Lower-Division

LALS 1 Introduction to Latin American and Latino Studies

Interdisciplinary introduction presenting the elements for studying Latin American politics and economics, culture, and society as well as the dynamics of Latino communities in the U.S. Special attention paid to issues of colonialism, human rights, U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, racism, capitalist globalization, migration, to emerging political and economic shifts in the Americas, and to new local and transnational efforts for social change on the part of Latin America's peoples and Latinos in the U.S.

Credits

5

Instructor

Lily Balloffet, Shakari Patel

General Education Code

ER

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Summer

LALS 5 Introduction to Human Rights and Social Justice

Introduces human rights as a way to study social justice. Students gain an understanding of interdisciplinary approaches to human rights as a theory, legally, and as a basis for global social movements.

Credits

5

Instructor

Shankari Patel

General Education Code

PE-H

Quarter offered

Spring

LALS 15 Truth, Justice, and Statistics

Provides statistical methodological training and skills through the examination of social and cultural manifestations of truth as a tool to serve social justice efforts for Latinx and other minoritized students in the education setting.

Credits

5

Instructor

The Staff

General Education Code

SR

Quarter offered

Winter

LALS 20 Latino Politics

Offers a domestic (U.S.) and transnational approach to Latino politics, focusing on the five largest Latino groups: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans. Issues addressed include Latino electoral participation, Latino public opinion, migrant political incorporation, and transnationalism among others.

Credits

5

General Education Code

ER

LALS 30 Social Movements in Latin America

Examines contemporary social movements in Latin America, especially those that arose from popular response to different forms of social exclusion and to authoritarian political systems. Explores a variety of popular movements, their successes and setbacks, including rural and urban uprisings, native nations and their descendants, women, labor, human rights, and transnational movements.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jessica Taft

General Education Code

CC

LALS 32 Citizens, Denizens, Aliens

Explores theories and practices of citizenship with a focus on how institutions, such as the immigration apparatus, school, and prison, produce and shape inclusion, marginalization, exclusion, and mobility and how social actors envision and enact home and belonging.

Credits

5

Instructor

Catherine Ramirez

General Education Code

PR-E

LALS 40 Latinos and Labor

Explores the historical, social, economic, and political dynamics of inequality, stratification, and segmentation that shape the occupational pathways and workplace conditions of Latinos in the United States. Students learn about the structures, policies, and ideologies that influence Latinos' working lives as well as how individuals experience their work in a variety of sectors.

Credits

5

General Education Code

ER

LALS 45 Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender

Introduces theories of race, class, and gender which shape understandings about racial/ethnic issues in the United States. With particular attention to the experiences of U.S. racial/ethnic groups, including Latinas/os, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, this course draws from interdisciplinary research to address how race, class, and gender are also crosscutting dynamics.

Credits

5

General Education Code

ER

Quarter offered

Summer

LALS 50 Transnational Feminist Organizing in the Americas

Explores key aspects of transnational feminist organizing in the Americas, including transnational feminist theories and feminist activism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Discusses how women from throughout the Americas region organize politically and socially across gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality.

Credits

5

Instructor

Sylvanna Falcon

General Education Code

CC

LALS 55 AIDS Across the Americas

Compares the response to AIDS in the United States and Latin America, with special attention to migration, human rights, activism, stigma, gender, and sexuality. Students develop a conceptual foundation to conduct a people-centered approach and cultural analysis of AIDS.

Credits

5

Instructor

Justin Perez

General Education Code

CC

LALS 56 The Right to Health

Over the 20th century, Latin American countries experimented with the challenge of ensuring the right to health. Many of their approaches were inspired by Latin American Social Medicine, a social scientific field whose contributions remain, to this day, under-recognized in traditional public health. This course introduces the field of Latin American Social Medicine and its struggles to affirm health as a fundamental human right. Through a range of case studies, students examine how unequal social contexts and power relations shape collective health, the politics of care, and everyday experiences of illness and well-being.

Credits

5

Instructor

Justin Perez

General Education Code

CC

Quarter offered

Fall

LALS 60 Latin American Childhoods

Introduces research on childhood in contemporary Latin America. Explores discourses about Latin American children, the regional institutions shaping children's lives, and how children experience and negotiate these larger social forces.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jessica Taft

General Education Code

CC

Quarter offered

Fall

LALS 65 Religion and Revolution in Latin America

Examines the religious beliefs and practices surrounding the revolutionary movements for social change in Latin America with a particular focus on liberation theology.

Credits

5

Instructor

Shankari Patel

General Education Code

CC

LALS 70 Cinema and Social Change in Cuba

Examines selected feature-length films and documentaries produced after the Revolution of 1959 as a venue to study social change in Cuba. Cinema is used as artifact to document and critique social change. Topics include: the role of art and artist in Revolution, literacy campaign, changing gender relations, dissident sexualities, racial politics, and others.

Credits

5

General Education Code

IM

LALS 75 Art and Social Change in Latin America: Diego Rivera

Explores the works of Diego Rivera, other Mexican muralists, and the Latin American cultural movements that developed to address relevant social and political issues.

Credits

5

Instructor

Greg Landau

General Education Code

IM

Quarter offered

Summer

LALS 79 Hip Hop History/Historia Hip Hop

Exploration of key themes in Latin American history through the medium of hip hop. Students analyze prevalent historical patterns that speak to shared experiences across the Americas. Course content is divided into weekly modules that move thematically through topics including struggles for social and political citizenship, structural mechanisms of exclusion, and anti-imperialist activisms. Also includes reading primary historical documents and engaging in textual analysis of both archival and contemporary texts. Readings equip students to critically interpret elements of hip-hop culture from contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean including MCing, graffiti, and hip hop as the production of knowledge.

