Academic Catalog

Latin American and Latinx St. (LALS)

LALS 167  Culture in the Americas  (1 Credit)
This course provides an overview of the history and cultures of the Americas. There is a multitude of complex distinctions and similarities between North, Central, and South America, including the Caribbean and Latina/o/xs living in the United States—or what we will refer to simply as “the Americas.” Exploring distinct cultural norms of music, food, language, dress, religion, political ideology, as well as racial and ethnic identities pushes students to reconsider a perspective outside or other than their own. Contrasting perspectives also arise from images, films and texts drawn from distinct locales throughout the region’s peoples, histories, and contemporary challenges. Of particular concern are the ways legacies of colonialism shape both the Americas and the production of knowledge. Additional topics of interest include indigenous and Afro-Latinx resistance and expression; immigration, transnationalism, and deportation; and gender and sexual orientations.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C014, GEC C026, GEC C037, GEC C041, GEC C059
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): ANTH 167
Instructor: Benoit Vallee
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 181  Creating Latin America: A History  (1 Credit)
Beginning with the lead up to the first encounters between Europeans and Americans and ending with the challenges of globalization in the twenty-first century, this course offers a chronological and topical overview of 500 years of Latin American history. It examines individual lives within the frameworks of sweeping political, social, and cultural transformations. Students use primary documents, images, texts, and film to explore major themes of the course, including conquest and colonialism, independence and the creation of new nations, and twentieth-century social revolutions and military dictatorships. Special attention is given to issues of race, gender, religion, and relationships with the United States.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C041, GEC C059, GEC C066, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Early Modern), (History: Latin America), (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST 181
Instructor: Karen Melvin
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 208  Latinx Politics  (1 Credit)
This course explores the role of Latinx people in American politics. Students define Latino/a/e/x, describe Latinx diversity, and explain why the history of distinct Latinx subgroups within the United States translates into variations in political power and preferences. Students also summarize various theoretical perspectives on American political identity and explain how, in the past, Latinx people have been castas economic, cultural, health, moral, and security threats to this identity. In the second part of the course, students strengthen and nuance their understanding of American politics and institutions by explaining the conditions under which Latinx engage in grass-roots and collective political organizing and mobilization. They then analyze Latinx voting patterns, partisanship, public opinion, and the election of Latinx to public office. Although the course gives particular attention to Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Cubans, it serves as an introduction to the study of other Latinx subgroups, and other racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. Recommended background: PLTC 115.

Modes of Inquiry: [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C041
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): PLTC 208
Instructor: Clarisa Perez-Armendariz
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 215  Revolutionary Americas, 1750-1848  (1 Credit)
This team-taught course looks at struggles for independence throughout the American hemisphere. From Buenos Aires to Boston, the revolutions that reshaped the Americas from 1765-1830 were as varied as the hemisphere. European men were not the only ones to claim new authority. Women claimed power men had long denied them. Black people challenged slavery, even creating a new republic in Haiti. Indigenous nations reshaped Peru and New York. Poorer soldiers redefined political power. These competing and overlapping interests reshaped the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish empires and the nations that replaced them. These interests also challenge simple stories of “Founding Fathers” crafting new nations in closed rooms. This course focuses on how different peoples defined independence, why they pursued it, and how they shaped it in new American republics.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C066
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Early Modern), (History: Latin America), (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor: Karen Melvin, Joseph Hall
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 220  Central America and The Caribbean  (1 Credit)
This course will introduce students to the cultural history of Central America and the Caribbean. Beyond the assigned geographic reasoning and ethno-racial conventions that often treat these regions separately, students will critically assess how both regions have been intrinsically connected by a common history rooted in pre-colonization dynamics, colonialism, slavery, emancipation, imperialism and neoliberal migrations. Through a chronological approach, students will delve into the centrality of race, indigeneity and ethnicity as they relate to the construction of competing ideologies and cultural identities about what it means to be Central American and/or Caribbean. A wide varieties of sources will be used to cover the similarities and distinctions of the Hispanic and Anglophone Central American and Caribbean regions, such as literature, film, music, memoirs, maps, and the arts.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C014, GEC C037, GEC C041, GEC C048, GEC C059
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor: Benoit Vallee
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 225  The Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World  (1 Credit)
The Haitian Revolution is widely regarded as one of the most dramatic and significant events in history and is the only slave revolt in the Americas to successfully result in the abolition of slavery. It began with a massive slave insurrection in 1791 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, and in 1804 it culminated in independence from France and the creation of the free, Black nation of Haiti. The revolution was shaped by people and ideas from Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and in turn had a profound impact on people from enslaved laborers and rebels to politicians and merchants. This course examines the events of the Haitian Revolution and explores how it changed the history of the broader world in which it took place.

