theory, the course discusses the shaping of various forms of social subjectivity and cultural ideology that sustained the formation and development of the state. The course also engages with the identities and processes that led both to the formation of structures of citizenship and to the contestation of state power. This course is structured chronologically, following the development of three interrelated processes unfolding between 1810 and the present: (1) the creation of state institutions and ideology and their evolution in relationship to events such as the liberal Reforma of the 1850s and the Mexican Revolution; (2) the cultural and social implication of processes of capitalist development, modernization and globalization; and (3) the ways in which Mexico's histories of sociocultural difference led to political and cultural insurgencies and rebellions. This course fufills the seminar requirement for Latin American Studies majors. Prerequisite: L45 165D, L45 305, any other 300-level course with significant focus on Mexico, or permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: ETH, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4210 The Binational Condition. The Mexico-US Relationship in Mexican History and Culture.

From the 19th century onwards, the relationship between Mexico and the United States has been defined by intense tensions and contradictions. Closely intertwined by geopolitical engagement and integrations, mutual migration flows, and rich cultural exchange, both countries belong to a binational system with few equivalents around the world, which defines the lives of people living across North America. And yet, few people in the United States have access to a clear and rigorous understanding of the Southern neighbor, often leading to conflict at the political and social levels. This class explores this historically, from the early frictions caused by territory and slavery to the binational conditions of the present. The class emphasizes the Mexican perspective of the relationship, often erased in discussions from the U.S. From this perspective, the course will engage critical moments in the history of the relationships, such as the underground railroad to the South, the Mexican American War, the Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty, and the Cold War. The class will also discuss the ways in which Mexico has influenced the United States culturally, from the impact of Mexican post-Revolutionary art in the New Deal to the rise of film directors like Alfonso Cuarón and Gullermo del Toro. Finally, the class will lay out the ways in which Mexicans and scholars of Mexican studies think about questions such as regional development, the border, immigration, and the Drug War. Prereq. L45 165D or prior coursework on Global Studies, Latin American Studies or American Studies. The course covers the seminar requirement for majors and minors in Latin American Studies.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: ETH, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 4238 Introduction to Latin American Philosophy - Contemporary Topics

The main goal of this course is to familiarize students with a distinct philosophical corpus closely linked to the postcolonial conditions of cultural production in the Latin American region. The selected works will expose the connections between as socio- political reflection and intellectual development, and the characteristics of situated knowledge related to questions of coloniality, interculturality, and decolonization. Different approaches to transcendental issues, to questions of temporality, subjectivity and Being, will be developed vis a vis diverse conceptions of historicity, positionality, power and resistance. Factors of race, gender, inequality and cultural diversity will be discussed as part of the introduction of issues such as indigeneity, miscegenation, creolization, archipelagic thought, and the like. Some of the authors to be studies in the course are: Leopoldo Zea, Enrique Dussel, Santiago Castro Gomez, Nelson Maldonado Torres, Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, Bolivar Echeverria, Sylvia Wynter, Rita Segato, Maria Lugones, et al.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, WI BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4250 Popular Culture and the Representation of Youth in Latin America

The objective of this course is to introduce students to different aspects related to the representation of youth in Latin America, particularly through the depiction this sector receives in the realm of popular culture. The course will focus on the relationship between youth and social/political conflict and on the literary and cinematic representation of juvenile sectors in cultural production in different Latin American countries. The roles of music, melodrama and the media will be studied in connection to the construction of subjectivity and collective identity. The course will also analyze the involvement of juvenile sectors in narco-culture, gangs, maras, and the like, as well as the impact of violence, fear, and social inequality in early life. The analysis of films, literary texts, critical studies and cultural practices will be approached through a combination of biopolitical analysis and the analysis of representational strategies utilized in the elaboration of symbolic materials. This course fulfills the seminar requirement for Latin American Studies majors and minors. Prerequisite: LatAm 165D or another Latin American Studies course.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4272 The Materiality of Culture in Latin America

