TENTATIVE Spring 2025 class offerings (this list subject to change)
Research Strategies in Africana and Latina/o 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 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. Instructor(s): Reanna Esmail and Hannah Toombs. MW 2:30 – 3:20. 1 credit. PLEASE NOTE: This course is a ½ semester course – 2nd 7 week session – 3/12 – 5/17/2025. (This course does not fulfill minor requirements).
Spanish for Heritage Speakers I – LSP 1250 (also SPAN 1250). This low-intermediate course expands Heritage students' confidence and competence in Spanish by providing opportunities to build upon the conversational skills they have. Through literary texts, other readings, music, films and the visual arts students broaden their vocabulary, improve grammatical accuracy, develop writing skills and enrich their understanding of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. The heritage student grew up speaking Spanish and finished high school in the U.S. After this course student may take SPAN 2000, SPAN 2070, or SPAN 2090. Instructor: Mary K. Redmond. MWF 10:10 - 11:00. 3 credits. (This course fulfills an elective option for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Spanish for Heritage Speakers - LSP 2020 (also SPAN 2000). A course designed to expand bilingual student's knowledge of Spanish providing them with ample opportunities to develop and improve each of the basic language skills. Prerequisite: LPS score 56 or higher, SAT II 590 or higher, CASE placement, or permission of instructor. Instructor: Mary K. Redmond. Two sections: MWF 11:15 – 12:05 or 12:20 – 1:10. 3 credits. (This course fulfills an elective option for the LSP undergraduate minor).
(Im)migration and (Im)migrants: Then and Now – LSP 2152 (also GOVT 2152). One in ten residents of the United States was born outside the country. These people include international students, temporary workers, refugees, asylees, permanent residents, naturalized U.S. citizens and undocumented migrants. The arrival of these newcomers affects the cultural, economic, political and social dynamics of the country. Since immigration shows no signs of slowing down—in the United States or in many other nations of the world—the causes, consequences and repercussions of immigration will be one of the most important topics of the 21- century. Therefore this class will examine the history and contemporary role of immigration in the U.S. political system. The class will focus on two aspects of immigration: First, a historical examination of immigration policy from the founding of the country all the way forward to the current debate over immigration reform. Second, we will evaluate and assess the political incorporation and political participation of immigrant groups in the U.S. and determine whether immigrants are being incorporated, and if not, why? We will reflect on many important questions including the costs and benefits of immigration, issues related to civil rights and civil liberties, and finally propose our own ideas and solutions to the current immigration reform debate. Instructor: Fernando Villegas Rivera: TR 10:10 - 11:25. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Social Science distribution for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Sanctuary in the Americas: Envisioning a Borderless World – LSP 3132 (also GOVT 3132). This class will examine historical and contemporary developments in the politics of resistance, solidarity, and inclusionary policies around migration. We will place a special focus on North and Central America to understand the emergence and development of both the Old and the New Sanctuary Movements, broadly defined, as a transnational and diverse coalition of religious and political groups such as churches, synagogues, NGOs, educational institutions, and pro-migrant states and cities that offer “safe haven” or “sanctuary” to migrants holding various legal statuses. In addition, we will examine other social movements such as the Immigrant Rights movement, migrant Caravanas, as well as the origins, development, and current state of subnational pro-migrant public policies. We will close the class with reflections on what a world without borders could look like. This class draws on a range of interdisciplinary theories and methods from the social sciences and humanities that will allow students to analyze, imagine, and devise creative ways of inclusion toward migrants and marginalized populations. Instructor: Fernando Villegas Rivera. MW 11:40 – 12:55. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Social Science distribution for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Performance and Immigration:Staging the Migrant, Alien, and Refugee in and out side the US - LSP 3215 (also PMA 3215). In this course, we interrogate how immigration debates are staged and experiences of belonging are redefined through performance. The categories of "undocumented," "illegal," "displaced," and "exile" collide on international and national stages when governmental bodies decide who gets to be a migrant and under what terms. We assess how bodies marked culturally and legally as "aliens" use performance to navigate complex migration laws and dangerous social terrains that appear to be shifting and solidifying at the same time. We consider performances on stage, as well as performance in a broader understanding. We examine visual, linguistic, and performative representations of migrant experiences. We analyze and write about performances that deal with issues of migration beyond economic and security models. Instructor: Juan Aldape-Munoz. MW 11:40 - 12:55. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Humanities distribution for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Border Environments – LSP 3336/6336 (also COML 3336/6336). This course focuses on a place and a concept where two of the most urgent issues of our times-- migration and environmental degradation -- converge, collide, and shape each other. It examines borders not as abstract lines on the map, butas dynamic hubs that connect human societies, politics, and cultures with the natural and built environments that we inhabit and transform. Through scholarly and creative work from an array of borders around the world, we will develop new theoretical approaches and methodological toolkits for rethinking and re-visioning borders in an era of climate change, toxic pollution, and mass extinction. Using lenses of environmental ethics and justice, the course encourages multi- and inter-disciplinary projects from students and will feature guests from diverse areas, disciplines, and practices. Instructor(s): Debra Castillo/Anindita Banerjee. MW 1:25 – 2:40. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Humanities distribution for LSP undergraduate minor).
Multicultural Issues in Education - LSP 3405 (also ANTHR/EDUC/AMST 3405). This course explores research on race, ethnicity and language in American education. It examines historical and current patterns of minority school achievement as well as practices of teaching and learning in diverse families, communities, and schools. Policies, programmatic and pedagogical responses to diversity, including multicultural and bilingual education, are addressed. Instructor: Sofia Villenas. TR 11:40 – 12:55. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Social Science distribution for LSP undergraduate minor).
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art - LSP 3551 (Also ARTH 3550).
Instructor: Maria Fernandez. MW 11:40 - 12:55. 3 credits. (This course fulfills an elective option for the LSP undergraduate minor).
War and Revolution in 20th century Latino History - LSP 3801 (also HIST 3801). 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. There are no prerequisites for the course but HIST 1802 is strongly recommended. Instructor: Maria Cristina Garcia. TR 1:25 – 2:40. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Humanities distribution for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Decolonial Poetics and Aesthetics: Arts of Resistance in the Americas - LSP 4556/6565. Instructor: Jolene Rickard. R 11:15 - 1:45. 3 credits. (This course fulfills humanities distribution for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Desbordando: Reading Caribbean Waters in Latinx Studies – LSP 4577 (also ENGL 4577). 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. Instructor: Rebeca Hey-Colón. M 2 – 4:30. 4 credits. (This course fulfills humanities distribution for the LSP undergraduate minor).
Latin American & Latinx Environmentalisms - LSP 4690 (also 4690). The Silueta or “earth-body” sculpture series by Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta explores how the human body is bound to the land. In Imagen de Yagul, Mendieta covers her body in white flowers and lies down, assuming the position of a corpse. The image evokes the earth as both grave and garden: the origin and the end of life. The artist’s identity is concealed by the plants that seem to spring from her body, undermining her individuality and pointing instead toward relationality. In the second image, Mendieta dramatizes the earth as an archive of human memory. The imprint left behind by her body is framed by plants as if it were a portrait. What to make of the artist’s absence in this image? Or of the staging of the land as the body’s archive? Scholars have suggested that perhaps the Silueta series is a meditation on Mendieta’s exile from her home in Cuba, or perhaps it is simply a reflection of the way human memory is site-specific. In this course, we will explore how the nonhuman environment has been conceptualized by Latin American and Latinx thinkers, writers, artists, and filmmakers. We will pay particular attention to how colonialism has shaped the material and cultural connections with nature in the Americas, as well as to how Latinx, Latin American, Afro-descendent, and Indigenous thinkers have articulated other forms of relationality between body and land. This class will be conducted in English. However, discussion in Spanish or Spanglish is welcome. Instructor: Carolyn Fornoff. MW 11:40 - 12:55. 3 credits. (This course fulfills Humanities distribution for LSP undergraduate minor.)
Nightlife – LSP 4701/6701 (also PMA 4701/6701). 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. Instructor: Karen Jaime. TR 2:30 – 4:10. 4 credits. (This course fulfills Humanities distribution for LSP undergraduate minor.)
Latinx Education Across the Americas – LSP 4790/7790 (also ANTHR 4790/7790). This course examines Latinx education in comparative perspective, with a focus on transnational communities and cross-border movements that link Latinx education in the United States with Latin American education. We ask: how do legacies of colonialism and empire shape the education of Latinx communities? How are race, language, gender, cultural and national identity, and representation negotiated in schools? Drawing on ethnographic studies of education in and out of school, we explore how families and youths create knowledge, do literacy, and respond to cultural diversity, displacement, migration, and inequality. Throughout, we inquire into the potential for a decolonial and transformative education. Instructor: Sofia Villenas. R 2:00 – 4:30 pm. 4 credits. (This course fulfills Social Science distribution for LSP undergraduate minor).