Modes of Inquiry: [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C034, GEC C037, GEC C059
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Latin America), (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): AFR 225, HIST 225
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 228  Latin America Debates Dependency and Development  (1 Credit)
The history of Latin American and Caribbean political development is also a history of how the region grappled with struggles for economic development and autonomy in relation to the more powerful Western states. This course surveys the progression of the dependency-development debate by contextualizing it within the Cold War context and beyond. The intellectual debate centers on elaborating a prognosis and solutions to the problem of dependency and underdevelopment. The course will cover (1) the roots of underdevelopment and its interconnectedness to the topics of reform/revolution, socialism/fascism/capitalism, and democracy/authoritarianism; (2) historical events that enabled and/or inhibited different socio-political experiments; and (3) contemporary issues that touch on this debate, including neo-extractivism, China’s growing influence, and regional ecological degradation. Recommended background: Prior coursework focusing on Latin America, development and/or political/social theory.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C008, GEC C037, GEC C059, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): ENVR 228, PLTC 228
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 243  International Development  (1 Credit)
This course casts a critical eye on the international development complex and its varied consequences for environments and communities worldwide. Students first consider the colonial origins of the development idea, its institutional growth in the twentieth century, and various theoretical approaches to development. Drawing heavily on case studies and voices from across the global South, the course then explores major environment-development quandaries such as extractive industries, large infrastructure projects, public health, famine and food security, climate change adaptation, disaster relief, and foreign aid, all the while measuring them against development’s shifting aspirations: poverty alleviation, social justice, and sustainability. Prerequisite(s): ENVR 204 or any course in Latin American and Latinx Studies.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): ENVR 243
Instructor: Sonja Pieck
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 249  Politics of Latin America  (1 Credit)
In this course, students explore Latin America’s historical experiences with state formation, nationalism and nation building, varying political economic models, and regimes. They then examine how these experiences shape contemporary political issues including transitional justice, parties and elections, democratic institutional innovations, extractivism, corruption, and violence. The course emphasizes the relationship between these political problems and Latin America’s struggle to achieve sustained economic growth, its sustained racial and economic inequalities, legacies of slavery and colonialism, domestic conflict and legacies of authoritarianism, and relations with the United States. Recommended background: HIST/LALS 181 and PLTC 122.

