Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies Courses for Spring 2024
| Title | Instructor | Location | Time | All taxonomy terms | Description | Section Description | Cross Listings | Fulfills | Registration Notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | Course Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LALS 0116-401 | American Race: A Philadelphia Story (SNF Paideia Program Course) |
Fernando Chang-Muy Fariha Khan |
TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course proposes an examination of race with a three-pronged approach: one that broadly links the study of race in the United States with a multi-disciplinary approach; situates specific conversations within the immediate location of Philadelphia; and examines the international human rights context of race with Greece as a case study. The broad historical examination advances key concepts of race and racialization, explores key theoretical methodologies, and highlights major scholarly works. Students will engage with the study of race through Africana Studies, Asian American Studies, Urban Studies, South Asia Studies, Latin American & Latinx Studies, and through international human rights law. Readings and methodologies will introduce students to critical issues in education, in literature, in sociology, and with methods in oral history, archival work, and ethnography. Most importantly, this extensive approach highlights the impact of race across multiple communities including Black Americans, immigrant populations, Asian Americans, and international communities that are marginalized to emphasize connections, relationships, and shared solidarity. Students are intellectually pushed to see the linkages and the impacts of racism across and among all Americans and from a thematic and legal perspective. As each theme is introduced a direct example from Philadelphia will be discussed. The combination of the national discourse on race, with an intimate perspective from the City of Philadelphia and travel to Greece, engages students both intellectually and civically. The course will be led by Fariha Khan and Fernando Chang-Muy along with local activists with varied disciplinary backgrounds from local community organizations. Each guest lecturer not only brings specific disciplinary expertise, but also varied community engagement experience. This course is a Penn Global Seminar, which includes a travel component. An application is required. For more information and to apply, visit: https://global.upenn.edu/pennabroad/pgs. The course is also supported by the SNF Paideia Program, the Asian American Studies Program and Africana, Latin American & Latinx Studies, Sociology, South Asia Studies, and Urban Studies. | AFRC0116401, ASAM0116401, SAST0116401, SOCI0116401, URBS0116401 | |||||||||
| LALS 0450-401 | Modern Latin America 1808-Present | Melissa Teixeira | TR 10:15 AM-11:14 AM | This course examines central themes of Latin American history, from independence to the present. It engages a hemispheric and global approach to understand the economic and social transformations of the region. We will explore the anti-imperial struggles, revolutions, social movements, and global economic crises that have given rise to new national projects for development, or have frustrated the realization of such goals. Taking a historical perspective, we will ask: What triggers imperial breakdown? How did slaves navigate the boundary between freedom and bondage? Was the Mexican Revolution revolutionary? How did the Great Depression lead to the rise of state-led development? In what ways have citizens mobilized for equality, a decent standard of living, and cultural inclusion? And what future paths will the region take given uneasy export markets and current political uncertainty? | HIST0450401 | History & Tradition Sector (all classes) | ||||||||
| LALS 0720-401 | Introduction to Latin American and Latino Studies | Ann C. Farnsworth | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of Latin American and Latino Studies, this is a seminar oriented toward first and second year students. Readings will range widely, from scholarly work on the colonial world that followed from and pushed back against the "conquest"; to literary and artistic explorations of Latin American identities; to social scientists' explorations of how Latinos are changing the United States in the current generation. | HIST1702401 | |||||||||
| LALS 1121-401 | U.S. Intervention in Latin America | Jane Esberg | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Why has the United States government participated in regime change in Latin America? How have these interventions affected Latin American political and economic outcomes? How have they helped or hurt U.S. interests in the region? This lecture course provides an introduction to the history and politics of U.S. participation in regime change in Latin America since 1949. For each event, the course will help students understand (1) the goals of the U.S. government; (2) the historical and political context of the intervention; and (3) the outcomes and consequences, both in Latin America and for the United States. One set of short writing assignments will train students to identify the main argument of a reading and assess the quality of the evidence presented in support of that argument; a second set of short writing assignments will train students to make and defend their own argument (see draft syllabus for details). | PSCI1121401 | |||||||||