Credits

5

Instructor

Lily Balloffet

General Education Code

TA

Quarter offered

Summer

LALS 79S Hip Hop Historia

Taught in Spanish. Exploration of key themes in Latin American history through the medium of hip hop. Students analyze prevalent historical patterns that speak to shared experiences across the Americas. Course content is divided into weekly modules that move thematically through topics including struggles for social and political citizenship, structural mechanisms of exclusion, and anti-imperialist activisms. Also includes reading primary historical documents and engaging in textual analysis of both archival and contemporary texts. Readings equip students to critically interpret elements of hip-hop culture from contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean including MCing, graffiti, and hip hop as the production of knowledge.

Credits

5

Instructor

Lily Balloffet

General Education Code

TA

Quarter offered

Summer

LALS 80D Political Change in Mexico

Reviews broad trends in contemporary Mexican politics against the backdrop of long-term historical, social, and economic change throughout the 20th century, analyzing how power is both wielded from above and created from below. The course covers national politics, grassroots movements for social change and democratization, environmental challenges, indigenous movements, the media, and the politics of immigration and North American integration.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

OAKS 80D

General Education Code

CC

LALS 80F Latinos in the U.S.: A Comparative Perspective

Analyzes the Latino experience in the U.S. with a special focus on strategies for economic and social empowerment. Stresses the multiplicity of the U.S. Latino community, drawing comparative lessons from Cuban-American, Puerto Rican, Chicano/Mexicano, and Central American patterns of economic participation and political mobilization.

Credits

5

General Education Code

ER

LALS 80H Comparative Latina/o Histories

Designed to survey recent works in the field of Latina and Latino histories, with particular emphasis on historiographical approaches and topics in the field. Readings are chosen to expose a selection of the varied histories and cultures of Latina/os in the U.S., and focus primarily on Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans.

Credits

5

Instructor

Gabriela Arredondo

General Education Code

CC

LALS 80J Race, Nation, and War

Evaluates the relationship between processes of racial formation, war, and nationalism in Latin America. Case studies range from the wars of independence to more recent forms of transnational violence. Students engage historical and anthropological perspectives and critiques of modernity.

Credits

5

Instructor

Cecilia Rivas

General Education Code

ER

LALS 80P Environment and Society in Latin America

Examines the implications of environmental degradation and resource extraction for economic growth and social inequality in Latin America. Course focuses on the connections between race, ethnicity, power, poverty, and environmental problems.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PE-E

LALS 80S Sexualities and Genders in Latin American and Latina/o Studies

Introduction to issues and themes surrounding sexualities and genders within Latin American and Latina/o studies. Provides background in the basic theoretical and historical frameworks of gender and its relationship to sexuality. In addition to cross-border perspectives, course also examines how gender and sexuality are structured and experienced through other social categories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Shankari Patel

General Education Code

CC

LALS 80X Central American Peoples and Cultures

Examines contemporary societies and peoples of Central America considering how, in recent decades, media, history, war, cultural production, and migration have shaped Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica both as individual nations and as a region.

Credits

5

Instructor

Cecilia Rivas

General Education Code

CC

LALS 90 Contemporary Brazil

Introduces issues affecting contemporary Brazilian society and culture, such as the legacy of slavery and persisting social, racial, and gender inequities. Analyses of how different representations of Brazil sustain distinctive national projects, which, in turn, attribute specific meanings to blackness, whiteness, masculinity, femininity, and upper- and lower-class identities.

Credits

5

Instructor

Patricia Pinho

General Education Code

ER

Quarter offered

Winter

LALS 94X Mother Earth, Capitalism, and Crises

With a focus on the Americas, this course introduces students into the debates about the causes and solutions to the twinned crisis of global climate change and rising inequality.

Credits

5

Instructor

Fernando Leiva

General Education Code

PE-E

LALS 95 Undergraduate Research Seminar

Seminar for undergraduates participating in the Cultivamos Excelencia program supporting the development of students as researchers and active participants in academic communities; including lectures on disciplinary methods by participating faculty, work-in-progress sessions for mentors and student researchers, and workshops on formulating research questions, developing a research plan, writing a research paper, and professional development. Enrollment is by instructor permission.

Credits

2

Instructor

The Staff

Cross-listed courses that are managed by another department are listed at the bottom.

Cross-listed Courses

PHIL 80E Latin American Philosophy

Is there a general school of philosophy endemic to Latin America? Would it have to appeal to quintessential Western philosophical questions regarding knowledge, values, and reality? If not, why not, and would it then still count as philosophy? What difference do ethnic and national diversity, as well as strong political and social inequality, make to the development of philosophical questions and frameworks? Course explores a variety of historically situated Latin American thinkers who investigate ethnic identity, gender, and socio-political inequality and liberation, and historical memory, and who have also made important contributions to mainstream analytical and continental philosophy.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

LALS 80E

POLI 243 Comparative Methods

Introduces the comparative method in social science. Trains students in the use of this method by examining how scholars have used it to compare across national governments, subnational units, public policies, organizations, social movements, and transnational collective action.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

LALS 243

Instructor

Kent Eaton

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

THEA 161P Theater in the Chicano Power Movement

Covers the rise of Teatro Chicano as a cultural-political force within the 1960's Chicano Power Movement starting with founding playwriter Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino and covering Chicana/o playwrights inspired by the movement, e.g. Cherrie Moraga, Luis Alfaro, and Josefina Lopez.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

LALS 161P

Instructor

The Staff

General Education Code

ER