Modes of Inquiry: [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C008
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): PLTC 249
Instructor: Clarisa Perez-Armendariz
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 268  US Latinx History  (1 Credit)
This course introduces students to the history of Latinx Americans drawing on the distinct experiences of Puerto Ricans, Chicanxs/Mexicanxs, Dominican Americans, Central Americans, and Cuban Americans. The course underscores international processes (imperialism and immigration) as central forces in the formation of U.S. Latinx communities. This global perspective accompanies a focus on the relationship between Latinx culture and American society, the dynamic role of women in the shaping of Latinx American communities, and origins and place of Latin American-origin immigrants in U.S. society.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C037
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST 268
Instructor: Erik Bernardino
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 270  From Madrid to Manila: Globalization and the Spanish Empire  (1 Credit)
The world became permanently connected during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While some have identified the origins of this globalization in Europe, the Spanish empire offers a different perspective. The ties of empire were forged throughout its vast territories: from Madrid to Manila. This course considers questions of identity and belonging in it, including for "old Christian" Spaniards, recent Jewish converts to Christianity, Muslims, Africans and their descendants, and indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Philippines. It also takes up questions of imperial scale, including global commerce, royal authority, and how people, knowledge, and beliefs moved throughout the early modern world.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C014, GEC C059, GEC C066
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Early Modern), (History: Europe), (History: Latin America)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST 270
Instructor: Karen Melvin
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 273  US Immigration: Rise of the Immigration Regime  (1 Credit)
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" encapsulates the belief that the United States is a nation of immigrants, yet that can be an oversimplification of a deeply complex issue. This course explores the various reasons people migrate, acculturate, and what it means to be an "American" and an immigrant. Students review immigration records to examine how issues of poverty, sexual orientation, gender, race, and political affiliation affected how people "breathe free" and navigated the US immigration regime from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): AMST 273, GSS 273, HIST 273
Instructor: Erik Bernardino
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 289  After Deportation Ethnographies from Latin America and the Caribbean  (1 Credit)
Studies on deportation have mostly focused on the pathways to the criminal justice system, prison experience, and deportation processes to highlight the conditions in which individuals are criminalized and removed. This course builds on a growing literature paying attention to what happens to individuals after they are being deported to their so-called “countries of origin”, specifically those who are deported from the United States to Latin American and Caribbean nation-states. While students learn about the historical context and hegemonic narratives shaping the design of ever-growing migration policies affecting BILPOC immigrant communities in the US, the course centers the voices of deportees to analyze the different strategies they use to deal with the traumas and stigma of deportation in “origin” societies that often portray them as de-facto criminals. The course emphasizes the socio-cultural capital deportees use to find ways to belong in receiving societies.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C008, GEC C014, GEC C037, GEC C041
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): ANTH 289, SOC 289
Instructor: Benoit Vallee
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 295  Montezuma's Mexico: Aztecs and their World  (1 Credit)
The Aztec state encompassed millions of people, featured a capital whose size and towering pyramids left the first Spanish visitors in awe, and developed a culture that continues to influence contemporary Mexico. Yet Aztecs are more often remembered for their cannibalism than their complex civilization. This course examines the Aztec world: what it was like to live under Aztec rule, how society was organized, what people believed about how the cosmos worked, and why Aztecs practiced ritual human sacrifice.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C051, GEC C057, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Latin America), (History: Premodern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST 295, REL 295
Instructor: Karen Melvin
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 301D  Regulating Intimacy: Histories of the Labor of Sex in North America  (1 Credit)
Despite being referred to as the “world’s oldest profession,” sex labor is often excluded from traditional discussions of “work.” To understand sex work’s exclusion, this course focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries efforts by the United States, Canada, and Mexico to control, regulate, and end sexual commerce. The course will pay particular attention to how race, class, and gender ideologies have influenced the regulation and perception of sex labor. Students will learn to analyze historical sources, understand scholarly debates in the field, and conduct original research, culminating in a final research paper.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): GSS 301D, HIST 301D
Instructor: Erik Bernardino
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 301W  Latin America during the Cold War  (1 Credit)
