Class Schedules

This course offers a general survey of the complex and heterogeneous region we somewhat reductively term Latin America. It follows a roughly chronological approach, beginning with the eve of encounter and continuing through the contemporary era. Discussions will consider themes such as the institution and legacy of colonialism, the search for new national identities, and the onset of modern racial and political strife. The course will emphasize the import of global economic, political, and cultural trends on the formation of the region.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course offers geographical perspectives on one of the world's most vibrant regions, Latin America and the Caribbean. Extending from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, this world region stretches across diverse landscapes, from tropical rainforests to the snowcapped peaks of the Andes, from mega-cities to verdant plains and sparsely populated deserts. This course combines thematic and regional approaches to understanding the geography of Latin America. Major topics include the dynamics of climate, physical geography, and natural hazards; how indigenous peoples of the Americas transformed their environments, especially through agriculture; how European colonialism and the Columbian Exchange altered patterns of land use, labor, and trade; the development patterns of modern nation-states within a globalized economy; the environmental and social impacts of commodity production (e.g. coffee in Central America, rubber in the Amazon); challenges to and persistence of small-scale agriculture in the Andean region; the causes and consequences of tropical deforestation; conflicts over land and natural resources; the resilience and political resurgence of indigenous groups and people of African descent, and the evolution of pluriethnic or multinational states; the causes of mass urbanization and the environmental problems of cities; patterns of international migration, including flows between Latin American countries and towards the US and Europe; and the development of Latino culture and identity in the U.S. Along the way, we will examine the human-environment geography of various regions and countries such as The Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, Brazil, the Andean Countries, and Argentina.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

When Guatemala’s elite rejected the 2023 election results, how did Mayan activists and the indigenous Xinka Parliament use mass mobilization to successfully inaugurate the first progressive president in decades? When U.S. billionaires initiated the hyper-privatized Economic Development and Employment Zone (ZEDE), how did Afro-Honduran communities defend their ancestral Garifuna lands in court and cancel the unconstitutional project? And in Panama, environmentalists achieved a 2023 ban on new mines and closed one of the world’s largest copper mines, but can they stop the new president from re-opening the mines? With an emphasis on the agency, resilience, and voices of diverse communities throughout the isthmic region of Central America, this course examines the achievements of political parties, social movements, and local organizers. Topics include Left-Right party politics in Belize and Costa Rica; the “Sons of Mother Earth” Afro-Indigenous party on the Miskito Coast; feminist and anti-feminist battles in Nicaragua; migrant caravans as a form of resistance; and grassroots challenges to mass incarceration in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course presents the student with essential tools for the critical analysis of a broad range of topics and forms of cultural production (literature, cinema, art, e-texts, etc.) in the Hispanic world. It also teaches the student advanced language skills in written composition and public oral presentation. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course provides an interdisciplinary discussion of the Latinx experience in the United States with a focus on Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban- Americans. Using fiction, poetry, films and critical essays, we will examine issues of race and ethnicity, language, identity, gender and sexuality, politics, and immigration. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

A survey of modern dialectal variations of Spanish and Peninsular Spanish varieties. Sociolinguistic issues and historical aspects of language will be addressed, along with other extralinguistic factors. Through this course, students will gain a linguistic understanding of the principal varieties of Modern Spanish. This course satisfies the Area 3 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 309 or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The border region between the United States and Mexico exists as both a physical space and an ideological construct. This seminar uses literary and filmic narratives to explore issues of identity, opportunity, and violence that arise from this contested space. How does the border shape individual and cultural identities? In what ways does the border create opportunities for both advancement and exploitation? How do these works engage conflicts and tensions of race, nationalism, gender, and power? The course will include writers and filmmakers from both countries, and we will read original texts both in Spanish and English. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 308 or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

