Courses

This course will examine race and ethnic relations between Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in the United States. The goal of this course is for students to understand how the history of race and ethnicity in the U.S. affects opportunity structures in, for example, education, employment, housing, and health. Through this course students will gain a better understanding of how race and ethnicity stratifies the lives of individuals in the U.S.

Full details for LSP 1105 - Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Social Constructs, Real World Consequences

This course seeks a fuller recounting of U.S. history by remapping what we understand as "America." We will examine traditional themes in the teaching of U.S. history—territorial expansion and empire, migration and nation building, industrialization and labor, war and revolution, and citizenship and transnationalism—but we will examine this "American experience" in a broader hemispheric context and include as actors americanos of Spanish, Mexican, Caribbean, and Central/South American ancestries.

Full details for LSP 1802 - Introduction to Latinos in U.S. History

Designed to expand bilingual Heritage students' knowledge of Spanish by providing them with ample opportunities to develop and improve each of the basic language skills, with a particular focus on writing vocabulary. The heritage student has at least one parent of Hispanic origin and grew up speaking Spanish at home; s/he also finished high school here in the US. After this course students may take SPAN 2140, SPAN 2150, SPAN 2170, or SPAN 2095.

Full details for LSP 2020 - Spanish for Heritage Speakers

This course discusses the health status of minorities in the United States. Explores intra-group diversity such as migration, economic status, and the influence of culture and the environment on the health status, access to health care and utilization of health services. Special attention to Latino and other minority populations.

Full details for LSP 2200 - Sociology of Health and Ethnic Minorities

Americans are conflicted about immigration. We honor and celebrate (and commercialize) our immigrant heritage in museums, folklife festivals, parades, pageants, and historical monuments. We also build fences and detention centers, and pass more and more laws to bar access to the United States. Polls tell us that Americans are concerned about the capacity of the United States to absorb so many immigrants from around the world. How often have we heard the laments "Today's immigrants are too different. They don't want to assimilate" or "My grandparents learned English quickly, why can't they?" The assumption is that older generations 'Americanized' quickly but that today's immigrants do not want to assimilate. Did 19th century immigrants really migrate to the United States to "become Americans"? Did they really assimilate quickly? Are today's immigrants really all that different from the immigrants who arrived earlier? Why do these particular narratives have such power and currency? This seminar will explore these issues and help students discern fact from fiction. 

Full details for LSP 2251 - U.S. Immigration Narratives

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.

Full details for LSP 2300 - Cultures and Communities

Representation is basic to anthropology. In the process of translating societies and cultures, anthropologists produce authoritative accounts about other people, their lives, and their communities. We will here examine, from a critical perspective, the production of representations on Latino culture[s] in anthropological texts. Issues to be explored include the relation between the ethnographer and the people s/he is studying, the contexts in which ethnographic texts are produced, the ways these texts may contribute to the position that different cultural groups have within the United States, and the implications emanating from these processes.

Full details for LSP 2721 - Anthropological Representations: Ethnographies on Latino Culture

Designed for the general student population, this course specifically appeals to students traveling abroad, or who in the future will work with diverse communities (for example, students with interests in medicine, law, labor, government, business, the hospitality industry, or in the fields of gender, queer, or ethnic studies). Serving as an introduction to the critical inquiries and scholarly fields of the English department,   the course uses literature and popular culture, alongside literary, social, and cultural theory to consider how people from different cultures encounter and experience each other. Exploring travel and tourism from multiple perspectives including dark, disaster, and eco- tourisms, the course examines a history of racial representation, dating to the colonial era and that resonates in twenty-first century depictions of race, class, gender, and other markers of "difference."

Full details for LSP 2770 - Representing Racial Encounters/Encountering Racial Representations

This course explores Caribbean literary, sonic, and visual cultures in New York City from the late 19th century to the present, and examines the ways in which Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican diasporic artists experience New York, whether as tourists, residents, or exiles.  We will read about and visit places like Coney Island, Wall Street, Chinatown, Harlem, the Bronx, the Village, and Washington Heights.  Through the work of José Martí, Julia de Burgos, Manuel Ramos Otero, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Josefina Báez, and others, we will focus on such topics as immigration, transnationalism, imperialism, modernity, Latinx Caribbean influences on Bronx hip hop, gender, race, and sexuality.  Course readings and discussions in Spanish, English, and Spanglish.  Includes a 2-day trip to New York City in Week 3.

