This course offers an introduction to Latina/o/x politics in the United States. We examine the political experiences, participation, and representation of Latino/a/x communities, with attention to identity, leadership, media, social movements, and policy preferences. The course emphasizes the historical, cultural, and demographic factors that shape political engagement and influence. Students gain foundational tools for understanding Latino/a/x within the broader U.S. political system. (GOVT-AM)

Full details for LSP 2031 - Introduction to Latino-a-x Politics

Americans are conflicted about immigration. We 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 the immigrant ancestors adapted 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. (HIST-HNA)

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

Foreign in a domestic sense is the perplexing way that the Supreme Court of the United States chose to define Puerto Rico's status in the so-called Insular Cases of the early 20th century. Written over 100 years ago, this contradictory ruling looms large over Puerto Rico's precarious legal standing, despite the fact that there are now more Puerto Ricans living on the US mainland than in the island itself. Seeking to counter the obfuscation of Puerto Rico in the US imaginary, in this course students will analyze how key historical, political, and social moments connected to diasporas, disasters, and dissent have galvanized Puerto Rican cultural production in the 20th and 21st centuries. (ENGL-GLS, ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)

Full details for LSP 3678 - Diasporas, Disasters, and Dissent: Re-Thinking Puerto Rican Studies in the 20th and 21st Centuries

In this course, we will critically examine the production and performance of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender through literature and contemporary performance genres such as spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop theatre. (PMA-HTC)

Full details for LSP 3754 - Spoken Word, Hip-Hop Theater, and the Politics of Performance

In this course, we will answer two major questions: What is Latino history? And how should we write Latino History? We will explore these questions without attempting to cover all of Latino history before 1800. We will focus on a variety of experiences to better understand how differences in race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and class have shaped Latino communities over time. We will read academic journal articles and books (secondary sources) and documents from the past, such as diaries, letters, court records, and maps (primary sources). Throughout the semester we will be working in groups toward creating a final project: a Latino history website. (HIST-HNA, HIST-HPE)

Full details for LSP 3770 - Latinos and the United States, 1492-1880

This course examines war and revolution as drivers of migration from Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean to the United States and Canada. From the War of 1898 to the wars in Central America, war and revolution have displaced millions of people, prompting internal and cross-border migration. This history underscores how migration is multicausal-that is, produced by a wide and complex range of intersecting drivers. War and revolution disrupt livelihoods, produce scarcity, and create the insecurity that makes it impossible to exercise a basic human right to stay home. The course also examines how Latinos have become actors in U.S. wars and interventions in their countries of ancestry. (HIST-HNA)

Full details for LSP 3801 - War and Revolution in 20th Century Latino History

We will undertake a comparative study of African American and Latina/o histories, cultures, and politics from the American Revolution to the present. Students will gain understandings of connections between events in the Americas including the abolition of slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Mexican American War, and the US Civil War. We will study ties between US empire and the Jim Crow/Juan Crow systems. We will seek to understand Black and Brown workers' freedom struggles against systemic racism in the Sunbelt, and the roles these workers played in the making of the New Deal, Third World Solidarity, feminism, and the election of the first African American president in US history.

Full details for LSP 3805 - African American and Latinx Histories

This introductory course introduces students to issues and debates related to international migration and will provide an interdisciplinary foundation to understanding the factors that shape migration flows and migrant experiences. We will start by reviewing theories of the state and historical examples of immigrant racialization and exclusion in the United States and beyond. We will critically examine the notions of borders, citizenship/non-citizenship, and the creation of diasporas. Students will also hear a range of perspectives by exposing them to Cornell guest faculty who do research and teach on migration across different disciplines and methodologies and in different world areas. Examples include demographic researchers concerned with immigrant inequality and family formation, geographic perspectives on the changing landscapes of immigrant metropolises, legal scholarship on the rights of immigrant workers, and the study of immigrant culture from a feminist studies lens. Offered each fall semester.

Full details for LSP 3810 - Migration: Histories, Controversies, and Perspectives

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

This course provides an introductory overview to environmental thought in Latin America and the Latinx diaspora. We will discuss pre-Columbian approaches to the nonhuman and colonialism's transformative impact on ecosystems in the hemispheric America's. We will then turn to contemporary debates about whether nature should be treated as a resource or as a commons, with special attention paid to Indigenous philosophers like Ailton Krenak, Latinx scholars like Laura Pulido, and visual artists like Laura Aguilar and Carolina Caycdo.

Full details for LSP 4690 - Latin American and Latinx Environmentalisms

This course explores the rich, global food cultures of Greater Mexico, that is, a idea of Mexican gastronomy that encompasses the country of Mexico, the Mexican American community in the US, and Mexican migrants around the world, as well as the practice of Mexican food culture by non-Mexicans. The course raises fundamental issues related to the ways in which the practice and representation of gastronomy allow the consideration of topics such as colonialism, globalization, gastrodiplomacy, economic development and sovereignty, while discussing the role of food culture in subjectivity and identity. These questions will be explored through an array of literary, artistic and cinematographic texts, as well as the critical work of scholars across the humanities and the social sciences.

Full details for LSP 4875 - Global Food Cultures of Greater Mexico

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

Guided independent study.

Full details for LSP 6210 - Graduate Student Independent Study