From the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, the Amazon rainforest has been a source of wonderment, greed, and, in our present, concern. However, as exemplified by metaphors such as “el Dorado”, the “Green Hell” or the “Lungs of the Earth”, the Amazon is as much a geographical space as it is a discursive formation. This course offers an introduction to the cultural representations of the Amazon rainforest. From Indigenous myths to contemporary films and first-person accounts, we will analyze how the Amazon has been imagined and depicted by multiple actors, such as indigenous activists, scientists, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs. Through a variety of texts, disciplines, and voices, we will analyze how the Amazon has been narrated as a place of “origin”, “wealth”, “suffering”, and “resistance”. While students will gain a general understanding of Amazonian culture, one of the objectives of the course is to discuss how indigenous peoples are tapping into their ancestral knowledge to situate themselves as global political actors and fight back against environmental degradation. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement of the Spanish major. Prerequisite: SPAN 307 or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course focuses on the writing of black women writers from Brazil. We will study the history of race relations in Brazil as the framework of the struggle of Afro-Brazilian women against invisibility and injustice. We will analyze a wide array of texts, which revolve around the experiences and the position Black women have traditionally had within Brazilian society and the way they are now contesting such circumstances and roles through literature, music, art, theater, folklore, Afro-Brazilian religion, and cinema. Students will learn about "escrevivência", the process of writing the experience of the marginalized and the oppressed. Prerequisite(s): PORT 331

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An integrative, research-oriented capstone which gathers senior majors of diverse regional and disciplinary focuses during the final semester. A faculty convener will integrate a schedule of issue-area seminars, faculty methods and topics presentations, talks by visiting speakers, and student reports on research projects. The course culminates in a lengthy final paper.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course offers a general survey of the complex and heterogeneous region we somewhat reductively term Latin America. It follows a roughly chronological approach, beginning with the eve of encounter and continuing through the contemporary era. Discussions will consider themes such as the institution and legacy of colonialism, the search for new national identities, and the onset of modern racial and political strife. The course will emphasize the import of global economic, political, and cultural trends on the formation of the region.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course provides students a basic understanding of the most important biophysical and social characteristics of the dominant landscapes of the Neotropics. The Neotropical realm refers to the biogeographic region that includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and South America's temperate zone. These areas provide a range of services-both locally and globally-including water sources, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. They are also home to various human populations and support the livelihood of local and global human populations. Among others, these include tropical rain forests, Andean páramos, tropical dry forests, wetlands, deserts and temperate forests of southern South America. For each of these landscapes, we will learn the key biophysical processes that govern their functioning. We also study the peoples that live in them including indigenous communities, afro-descendants, and mestizos. Finally, using examples of these areas, we also analyze human-environment interactions including land-use change, biodiversity, resource and cultural conservation, and climate change impacts and responses.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Comparative study of political institutions and conflicts in Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Mexico, with attention to Pink Tide leaders like Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, right-wing populists like Jair Bolsonaro and Javier Milei, and new leaders like Claudia Sheinbaum and Bernardo Arévalo. As U.S. imperialism strikes Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, and Central America, can party politics and social movements yield leadership to defend Latin American sovereignty? Through a mix of empirical and theoretical work, we analyze authoritarianism and democratization, unions vs. neoliberalism, state terror and peace processes, liberation theology, anti-racist and feminist organizing, and Indigenous mass mobilization. Themes are explored through diverse teaching methods including discussion, debate, simulations, lecture, film, memoir, and poetry. This class employs an innovative portfolio system of qualitative assessment. Students take the course “S/SD/N with Written Evaluation.” This provides a powerful opportunity for students to stretch their limits in a learning community with high expectations, but without a high-pressure atmosphere. This ungraded course has been approved for inclusion on major/minor/concentration plans in Political Science, Latin American Studies, and Human Rights and Humanitarianism.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course examines and critically analyzes various approaches to the study of how different individuals and communities in particular historical and cultural scenarios in contemporary Latin America create meanings about their past experience with political violence. The course addresses questions related to the tension between remembering and forgetting, the presence of conflicting memories and truths and how these are negotiated or not through distinct forms of representation. The cultural analysis of different means of representation: human rights and truth commission reports, testimonials, film, art and memorials will be the basis for class discussions on different notions of truth and different forms of truth-telling. A close examination of these forms of representation will reveal the extent to which they can conflict with each other while at the same time feed on each other, creating "effects of truth" and leaving room for secrecy as a mode of truth-telling. Finally, the course will also compel students to think about what consequences the politics of memory have for the future.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Who profits and who is punished at mega-prisons like CECOT (El Salvador), Pinheiros (São Paulo), and Angola (Louisiana)? What explains divergent outcomes of prison strikes in Alabama and Venezuela? And how have incarcerated women in Colombia successfully demanded alternative sentencing to allow caregivers to remain with their children, while their allies in Minnesota struggle to achieve the same goal? Over 4 million people are now incarcerated in the Americas, and in the largest detention systems over two-thirds of prisoners are Black, Indigenous, immigrants, or other minoritized groups. This course examines the politics of mass incarceration in Latin America and the United States, with attention to community organizations and prison reform and abolition movements. Drawing on imprisoned voices and the work of U.S. and Latin American scholars, we will study carceral imperialism, prisons as a cornerstone of structural racism, and resistance rooted in racial and gender identity. Class normally meets for 90 minutes (M-W 10:50 am-12:20 pm), but the 10:50 am-1:00 pm time slot allows us to take field trips to sites such as All Square & the Legal Revolution, Transformation and Re-entry through Education and Community, and the Global Prison Nursery Network Symposium. Guest speakers may include Mujeres Libres (Bogotá), MOVIR (San Salvador), Juvenile Justice Advocates (Minneapolis/Mexico City), and the Asian Prisoner Support Committee (California).