Full details for LSP 3470 - Nueva York: Caribbean Urbanisms

This course introduces students to the arts of the ancient Americas from circa 2000 BC to the Spanish invasions of the 15th and 16th centuries. The inhabitants of the Americas produced outstanding works of art and architecture that showcased their diverse aesthetic contributions.  This course covers the arts of indigenous Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras), the Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and the Greater and Lesser Antilles), and Andean South America (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile).  Students will become familiar with the history, archaeology, and visual arts of the earliest cultures that populated these regions up through the Inca, Aztec, and Maya cultures that encountered the Spaniards.  This course will also explore the legacies of pre-Columbian art in colonial, modern, and contemporary Latin America.

Full details for LSP 3566 - Art and Architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas

Interested in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies? This course will explore topics in Anthropology, Art, Economics, History, Literature, Government, Sociology, etc., of US Latino and Latin American contexts. Course features guest speakers from Cornell and other institutions.

Full details for LSP 4000 - Contemporary Issues in Latin - Latino America

Guided independent study.

Full details for LSP 4210 - Undergraduate Independent Study

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.

Full details for LSP 4300 - Cultures and Communities

This course will introduce students to basic concepts and developments related to migrants and migration in Central America, Mexico, and the United States via engaged learning and research. The course will be organized around core themes such as the challenges and ethics of working with vulnerable populations, workplaces and working conditions, oral histories/testimonios, and immigration policy and enforcement practices. Students will learn qualitative methodologies for field research.  All students will practice their skills through collaboration with the Cornell Farmworker Program on priority projects identified by immigrant farmworkers.  This can be taken as a stand-alone course, but it is also a prerequisite for an optional winter intersession practicum, and for ILRIC 6311/LSP 6110 in the Spring.

Full details for LSP 4312 - Migration in the Americas: Engaged Research Methods and Practice

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 of traffic 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.

Full details for LSP 4565 - Traffic: Drugs, Bodies, Books

Interested in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies? This course will explore topics in Anthropology, Art, Economics, History, Literature, Government, Sociology, etc., of US Latino and Latin American contexts. Course features guest speakers from Cornell and other institutions.

Full details for LSP 6000 - Contemporary Issues in Latin-Latino America

This seminar will examine the links between globalization and migration and explore the character and dimensions of "unauthorized" migration in several regions of the world. Drawing on cases from Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Australia, we will consider some of the recent theories, debates, and empirical developments relating to such issues as border controls, migration and human rights, development and migration, the role of states, asylum and refugee protection, and politics and citizenship.

Full details for LSP 6010 - Crossing Borders: Migrations in Comparative Perspective

Guided independent study.

Full details for LSP 6210 - Graduate Student Independent Study

This course will introduce students to basic concepts and developments related to migrants and migration in Central America, Mexico, and the United States via engaged learning and research. The course will be organized around core themes such as the challenges and ethics of working with vulnerable populations, workplaces and working conditions, oral histories/testimonios, and immigration policy and enforcement practices. Students will learn qualitative methodologies for field research. All students will practice their skills through collaboration with the Cornell Farmworker Program on priority projects identified by immigrant farmworkers.  This can be taken as a stand-alone course, but it is also a prerequisite for an optional winter intersession practicum and for ILRIC 6311/LSP6110 in the Spring.

Full details for LSP 6312 - Migration in the Americas: Engaged Research Methods and Practice

Borders are highly contested sites and their representation plays a fundamental role in a variety of identity discourses. The place of borders in contemporary political discourse also speaks of the anxiety borders generate as well as their political currency. This seminar engages a number of cutting edge theoretical and ethnographic writings as well as cultural manifestations (music, films, literature, TV shows) about borders in an attempt to contest the essentialisms that have controlled the representations of these areas and to show instead their fluidity and multi-sited nature. However, in an attempt to articulate the possible shortcomings of border theory, throughout our exploration of the topic we'll keep in mind the following question: who gets empowered when we speak about borders?

Full details for LSP 7352 - Listening from the Other Side: Issues in Music and Border Theory