This course examines Latin American experiences during the cold war from a historical perspective. Students explore how some of the revolutionary transformations, military coups and governments, wide-scale human rights violations, and civil wars shaped the region between the 1950s and the 1980s. Topics covered include Guatemala’s 1954 coup and thirty-year civil conflict, revolution in Cuba, and military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. Students use and analyze primary sources, including declassified government documents, Truth Commission reports, memoirs, and films.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Latin America), (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST 301W
Instructor: Karen Melvin
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 303  The Spanish Inquisition  (1 Credit)
Were witches and heretics really tortured in the Spanish Inquisition's infamous jails? This course examines both the institution of the Spanish Inquisition and the lives of those who came before it. Students read and analyze original Inquisition cases as well as consider the ways historians have used cases to investigate topics such as sexuality and marriage, popular beliefs, witchcraft, blasphemy, and the persecution of Jewish and Muslim people. The sins that concerned the Inquisition depended on the time and place, and the crimes prosecuted in sixteenth-century Spain or eighteenth-century New Spain reveal a great deal about early modern (ca. 1500-1800) culture and society.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): GEC C001, GEC C035, GEC C066, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Early Modern), (History: Europe), (History: Latin America)
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST 301Y, REL 314
Instructor: Karen Melvin
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 304  Poesía de resistencia: From Antipatriarchy to Anti-imperialism  (1 Credit)
The course explores antipatriarchy and anti-imperialist poetry written by women in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spanish America. It grounds its exploration on historical writers such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Micaela Lastenia Larriva, who wrote against the gender paradigm brought to the Américas by the Spanish. It closely examines the work of Rosario Castellanos and Domitila Barrios Chúngara and the transition from antipatriarchy to anti-U.S. imperialism, and the presence of poetry as a weapon in defense of civil liberties. Special attention is given to contemporary poetry written by indigenous and Afro-descendant women of the Spanish-speaking Américas. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C032
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): HISP 304
Instructor: Claudia Aburto Guzman
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 306D  Theologies of Race and Liberation in the Americas: Black, Womanist, and Latinx  (1 Credit)
This course explores the interconnections among race, liberation, and theology in the Americas. We begin with a historical study of the material and ideological relationship between Christian theology and the formation of racial consciousness, from the advent of the global colonial period to the establishment of the United States. This study will enable us to examine the interrelated processes of racial and religious formation in the US, Caribbean, and Latin America during the 18th and 19th centuries. Focus will be given to the social, economic, and political dimensions of these processes; that is, on issues of colonialism, patriarchy, racism, and capitalist extractivism. We then consider the ways theology has served as a means to critique and resist these processes during the 20th and 21st centuries throughout the Americas. We will especially attend to how Black, Womanist/Mujerista, and Latinx theological frameworks contribute to struggles against these forms of injustice. Recommended background: one course in Religious Studies or American Studies.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): AMST 306D, REL 306D
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 309  Visions of Freedom Before 1619 in the Iberian Black Atlantic  (1 Credit)
Black Africans affected the Atlantic culture immediately after 1492. Their words and deeds impacted the institutions of the time in Spain, Portugal, and their overseas empires in the early modern period. Black people transmitted the cultural practices of their African native lands through the Diaspora, but they also were protagonists of the European Renaissance wherever they lived. Palenques of cimarrones–settlements of self-liberated Blacks–dismantled slavery and helped Blacks build a new conception and practice of human freedom. Black men and women wrote and sang, and were represented in the literary works of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Inca Garcilaso, Guamán Poma de Ayala, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. This course will be taught in English.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C037, GEC C038, GEC C041, GEC C059, GEC C066
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): AFR 309, HISP 232
Instructor: Baltasar Fra-Molinero
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 312  Language Death and Revitalization  (1 Credit)
Language Death and Revitalization explores linguistic diversity among the world’s 7,000 languages, one of which dies every two weeks. The course addresses the question of what is lost in terms of bodies of knowledge, world view, and identification of the limits of variability among human languages when languages die out. The local and global causes of extinctions are explored, including genocide, natural disaster, dislocation and population absorption and language shift, or linguistic suicide. Planning strategies for revitalization at local, national, and international levels are studied. Strategies for successful revitalization movements are deduced throughout the course of the semester. Recommended background: prior coursework in anthropology.

