Spring 2017 Course Offerings

Spring 2017 course roster 

Research Strategies in Latino and Africana Studies - LSP 1101 (also ASRC 1900). The digital revolution has made an enormous amount of information available to research scholars, but discovering resources and using them effectively can be challenging.  This course will introduce students with research interests in Latino and Africana Studies to search strategies and methods for finding materials in various formats (print, digital, film, e.g.) using information databases such as the library catalog, print and electronic indexes, and the World Wide Web.  Instructors will provide equal time for lecture and hands-on learning.  Topics will include government documents, statistics, subject specific online databases, social sciences, the humanities, and managing citations electronically. Instructors: Tony Cosgrave/Eric Acree.   TR 11:15 am – 12:05 pm or TR 2:30 – 3:20 pm. 1 credit.   PLEASE NOTE:  This course is a ½ semester course – 2nd 7 week session – 3/20 – 5/10/2017.

Music of Mexico and the Mexican Diaspora – LSP 1321 (also MUSIC 1321). This class is a survey of music practices among Mexican communities both in Mexico and in the U.S. Taking contemporary musical practices as a point of departure, the class explores the historical, cultural, and political significance of a wide variety of Mexican music traditions (including indigenous, folk, popular, and art music, dating back to the 16th Century) from a transnational perspective. Instructor: Alejandro Madrid. MWF 12:20 – 1:10 pm. 4 credits.

Latinos in the United States - LSP 2010 (also SOC 2650, DSOC 2650, AMST 2655).  Exploration and analysis of the Hispanic experience in the United States.  An examination of sociohistorical background and economic, psychological, and political factors that converge to shape a Hispanic group identity in the United States.  Perspectives are suggested and developed for understanding Hispanic migrations, the plight of Hispanic in urban and rural areas, and the unique problems faced by the diverse Hispanic groups.  Groups studied include Mexican American, Dominicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans.  Instructor:  Héctor Vélez. TR 2:55 – 4:10. 3 or 4 credits variable.

Cultures and Communities – LSP 2300/4300. Conceived as a service-learning course, the centerpiece here is targeted, engaged research and arts work with Latino/a culture-related organizations in Tompkins County like Cultura!,  No más lágrimas, and the Latino Civic Association.  The core idea is that students will learn while participating in meaningful activities that will enhance arts and culture partnerships.  Faculty will provide guidelines and resources for students to work within existing projects or to develop their own ideas; community partners will provide networks and planning assistance.  All students will be asked to develop  a comprehensive learning portfolio on their semester’s work.  Instructor: Debra Castillo. MW 2:55 – 4:10. Variable 1-3 credit hours depending on level of commitment.   

Introduction to Latina/o Literature – LSP 2400 (also ENGL 2400, AMST 2401). From the radical manifestos of revolutionaries to the satirical plays of union organizers, from new, experimental novels to poetry, visual art, and music, this course examines Latino/a literature published in the United States beginning in the early nineteenth century and continuing to the present. We will pay particular attention to the historical, theoretical, and literary context for this literature. We will study memoir, poetry, essays, and cultural production. Authors include José Martí, Luisa Capetillo, Israel 'Cachao' López, Josefina López, Cherríe Moraga, Esmerelda Santiago, Gloria Anzaldúa, José Montoya, Carmen Tafolla, and Pedro Pietri. Instructor: Ella Diaz. TR 2:55 – 4:10. 4 credits.

Latino Theater Production – LSP 3010 (LATA 3010, COML 3010).  Students develop a specific dramatic text for full-scale production. The course involves selection of an appropriate text, close analysis of the literary aspects of the play, and group evaluation of its representational value and effectiveness.  All students in the course are involved in some aspects of production of the play, and write a final paper as a course requirement. Credit is variable depending upon the student’s role in play production: a minimum of 50 hours of work is required for 1 credit; a maximum of 3 credits are awarded for 100 hours or more of work. Instructor: Debra Castillo. MW 7:30 – 10:30 pm. 1 - 3 credits variable.

Immigrant America: Race and Immigration in Modern U.S. Working-Class History – LSP 3065 (also ILRLR 3065). Immigration discourse and policy has played a central role in shaping the modern American nation-state, including its composition, values, and institutions. This course begins in the late nineteenth century, defining it as a pivotal moment in U.S. immigration and labor history when efforts to regulate immigrant entry and naturalization became increasingly bureaucratized. As part of the course we will examine the causes and consequences of working-class migration to the United States from a comparative historical, ethno-racial, class-based, and gendered perspective. We will also address questions regarding the perceived benefit and cost of immigration at both the national and local levels. In this sense, we will explore the economic, social, cultural, and political impact immigrants have had on the United States over time. Finally, we will consider how immigrants have negotiated the pressures of their new surroundings, and challenged dominant conceptions of American national identity and citizenship in the process. Instructor: Veronica Martinez-Matsuda. TR 1:25 – 2:40. 4 credits.