| LALS 1166-401 | A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered | Hardeep Dhillon | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Many Americans widely accept the notion that the United States is a nation of immigrants despite the fact that immigration and border control has been a central feature of this nation’s past. This course explores the United States’ development of immigration and border enforcement during the twentieth century through an intersectional lens. It roots the structures of modern immigration and border enforcement in Native dispossession and histories of slavery, and interrogates how Asian, Black, and Latinx immigration has shaped and expanded immigration controls on, within, and beyond US territorial borders. In addition to historicizing the rise and expansion of major institutions of immigration control such as the US Border Patrol and Bureau of Naturalization, we explore how immigration controls were enforced on the ground and impacted the lives of everyday people. | ASAM1166401, HIST1166401 | |||||||||
| LALS 1180-401 | The Art of Revolution |
Ricardo Bracho Jennifer Lyn Sternad Ponce De Leon |
MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course offers an international and multidisciplinary tour of revolutionary art from the 20th and 21st centuries, including cinema, literature, visual art, theater, and performance art. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. | CIMS1280401, COML1180401, ENGL1180401, GSWS1180401, THAR1180401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS1180401 | ||||||||
| LALS 1310-401 | Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade | Roquinaldo Ferreira | MW 5:15 PM-6:44 PM | This course focuses on the history of selected African societies from the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. The primary goal is to study the political, economic, social, and cultural history of a number of peoples who participated in the Atlantic slave trade or were touched by it during the era of their involvement. The course is designed to serve as an introduction to the history and culture of African peoples who entered the diaspora during the era of the slave trade. Its audience is students interested in the history of Africa, the African diaspora, and the Atlantic world, as well as those who want to learn about the history of the slave trade. Case studies will include the Yoruba, Akan, and Fon, as well as Senegambian and West-central African peoples. | AFRC1310401, HIST1310401 | |||||||||
| LALS 1800-401 | Perspectives in Brazilian Culture | Mercia Flannery | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | This course is designed to provide advanced-level students with additional exposure to Portuguese language and culture, as they broaden their knowledge of the Lusophone world and its identity. Classes will focus on discussions and students presentations based on articles, literary texts, and movies or documentaries from, and about, the different regions of the world where Portuguese is spoken. We will start with Portugal and Brazil, and end with Angola and Mozambique, and their cultural expressions. A series of important themes related to the Lusophone world, its history, the dialogues among its different countries, and contemporary challenges will be incorporated in this course as a way to familiarize students with key themes. At the end of this course, students should 1) have developed their oral and written expressions in Portuguese, at the advanced-level, and 2) be able to recognize and discuss important themes, historical figures, and cultural characteristics of the Lusophone world. | PRTG1800401 | |||||||||
| LALS 2020-401 | International Organizations in Latin America | Catherine E.M. Bartch | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | International organizations (IOs) play a powerful role in mitigating conflict at the global level. What role do they play in solving problems related to politics, economic development, corruption, inequality, and civil society in Latin America? How much power, influence, and control do they possess in the region? This course examines the role and impact international organizations have had on Latin America since the mid-20th century. After a review of theoretical perspectives on the significance of IOs in inter-American affairs, students will examine the workings, issues, and controversies surrounding IOs in Latin America across themes of democracy, human rights, security, and development - the four main pillars of the OAS. Through readings, short presentations/debates, and guest speakers, students will explore IOs and their action in the region. Some of these IOs include the IMF, World Bank, UN, ICC as well as regional organizations and area trade blocs and agreements of USMCA/NAFTA, Mercosur, Pacific Alliance, ALBA, and other civil society and human rights organizations. A large part of the course will focus on the Organization of American States and its various departments and divisions such as the Inter American Commission for Human Rights. Students will be invited to participate in the Washington Model OAS simulation in April. | PSCI2421401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS2020401 | ||||||||
| LALS 2590-401 | Nutritional Anthropology | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The course is an introduction to nutritional anthropology, an area of anthropology concerned with human nutrition and food systems in social, cultural and historical contexts. On the one hand, nutritional anthropologists study the significance of the food quest in terms of survival and health. On the other hand, they also know that people eat food for a variety of reasons that may have little, if anything, to do with nutrition, health, or survival. While the availability of food is dependent upon the physical environment, food production systems, and economic resources, food choice and the strategies human groups employ to gain access to and distribute food are deeply embedded in specific cultural patterns, social relationships, and political and economic systems. Thus, nutritional anthropology represents the interface between anthropology and the nutritional sciences, and as such, can provide powerful insights into the interactions of social and biological factors in the context of the nutritional health of individuals and populations. Because food and nutrition are quintessential biocultural issues, the course takes a biocultural approach drawing on perspectives from biological, socio-cultural and political-economic anthropology. Course content will include: a discussion of approaches to nutritional anthropology; basics of human nutrition; food systems, food behaviors and ideas; methods of dietary and nutritional assessment; and a series of case studies addressing causes and consequences to nutritional problems across the world. | ANTH2590401, URBS2590401 | ||||||||||