Modes of Inquiry: [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): AMST 312, ANTH 312
Instructor: Joyce Bennett
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 317  Screening Citizenship: Jewish Latin American Film  (1 Credit)
This course considers films from throughout Latin America made by Jewish directors. Students learn the history of Latin American film production as well as terms and skills necessary for audiovisual analysis. The course examines the ways in which film is used as a vehicle to explore and represent issues of identity, belonging, immigration, and assimilation that have long characterized Jewish experiences in Latin America. Moreover, the course focuses on filmmakers’ engagement with key social and political issues within their respective countries as well as on a regional or global scale. Taught in Spanish. Recommended background: HISP 228. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C032, GEC C038
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): HISP 317
Instructor: Stephanie Pridgeon
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 330  Latina/o/xs in NYC Hip-Hop Culture  (1 Credit)
This course introduces students to the historical contributions of Latina/o/xs in the emergence of Hip-Hop culture in New York City. To do so, students will be engaging with a contextual approach that depicts migration processes and settlements of Latinx communities within the five boroughs, particularly Uptown and the Bronx where Hip-Hop culture erupted during the 1970s. This course will show how Latina/o/xs have empowered themselves through artistic performances and expressions in the midst of social struggle and industrial decline. In addition, the course critically addresses how Latina/o/xs Hip-Hop artists constantly navigate the ethno-racial politics of Blackness and Latinidad that are crucial within discourses on Hip-Hop legitimacy and pioneerism. A wide variety of sources will be used to analyze Latina/o/xs’ involvements in the different elements of Hip-Hop culture (Mcing/Rap, Djing, Graffiti, Breaking, Beatboxing) in order to understand racial, ethnic and gender dynamics. Recommended background: prior coursework on race and ethnicity.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C008, GEC C011, GEC C037, GEC C040, GEC C080, GEC C083
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): AFR 330, AMST 330
Instructor: Benoit Vallee
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 338  Political Challenges in Latin America  (1 Credit)
This course examines some of the most pressing political challenges facing contemporary Latin America. Topics vary by semester and may include: ethnic, racial, and gender politics; transitional justice; democratic backsliding; high-level corruption; international migration; environmental politics; militarization and policing, and organized crime. Students engage with a variety of materials and practice reading academic articles and research reports. The course emphasizes the comparative method of social inquiry, including qualitative comparative case studies and the use of large datasets. By the end of the course, students demonstrate their understanding of the state of knowledge concerning one pressing political question affecting the region and produce an ethical and feasible research plan for investigating that question using comparative methods. Recommended background: LALS/HIST 181; LALS/PLTC 249. Prerequisite(s): One course from Latin American and Latinx Studies or Politics.

Modes of Inquiry: [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): PLTC 338
Instructor: Clarisa Perez-Armendariz
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 341  Lectura americana de Cervantes  (1 Credit)
A present-day reading in America of Don Quijote de La Mancha and other key texts of the Spanish and Spanish American Renaissance. This course examines themes of Islamophobia, white supremacy, conquest and empire, the slave trade, the quest for utopias, and the construction of historical narratives that shape the politics of the day. Students analyze myths and legends of the marvelous real such as the fountain of youth in Florida, the island of California, the return to the Golden Age, fabulous cities and unbelievable real ones (Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Cuzco) that are admired and destroyed, and a fake island in Louisiana called Barataria. Students consider issues that obsessed people in Cervantes' time: the expulsion of Muslims, hatred of Jews, war, gender roles and women's freedom, mental and physical disability, and changes to the environment in the form of windmills. Taught in Spanish. Recommended background: HISP 231. Only open to juniors and seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C018, GEC C035, GEC C066
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): HISP 341
Instructor: Baltasar Fra-Molinero
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 343  Geopolitics of Rising Powers: BRICS and Beyond  (1 Credit)
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of United States as the sole superpower, scholars began foreseeing the emergence of a multipolar world in which rising powers would gain relative economic and political importance. This course analyzes the rise of the BRICS coalition (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) within a global political economy framework. Topics include the BRICS institutions, differences among its members, antagonisms with Western coalitions, the new scramble for Africa, and frameworks for analyzing the coalition. Questions that motivate the course include: What does the BRICS group represent for US power at the global scale? In which areas may it be defying or complementing the US-led global liberal order (e.g., liberal trade regime, dollar hegemony, role of the IMF & World Bank)? Does the rise and expansion of the BRICS (now including Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia & the UAE) represent an authoritarian threat to a global order led by democracies? Prerequisite(s): PLTC 122, 125, 171, 213, 222, or 225.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): GEC C014, GEC C059, GEC C064, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): ASIA 343, PLTC 343
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 353  Political Violence in Latin America  (1 Credit)
Why is life in contemporary Latin America so violent? Political violence is inherent to revolutions, civil wars, and authoritarian regimes. In contrast, in theory, one of the merits of democracy is that it facilitates the peaceful allocation of resources and power. For much of the twentieth century, Latin America struggled with insurgencies, civil war, and repressive authoritarian regimes. A wave of democratic transitions in the 1980s and 1990s brought renewed hope for peace, justice, and the protection of civil liberties, but political violence persists. This course explores the puzzling persistence of violence throughout the region. Recommended background: HIST/LALS 181; PLTC 122 and/or 249.