The materiality of culture refers to a heterogeneous array of objects, artifacts, public and museum art and “sites of memory” that allows us to understand the connections between past and present, heritage and current creativity, collective memory, archival work, consumption and symbolic representation, both in popular culture and in institutionalized forms of artistic expression in Latin America. The course is centered on issues related to the construction, materiality, preservation, circulation and consumption of cultural production in Latin America both at the level of popular and “high culture.” In the first place, the corpus of the course will focus (selectively) on the meaning of colonial as well as modern and contemporary icons, fetishes, altars, images, artifacts and other items used in religious and secular rituals. In the second place, it will analyze murals, museums, graffiti and other expressions of “high” or popular art. Other elements of material culture refer to migrants’ paraphernalia or constitute commercial commodities that eloquently refer to a variety of social contexts particularly in Mexico, Peru, and the Caribbean region. The course has been thought to expose students to issues of cultural diversity and to productive processes of intercultural dynamics. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with different registers of cultural production, as well as with the significance of objects related to belief, political positions, and aesthetic styles, in a variety of social contexts. The main notions presented in the course relate to national identities, cultural legacy, cultural heritage, and market relations. This thematic scope will be basis for collective reflections on the formation of collective imaginaries among different racial, ethnic and social communities, as well as for the study of processes of cultural institutionalization, transculturation, hybridization, and the assignment of use & exchange value to material and symbolic commodities in different times and geo-cultural locations. Interdisciplinary readings will introduce students to concepts and methods used in the fields of museum studies, cultural sociology, anthropology, archeology, and cultural studies. Particular attention will be paid to “travelling objects” as studied by Sylvia Spitta and to the analysis of cultural markets advanced by Nestor Garcia Canclini and George Yudice. Concurrently, the critique of historiographical approaches to the organization of cultural legacies and to the consumption, archival arranging, technological/digital processing, and political resignification of cultural production will nurture the collective discussion. Students will work individually and in small groups for the development of specific projects. The course has no prerequisites and will be conducted in English.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 4278 The Representation and Politics of Latin American Anthropology

This course is focused on the intertwining of anthropology and representation in Latin America, an interrelation that can be traced since colonial times to the present. The specific geo-cultural characteristics of the New World invited, from the beginning, both philosophical and scientific inquiries about human nature, environmental conditions and social organization outside the domains of Western civilizations. The need to represent and disseminate knowledge about the new discoveries inspired both in Europeans and American societies reflections on identity/otherness and cultural development, as well as creative attempts to elaborate symbolic/aesthetic paradigms to capture cultural difference and intercultural relations. Issues of memory, imagination, language, cultural translation and transculturation will be discussed in the analysis of symbolic representation and construction of meaning. “Writing culture” becomes, as observed by James Clifford, one of the most controversial and important enterprises since it involved, both in colonial and in modern times, political assumptions, strategies of stereotyping, notions about hegemony/subalternity, and questions about the creation of world, the nature of language and the incommensurate meaning of collective subjectivity. The course will combine critical/theoretical materials regarding anthropology as a specific cognitive approach and the analysis of literary works, films and paintings that express issues of (self) recognition, alterity and ethnographic imagination in Latin America. Some of the literary works to be studies include narrative by J. L. Borges, M. Barnet, J. M. Arguedas, and Juan Rulfo, among others. Films include Colombian masterpiece “The Embrace of the Serpent” (2015). Paintings focus on Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín and Brazilian Tarsila do Amaral. The course will be conducted in English.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 4280 Constructing the (Racial) Other: From the Colonial Caste System to U.S. Latinos

The goal of this course is to introduce students to categories and concepts related to the questions of race and ethnicity in Latin America, from colonial times to the present. The course also covers U.S. Latinos as a population of Latin American descent that presents particular characteristics connected to the issues of migration, identity politics, reterritorialization, and cultural hybridity. Based on the theoretical and critical study of problems related to colonialism, social classification, miscegenation, whiteness, discrimination, and the like, representative literary and visual materials will be discussed to illustrate the connections between race, social roles, domestic/public spaces, work, democracy and modernization. The issue of race will be analyzed in its multiple articulations to the themes of nationalism, interculturalism, migration, and symbolic representation. This course covers the seminar requirement for Latin American Studies majors. Prerequisite: L45 165D, one other class in Latin American studies, or one class on race studies.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4290 Citizenship in the HOT Seat. Migration and Borders in Latin America