Immigration and Politics – LSP 4032 (also GOVT 4032, AMST 4032). Latinos are a greater presence in American society and political life than ever before.   Students in this course will explore themes such as immigration, political incorporation, inter-ethnic relations through both wide-ranging readings and the use of a unique dataset-- the 2006 Latino National Survey, a survey of 8,600 Latinos across 15 states, which includes questions ranging from crime and education to transnationalism and discrimination.  Students will be expected to learn and use statistical software to conduct preliminary analyses of these data, and to use these data and other resources to explore original research projects.  Prior coursework in American politics is recommended; no prior exposure to statistical software required. Instructor: Sergio Garcia-Rios. M 10:10 – 12:05. 4 credits.

Bodies at the Border – LSP 4339/6339 (also ASIAN 4440ASIAN 6640COML 6339FGSS 4339FGSS 6339).  Although the wounded, often feminine, body is the most powerful way of imagining border space in both the Indian subcontinent and the Americas, it is seldom coupled with the embodied practices and performances through which borders define everyday life and shape geographical and historical consciousness in the two regions. Drawing upon texts, media, and theory generated from South Asia and Latin America, the course will develop new comparative approaches to the constitutive role that bodies play in creating, maintaining, and imagining borders in the global South. Instructor: Debra Castillo. W 10:10 – 12:05. 4 credits. 

Traffic:  Drugs, Bodies, Books – LSP 4565 (also ENGL 4920, LATA 4565, AMST 4565). The movement of things like narcotics and of people like laborers has been a profoundly compelling subject for artists of every form.  This course will study television series such as Weeds and The Wire as well as a number of recent films, hip-hop hits, narco-corridos, novels, legal cases, and visual art in which the subject oftraffic and trafficking play an important role.  We will work across centuries to consider how various forms of trafficking and stories of captivity and treasure hunting help tell the modern tale of nation, race, sex, and gender. Artists and authors may include Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, Faith Ringgold, Alan Ginsburg, Ernesto Quiñonez, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Frederik Douglass, and Francisco Goldman.  Instructor: Mary Pat Brady. R 12:20 – 2:15.

Decolonial Poetics & Aesthetics: A genealogy of Chicana/o, Latina/o and Indigena/o Theorization – LSP 6565 (also ENGL 6565).  What is the decolonial? Is it a space between the colonial and post-colonial? Is it a process, theorization, or a period? Is it a performance, intervention, or embodied experience? Positing a genealogy of decolonial poetry, politics, and art, the course examines a history of decolonial modes of production and theorization in the twentieth century with attention to antecedents and contemporary applications. By centering our study on these questions, we will move discuss several decolonial lenses and frameworks, including the textual, oral, and visual. Authors include Gloria Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, Luis Alfaro, Emma Pérez, José Saldívar, Rupert García, José Martí, as well as scholars concerned with the primary documents of cultural nationalist and political activisms of the 1960s and 1970s.  Instructor: Ella Diaz. T 10:10 – 12:05. 4 credits.

Ethnoracial Identity in Anthropology, Language and Law - LSP 6424 (also ANTHR 6424, LAW 7231, AMST 6424). This course will examine the role that both law and language, as mutually constitutive mediating systems, occupy in constructing ethnoracial identity in the United States.  We will approach the law from a critical anthropological perspective, as a signifying and significant sociocultural system rather than as an abstract collection of rules, norms, and procedures, to examine how legal processes and discourses contribute to processes and cultural production and reproduction that contributes to the creation and maintenance of differential power relations. Course material will draw on anthropological, linguistic, and critical race theory as well as ethnographic and legal material to guide and document our analyses. Instructor: Vilma Santiago-Irizarry.  T 4:30 – 6:30. 4 credits.

Nightlife – LSP 6701/4701 (also PMA 6701/4701). This course explores nightlife as a temporality that fosters countercultural performances of the self and that serves as a site for the emergence of alternative kinship networks.  Focusing on queer communities of color, course participants will be asked to interrogate the ways in which nightlife demonstrates the queer world-making potential that exists beyond the normative 9-5 capitalist model of production.  Performances of the everyday, alongside films, texts, and performance at will be analyzed through a performance studies methodological lens. Through close readings and sustained cultural analysis, students will acquire a critical understanding of the potentiality of spaces, places, and geographies codified as "after hours" in the development of subcultures, alternative sexualities, and emerging performance practices.  Open to graduate students only. Instructor: Karen Jaime. TR 1:25 – 2:40. 4 credits.

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