Modes of Inquiry: [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): PLTC 353
Instructor: Clarisa Perez-Armendariz
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 360  Independent Study  (1 Credit)
Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study per semester.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 371  Indigenous Women's Social Movements in Latin America  (1 Credit)
This course examines Indigenous women’s movements in Latin America. Comparing Indigenous movements throughout Abiyayala (the Americas) requires investigating ethnographic, political, and socio-economic contexts in which Indigenous women’s movements develop, thrive, and sometimes fail. The course pays particular attention to Indigenous women’s responses to marginalization and oppression in the 20th and 21st centuries and entails an applied project through community engaged learning. Recommended background: Prior coursework in the social sciences.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): ANTH 371, GSS 371
Instructor: Joyce Bennett
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 457  Senior Thesis  (1 Credit)
An in-depth independent study of Latin American and Latinx studies. Majors register for LALS 457 in the fall semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for LALS 457 in the fall semester and LALS 458 in the winter semester.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: [W3]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS 458  Senior Thesis  (1 Credit)
An in-depth independent study of Latin American and Latinx studies. Majors register for LALS 458 in the winter semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for LALS 457 in the fall semester and LALS 458 in the winter semester.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: [W3]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS S20  Latina Power! U.S. Latina Labor History  (0.5 Credits)
One of the first major labor victories for Mexican Americans came from an unlikely source: young, Latina organizers. This course examines these women, their organizing, and the larger contexts of labor movements and the place of Latina women in the mid-twentieth century. The course focuses on the 1938 Pecan Shellers Strike in San Antonio, Texas, led by 21-year-old strike leader Emma Tenayuca, and Luisa Moreno, a Guatemalan immigrant who organized workers in Florida and California. Grounded in feminist theory, the course places the strike and Latina workers as critical in core social tensions of the time through the use of primary sources.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST S20
Instructor: Erik Bernardino
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS S23  Indigeneity in the Dominican Republic: Ethnographic Perspectives  (0.5 Credits)
The course offers students a practical experience in ethnographic research in the context of indigenous culture in the Dominican Republic. Based on a set of various activities ranging from an archeological field camp, participant observation in handcrafted workshops, to the study of the museography of the on-site partner institution, Museo Maguá - a community-led and autonomous Taino museum located in the Hermanas Mirabal province in northern Dominican Republic - students will practically delve into the growing cultural and educational politics of Indigeneity in the Dominican Republic. Through this course, students will also expand their knowledge of indigenous history and culture in the Caribbean context. Eventually students will be introduced and/or sharpen their research methods skills in an interdisciplinary setting. Recommended background: Prior coursework in Anthropology, particularly in Ethnographic methods; intermediate level in Spanish.

Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [CP]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): ANTH S23
Instructor: Benoit Vallee
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS S26  ¡Revolución! Debating Mexico  (0.5 Credits)
The year is 1911 and Mexico just ended a thirty-year dictatorship. Now civil war looms as revolutionaries, reformers, and conservatives cannot agree on what should happen next. In this course, students investigate some of the most pressing issues facing Mexico by taking on roles of historical figures in a Reacting to the Past exercise that transforms the classroom into a constitutional congress. There they attempt to shape Mexico’s future by deciding what to do about voting rights, land reform, workers' rights, education, the church, and women's rights.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): (History: Latin America), (History: Modern)
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): HIST S26
Instructor: Karen Melvin
Instructor Permission Required: No
LALS S50  Independent Study  (0.5 Credits)
Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study during a Short Term.

Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor Permission Required: No