This course is an introduction to concepts, interpretations, and debates related to different forms of human mobilization across borders, particularly in contemporary Latin America. However, class discussions will expand to other scenarios in order to contextualize the experience and characteristics of migration today. Some of the notions to be analyzed in connection to this topic are freedom of movement, citizenship, inequality, the labor market, borders, territoriality, and national security. Borders will be studied as material constructions (i.e., walls, wire fences, technological surveillance, funnel systems, and strategies of deterrence) and as conceptual/symbolic representations. In addition to migratory movements, other phenomena such as diaspora, exile, and forced displacements will also be introduced as they have developed in Latin America. Cultural and psychological aspects related to migratory experiences -- such as the role of memory and affect, individual and collective trauma, social effects of deportation, stereotyping, the role of race and gender, and so on -- will also be considered, as they constitute integral aspects of migratory studies. The course will be conducted in English as a combination of lectures, student presentations, and collective discussions of assigned readings. Fulfills the seminar requirement for Latin American Studies majors and minors. Prerequisite: L45 165D.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 4320 Bodily Injuries: Violence, Gender and Representation in Latin America

The course will focus on the definitions, uses and languages of violence in Latin America, particularly during the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Students will be introduced to philosophical, ethical and political issues related to the existence of structural violence and to the problems connected to the symbolic representation of this phenomenon in literature, fictional/ documentary films, and visual arts. One of the course's objectives will be to problematize the conceptualization of violence and to promote critical thinking about its emergence, significance and effects on local/global societies. Some of the topics to be analyzed are the body in its multiple manifestations (the body politic, the social body, the individual body, the treatment of the corpse, etc.), the narrativization of violence (violence as discourse, documentation and fictional elaborations, violence and the media, violence and ideology, etc.), violence and the city, citizenry and otherness, bio-politics, etc. Finally, violence will be presented in different contexts and associated to different activities (ordinary crime, narco-cultures, maras, political movements, domestic environments) and different situations (e.g. violence in rural areas, violence in the borderlands, violence and migration). In all cases the course will call for a reflection on the interrelations between private/public spheres, gender politics, ideological/aesthetic values, and individual/ institutional levels. The role of memory and emotions will be emphasized as a crucial element for the construction /mobilization of subjectivity and for the elaboration of agendas that challenge the State's monopoly of legitimate violence and propose alternative and often perverse forms of association and mobilization at the margins of institutional configurations.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4631 Seminar On Urban Cultures in Latin America

The course will focus on the key role urban development and urban cultures have had in Latin America with particular emphasis on contemporary times. The goal of the course is to discuss the connections between the formation and expansion of cities, the definitions of citizenship, and the role of modernity in the development of high and popular cultures within different historical and geo-cultural contexts. Particular attention will be paid to the issues of race, class and gender. Te course, which will utilize an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, will also focus on the phenomena of marginality, cultural resistance, nationalism and consumerism as well as on the role played by the media in contemporary Latin American societies. Some of the cultural expressions to be analyzed in the course are music (rock, pop, rap), sports, film and video.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4651 Cities, Race and Development in Latin America

This course offers a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the Latin American city: its history, development and inherent economic, social, cultural, ethnic, and political tensions. Lectures, readings, and class debates will explore interactions between the materiality and structure of Latin American modern cities and the social and cultural phenomena related to urban life in multicultural societies. Particular attention will be devoted to the effects of internal/external migration, and to the development of public spaces and sites of memory. Patterns of social segregation, marginalization, inequality, and the like, will be analyzed in order to elaborate on the contemporary challenges of the city in a globalized yet traditional world. In addition to the analysis of living, institutional, and commercial spaces, the course will cover social dynamics that break the discipline of the city through different forms of transgression, including crime, informal housing, and underground movements. The goal of the course is to expose students to historical and social developments as exemplified in a variety of urban environments, and to encourage reflection on issues of social justice related to the living conditions of rural, disadvantaged, and indigenous populations. The course will be conducted in English. Mandatory readings will be in English. Additional readings in Spanish will be required for those students fluent in the language. Prereq. None.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4950 Latin American Studies Research

For LAS students who are completing a research project.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

LATAM 4960 Latin American Studies Thesis Preparation

This is the first course in the 2-semester thesis for Latin Studies thesis writers. Enrollment requires approval of LASP and the undergraduate director.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

LATAM 4970 Latin American Studies Thesis

This is the second course in the sequence for Latin American Studies thesis writers. Enrollment requires permission from LASP and the undergraduate director.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

LATAM 4996 Latin American Studies Elective

This course is for 3000 level transfer credit.

Credit 0 units. EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer