Lower-Division

Anthropological in approach, concentrates on how Latin America's image is constructed and studied today. Topics include geographies, nationalities, social classes, ethnicities, gender, ecologies, regions, cultural areas, folklore, revolutions, and rural and urban societies.

Focuses on politics of power and resistance regarding major cross-border issues facing Latin Americans and Latinos in the 21st century. Emphasizes migration and migrant organizing; neoliberal free trade and implications for labor; organizing by women's, indigenous, and ecological movements; and for democracy and human rights. Many specific cases drawn from binational Central American experiences.

Applies critical and historical approaches to the study of gender in global cinema. Introduces students to different aesthetic and cross-cultural approaches to representing gender in contemporary film. Focuses on films, documentaries, and video works from the Americas as well as from other regions of the global South.

An introductory lecture and discussion course on literature and history of Mayan people of Mexico and Guatemala in the last 500 years; concentration also on representation of the Maya by westerners since the invasion of 1492.

Discusses impact of illegal drugs in societies and cultures of the Americas. Covers recent debates concerning legalization of drugs, illegal trafficking, state policy calling for eradication, military intervention, and stands of civil society on this issue. Studies origins and history of illegal drugs, causes of their persistence, and evaluates recent reactions to proposals that affect human communities in Latin America and the U.S.

Surveys various musical forms and styles that have developed in Latin America and Latino communities in the U.S. Discusses concept of hybridity and grapples with this as a central issue in the evolution of Latin American/Latino music. Addresses migration of music, which not only contributes to its distribution but also to the evolvement of musical practices of forms, styles and genres across borders. (Formerly Musica Latina.)

Analyzes the range of theory and practice that emerged from and shaped significant social movements during the rise and fall of United States hegemony. Focuses on social struggles and revolutions in five distinct locations across the Americas: the United States (United Farm Workers--UFW), Cuba (Movimiento 26 de Julio--M26J), Nicaragua (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional--F.S.L.N.), Mexico (Zapatistas), and Brazil (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra--MST).