Provides historical and analytical foundations for the inter/transdisciplinary and transnational project of bridging the fields of Latin American and Latino studies (area and ethnic studies). Explores social, cultural, economic, and political changes connecting Latin America and U.S. Latina/o communities. Traces the intellectual genealogy of these efforts and how they contribute to each other. Introduces students to LALS' four substantive themes: (1) Transnationalisms, Migrations, and Displacement; (2) Intersectionality, Identities, and Inequalities; (3) Collective Action, Social Movements, and Social Change; and (4) Culture, Power, and Knowledge. Core requirement for students pursuing the Designated Emphasis in Latin American and Latino studies.
Examines historical processes and contemporary social, cultural, and political structures in the Américas. Explores power as a mesh that interweaves relations of exploitation/domination/conflict aimed at controlling different dimensions of social existence. Places particular emphasis on the nature of capitalist development in the Américas, colonialism, imperialism/anti-imperialism, nationalism/ transnationalism/ plurinationalism, and neoliberalism. Builds a contextual foundation for conceptual inquiry in the department’s four substantive themes. (Formerly Power and Society.)
Introduces theoretical frameworks that explore the relationships between culture, power, and subjectivities. Emphasizes developing interdisciplinary, interpretive, and analytic skills and engages foundational critical approaches including queer theory, border theory, subaltern studies, intersectionality, feminisms, and critical race theory. (Formerly Theories of Culture in the Americas.)
Problematizes the construction of research approaches in the interdisciplinary field of Latin American and Latino studies, and showcases particular approaches in the social sciences and humanities so students may engage in innovative, transnational research. (Formerly Research in Praxis: Epistemology, Ontology, and Ethics.)
Students engage and discuss texts that examine the relationship between space, narratives, and ideas of the modern nation, along with critical studies that highlight the social effects of imaginaries and representations.
Grounds students in the social science literature on Latin American social movements, integrating anthropological, sociological, and political science approaches to the field.
Explores concepts and approaches related to migration; the multiple types of borders that migrants transcend--geopolitical, social, cultural, or interpersonal; and borderland formations constructed in relation to bodies in motion.
Brings together comparative studies of physical and social mobility with a focus on race, migration, and citizenship. Both an articulation and study of comparison, course is organized around three components: comparative borders; comparative migration; and comparative ethnic studies. The questions animating it include: What happens when different histories, places, and peoples are compared? How and why do scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences compare? What are the strengths and challenges of a comparative approach? (Formerly offered as Comparative Mobilities.)
Seminar that engages social, political, and cultural histories of homosexuality in Cuba, focusing on LGBT ostracism and activism after 1959, with particular attention to the social and economic impact of the developments of the USSR on Cuba's LGBT population.
Introduces intellectual histories of youth studies scholarship in the context of Latin American and Latino studies; explores young people's lived experiences of racialized capitalism and globalization; and addresses various forms of youth resistance and the relationship between youth cultures, politics, and social change.
Explores how narratives about children, teens, youth, and students are imbued with political significance, and the ways young people are actively engaged in political practices. Considers how representations and lived experiences of youth can serve to reproduce and/or challenge inequalities.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, explores Latina feminist social theory and scholarly practice—especially in representation and interpretation of Latina experiences. Examining key texts at different historical junctures, charts how Latinas of varied ethnic, class, sexual, or racialized social locations have constructed oppositional and/or relational theories and alternative epistemologies or political scholarly interventions and, in the process, have problematized borders, identities, cultural expressions, and coalitions.
Explores foundational texts by Latin American intellectuals that have served to construct and sustain continental, regional, national, and transnational cartographies of identities and the search for lo americano. Examines race/color, sexuality, and culture by tracing their narrative and conceptual (trans)formations in the region and its diaspora. Most texts are read in the original language of publication.
Explores the social construction of Latino cultures in their varied regional, national-ethic, and gendered contexts. Examines how culture, as a dynamic process constructed with a historical context of hierarchical relations of group power, is interrelated to the structural subordination of Latinos. Focuses on how power relations create a context for the creation of specific Latino cultural expressions and processes.
Examines the theories and practices informing the field of Latina cultural studies in the Americas. For students pursuing the Designated Emphasis in Latin American and Latino studies and students with interest in theories of coloniality of power, decolonialism, intercultural and transnational feminist methodologies.
Provides students in LALS and related fields with an opportunity to engage theoretical frameworks and examine a range of intellectual currents that have shaped economic, social, and cultural processes in Central America from the late 1800s to the present. Readings include a range of scholarship and critical studies in order to analyze the roles of intellectuals and how their ideas circulated in the isthmus and beyond. Evaluates the roles of institutions, political ideologies, media, and modernity in the constitution and propagation of intellectual networks, how these shape popular attitudes in everyday life, and the futures of the Central American isthmus.
