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 introduces students with research interests in Latino and Africana Studies to search strategies and methods for finding materials in various formats (e.g., digital, film, and print) using information databases such as the library catalog, print and electronic indexes, and the World Wide Web. Instructors provide equal time for lecture and hands-on learning. Topics include government documents, statistics, subject-specific online databases, social sciences, the humanities, and electronic citation management.

Full details for LSP 1101 - Research Strategies in Africana and Latino Studies

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 2095.

Full details for LSP 2020 - Spanish for Heritage Speakers

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.

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

In this course, we will learn about the history of the West. We will deconstruct popular myths about the West, as we engage with the major themes and significant debates that define the historical scholarship. This course will begin with Native origin stories and end with the 20th century. As a class, we will study the west from a multitude of perspectives, such as race, gender, and ethnicity, the environment, labor, politics and culture. This course is designed to increase our knowledge of the social, political and intellectual developments that have shaped our understanding of the West.

Full details for LSP 2765 - The North American West

Migrants are a heterogeneous group of people (the term migrants is used to encompass different immigrant communities). The reasons for relocating to the United States, or another country, the conditions under which they relocate, whether they are authorized to remain in a country, their cultural backgrounds, their ethnic/racial identities, their education level, their gender identity and sexual orientation, and their socio-economic status are merely a few factors that contribute to immigrants' diverse experiences. Thus, this course will introduce us to different frameworks, research, and practices that can help us understand the important role of communication in different, U.S., migration experiences. On the one hand, communication can help mitigate some of the social and structural barriers that migrants face in the United States and elsewhere. On the other hand, communication can also exacerbate or lead to educational, economic, and health inequities among migrants. We will consider both ways in which communication can function for migrant communities. Overall, migration: (1) is a diverse area of research that can incorporate intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, organizational, institutional, cultural, and policy levels of analysis; (2) is studied using a wide range of methodologies; and (3) is affected by a variety of communication channels. The readings and content of this course primarily focus on the experiences of Latina/o/x immigrant communities in the U.S.

Full details for LSP 3250 - Vamos Pa'l Norte: U.S. Migration and Communication

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

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

As Latinx studies continues to expand beyond its nationalistic origins and re-examines its geographical bounds, nuancing the role of borders within the field becomes urgent. This course probes at the primacy of the border in Latinx studies by centering Caribbean waters. As a liquid that refuses to succumb to the violence of fragmentation and instead embodies iterations of radical wholeness, water has an innate capacity to undo borders, a quality epitomized by the Spanish verb desbordar (to overflow). Through discussion and analysis of key Latinx cultural products we will gain an appreciation for the multiple ways in which water sustains provocative contradictions across borders regarding representations of historical memory, gender and sexuality, migration, race, and religion and spirituality, among others.

Full details for LSP 4577 - Desbordando: Reading Caribbean Waters in Latinx Studies

This seminar will explore the extraordinary literature, music, art, and film emerging from and about Los Angeles. As a global city, Los Angeles offers a glimpse of a world in transit; one that challenges preconceptions and established forms. Paying special attention to the work of Latinx creators, but also engaging with the many communities, including Indigenous, African American, and Asian American, that make art in LA, this course will offer students a chance to study and enjoy a wide variety of creative forms while also learning about resilience, innovative resistance movements, and the complexity of collaboration.

Full details for LSP 4612 - LA Stories: Literature, Film, and Music from Los Angeles

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 art, 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.

Full details for LSP 4701 - Nightlife

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

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 art, 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.

Full details for LSP 6701 - Nightlife