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course presents the student with essential tools for the critical analysis of a broad range of topics and forms of cultural production (literature, cinema, art, e-texts, etc.) in the Hispanic world. It also teaches the student advanced language skills in written composition and public oral presentation. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course provides an interdisciplinary discussion of the Latinx experience in the United States with a focus on Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban- Americans. Using fiction, poetry, films and critical essays, we will examine issues of race and ethnicity, language, identity, gender and sexuality, politics, and immigration. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 305 or SPAN 306

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Primarily designed to improve oral communication and to strengthen students' written proficiency and their awareness of grammar intricacies in Portuguese. In relation to writing, it serves as a bridge to upper-level courses. Conversations and compositions are based on the civilization and cultures of Brazil, which despite its continental size and being among the largest world economies remains a mystery to many. This course explores the socio-historical, political and cultural trajectory Brazil has undertaken while, at the same time, reflecting on how ideas such as nation, identity, race, ethnicity, and class have transformed the face of the country. A wide array of texts and materials -literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, and cinema- is used to gain a broad and critical understanding of the Brazilian universe. It involves extensive reading appropriate to the level. Prerequisite(s): PORT 221, or PORT 231, or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course offers a comprehensive exploration of contemporary filmmaking in Abya Yala, a term that reclaims the Indigenous identities and knowledges of the territories known as the Americas. Through an examination of 21st century feature films and documentaries, we will discuss how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous directors use cinema to portray the history of colonial violence, its lasting legacies, and the ongoing struggle for indigenous sovereignty in Abya Yala/Latin America. Recognizing the ethical complexities inherent in filmmaking, in this course we will critically analyze the representation of Indigenous identities, collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous creators, and the rise of Indigenous-led film production. Along with film screenings and in-class discussions, students will elaborate a video essay to deepen their understanding of the politics of representation in Abya Yala/Latin American cinema, and explore the region’s ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and self-determination. This course satisfies the Area 2 requirement for the Spanish major. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 307 or consent of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An integrative, research-oriented capstone which gathers senior majors of diverse regional and disciplinary focuses during the final semester. A faculty convener will integrate a schedule of issue-area seminars, faculty methods and topics presentations, talks by visiting speakers, and student reports on research projects. The course culminates in a lengthy final paper.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials