LACS MINOR & COURSES
HISPANIC LANGUAGES & LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
COURSES IN ENGLISH
LAB L01 T 11:56-01:50PM EARTH&SPACE 131 Kathleen Vernon
Course description: A contextual approach to the national cinemas of Latin America. Students will develop their skill in film analysis as they examine the specific role of film in re-focusing the terms of ongoing debates on questions of national identity and the function of culture in society.
Film viewing and discussions will be organized around four overlapping themes--Mapping Urban Realities; Road Movies; Street Kids; and Violence andRevolution: A View from Childhood—intended to provide insight into the role of Latin American fiction and documentary cinema in exploring the diverse geographies, societies and histories of the Latin American continent. We will also devote special attention to the analysis of various manifestations of social, cultural and economic conflict while revealing the roots of pervasive structural and institutional inequities in 20th and 21st century Latin America.
T 05:00-07:50PM FREY HALL 328. Dr. Sally Scott-Sabo. Note: Offered as SPN 410 and SPN 542
MW 05:00-06:20 pm in PHYSICS P125. Prof. Lena Burgos-Lafuente. Offered as SPN 415 and SPN 510
This seminar will focus on the creation of literature, visual art, performance, and music within contemporary Caribbean culture. We will examine aesthetic and critical responses to the current social, ecological, and political challenges facing the region, as well as the historical construction of the Caribbean as a zone of "hospitality”. Instead of following a strict chronological order or providing discrete accounts of national traditions, we will organize the texts around common historical and aesthetic themes to explore art's relationship to mourning, debt, political unrest, the pandemic, state violence, colonialism, ecological disasters, and tourism economies in the region.
While concentrating on the artistic production of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, we will reference dialogues with Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean texts, shedding light on key continuities and divergences constitutive of this corpus. We will also address gender politics, racial politics, gay/queer sexual politics, colonialism, political oppression, and their relation to aesthetics. Significant historical events such as Hurricanes Irma and María, Puerto Rico's Summer of 2019, Cuba's Movimiento San Isidro, Puerto Rico's Act 60, and the Dominican Republic's abortion ban will be considered in mapping artistic production.
Authors will include Achy Obejas, Allora & Calzadilla, Glorimar Marrero, Macha Colón, Johan Mijail, Yara Liceaga, Rita Indiana, Mara Pastor, Pedro Cabiya, Roque Salas, Yoss, Juan Carlos Quiñones, Jamaica Kincaid, Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, and Jorge Enrique Lage, along with critical essays by Mimi Sheller, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, and others.
HIS 379: Rebels & Revolutionaries: Latin America in the 1960s
GLO, SBS+, Professor Eric Zolov, Mondays/Wednesdays, 3:30-450pm. Frey Hall 105
This course explores the intertwined relationship between “rebels and revolutionaries”cembodied in the figure of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Latin America during the Global 1960s. With his long hair, irreverence toward authority, and militancy, Guevara became a symbol of countercultural rebellion as well as social revolution. Through a close reading of primary sources, the class will focus on different concepts of “rebellion,” “liberation,” and “revolution,” set against the backdrop of guerrilla insurgency, military repression, student protest, and U.S. interventionism. Students will write three critical analysis papers that draw directly on materials from class. There are no midterms or final exams.
WOMEN AND GENDER STUDIES DEPARTMENT
This course explores how debates about immigration tie to ideas of national identity, with a focus on the role played by media coverage of immigration issues and events. We identify causes and consequences of immigration through an interdisciplinary lens, with special attention to race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and family. We analyze restrictive laws and enforcement measures employed to maintain national borders—territorial and conceptual—historically and today. We deconstruct common narratives, metaphors, and images evident in media coverage of immigration, and examine how they shape popular ideas about immigration, immigrant/citizen interactions, and experiences of citizenship and belonging. Throughout the semester, we pay attention to current news and events, with special attention to 2024 U.S. political campaigns. While our primary focus is on the United States, we also give attention to the relationship between immigration, nation, and media around the world. Course materials include a variety of academic readings, news sources, social media, and film/video.