Analyzes social, civic, and political actors that come together across borders to constitute transnational civil society, drawing from political sociology, political economy, comparative politics, and anthropology to address collective identity formation, collective action, institutional impacts, and political cultures.
Considers historical moments in the development of race in the Americas to understand how race is given meaning and actualized through practices, beliefs, and behaviors. Interrogates theories and racial dynamics in the 19th through 21st centuries to reveal interconnections with constructions of gender and nation.
Approaches the nexus of sexuality and migration to examine contemporary theories of citizenship, security, violence, and power. Drawing on case studies that center experiences at, around, and across diverse borders throughout the Americas, the course takes an intersectional approach to understand: how migration is embedded in sexual identities and practices; and how sexuality, alongside race, class, and gender, influence who migrates and under what circumstances. Examining how researchers have approached sensitive questions of sexuality, students emerge better prepared to develop future research in the broader thematic fields of transnationalism, migration, and displacement.
Examines cultural, philosophical, and political foundations for human rights and provides students with critical grounding in the major theoretical debates over conceptualizations of human rights in the Americas. Addresses the role of feminist activism and jurisprudence in the expansion of human rights since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Addresses challenges of accommodating gender rights, collective rights, and social and economic rights within international human rights framework.
Cross Listed Courses
FMST 240
Explores how globalization, transnationalism, and the social construction of gender are interrelated, contingent, and subject to human agency and resistance. Examines particular configurations of globalization, transnationalism, and gender through the Américas and their implications for race, space, work, social movements, migration, and construction of collective memory.
Explores the utility of geographical information systems (GIS) for social science research. This course has three components: critical discussions of spatial analysis in published research, training in GIS software, and the application of digital mapping to students' research projects.
Examines efforts by intellectuals from the Global South, mainly Latin America, to cast off the political, cultural, and epistemological notions imposed by European colonialism and preserved today through the practices of Western/Eurocentric knowledge, to forge their own epistemologies of the South.
Examines whiteness in Latin America as a racial identity, a social condition, a set of cultural practices, a dominant standpoint, and a hyper-valued ideal. Analyzes the meanings and applicability of such concepts as ordinary whiteness, aspirational whiteness, the narcissistic pact of whiteness, the racialization of class, among others. Scrutinizes the intersections of whiteness with class, gender, nation, and language. Readings cover a wide range of Latin American countries and fields including anthropology, sociology, communication, and media and cultural studies.
Explores how the divide between cultural studies and political economy can be resolved through a post-disciplinary approach which is attentive to how semiotic and material practices co-constitute contemporary capitalism and an ever-changing set of strategies attempting to manage its multiple contradictions.
Graduate students in LALS and related fields discuss interdisciplinary texts on the interconnection between Latin American species and geographies. Takes a historically grounded approach to address a range of topics related to the study of non-human subjects in this hemisphere, such as animals, plants, fungi, and the ecologies that they co-constitute. Topics include: centering non-humans in Latin American history; critical natural histories of the hemisphere; and inhabiting, and producing knowledge about, nature in contemporary América. In addition, students choose their own related topic(s) of interest and complete a series of reflective and iterative writing assignments, culminating in a draft for (optional) future publication.
Required for all LALS graduate students in residence, colloquium includes a mix of activities aimed at supporting the development of graduate students as teachers, researchers, and active participants in academic communities. Includes lectures by distinguished speakers, work-in-progress sessions for both faculty and graduate student research, pedagogical theory and practice seminars, and professional development workshops.
Provides training for graduate students in university-level pedagogy in general and in the pedagogy of Latin American and Latino studies specifically. Coordinated by a graduate student who has had substantial experience as a teaching assistant, under the supervision of a faculty member.
Students submit a reading course proposal to a department faculty member who supervises independent study in the field. Faculty and student jointly agree upon reading list. Students expected to meet regularly with faculty to discuss readings. This independent study must focus on a subject not covered by current UCSC graduate curriculum. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.
Students submit a reading course proposal to a department faculty member who supervises independent study in the field. Faculty and student jointly agree upon reading list. Students expected to meet regularly with faculty to discuss readings. This independent study must focus on a subject not covered by current UCSC graduate curriculum. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.
Students submit a reading course proposal to a department faculty member who supervises independent study in the field. Faculty and student jointly agree upon reading list. Students expected to meet regularly with faculty to discuss readings. This independent study must focus on a subject not covered by current UCSC graduate curriculum. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.
Enrollment restricted to graduate students and permission of instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Enrollment restricted to graduate students and permission of instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Enrollment restricted to graduate students and permission of instructor. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.