| LALS 2601-401 | The Asian Caribbean | Rupa Pillai | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Although Asians have lived in the Americas for centuries, the Asian American community and experience tends to be defined by the post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States. In an effort to correct this narrative this course will explore the histories, experiences, and contributions of some of the forgotten Asians of the Americas. In particular, we will focus on the earlier labor migrations of Chinese and South Asian individuals to the Caribbean and the United States. The experiences of these individuals, who built railroads, cut sugarcane, and replaced African slave labor, complicate our understandings of race today. By examining the legal and social debates surrounding their labor in the 19th century and exploring how their experiences are forgotten and their descendants are rendered invisible today, we will complicate what is Asian America and consider how this history shapes immigration policies today. | ASAM2610401, GSWS2610401, SAST2610401 | |||||||||
| LALS 2610-401 | Latinos in the United States | Emilio Alberto Parrado | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course presents a broad overview of the Latino population in the United States that focuses on the economic and sociological aspects of Latino immigration and assimilation. Topics to be covered include: construction of Latino identity, the history of U.S. Latino immigration, Latino family patterns and household structure, Latino educational attainment. Latino incorporation into the U.S. labor force, earnings and economic well-being among Latino-origin groups, assimilation and the second generation. The course will stress the importance of understanding Latinos within the overall system of race and ethnic relations in the U.S., as well as in comparison with previous immigration flows, particularly from Europe. We will pay particular attention to the economic impact of Latino immigration on both the U.S. receiving and Latin American sending communities, and the efficacy and future possibilities of U.S. immigration policy. Within all of these diverse topics, we will stress the heterogeneity of the Latino population according to national origin groups (i.e. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latinos), as well as generational differences between immigrants and the native born. | SOCI2610401 | |||||||||
| LALS 2860-401 | Latin American and Latinx Theatre and Performance | Jennifer Thompson | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course will examine contemporary Latin American and Latinx theatre and performance from a hemispheric perspective. In particular, we will study how Latin American and Latinx artists engage with notions of identity, nation, and geo-political and geo-cultural borders, asking how we might study "national" theatres in an age of transnational globalization. Our consideration of plays, performances, and theoretical texts will situate Latin American and Latinx theatre and performance within the context of its politics, culture, and history. | COML2086401, ENGL0490401, THAR2860401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS2860401 | ||||||||
| LALS 3515-401 | Race, Rights and Rebellion | Keisha-Khan Perry | CANCELED | This course provides an in-depth examination of theories of race and different kinds of social struggles for freedom around the globe. We will critically engage the latest scholarship from a variety of scholars and social movement actors. From anti-slavery revolts to struggles for independence to anti-apartheid movements, this course will emphasize how racialized peoples have employed notions of rights and societal resources grounded in cultural differences. Though much of the readings will highlight the experiences of African descendant peoples in Africa and its diaspora, the course will also explore the intersections of Black struggles with social movements organized by indigenous peoples in the Americas. Students will also have the unique experience of accessing readings primarily written by primarily Black scholars, some of whom have participated as key actors in the social movements they describe. Key concepts include power, resistance, subaltern, hegemony, identity politics, consciousness, and intellectual activism. The course will be organized around the following objectives: 1. To explore a range of contemporary theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to the study of social movements; 2. To focus on the relationship between race, gender, class, culture, and politics in the African diaspora; 3. To study the historical development of organized struggles, social protests, uprisings, revolutions, insurgencies, and rebellions; 4. To examine the political agency of African descendant peoples in the global struggle for liberation and citizenship. | AFRC3515401, ANTH2515401, SOCI2907401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3524-401 | Medical Mestizaje: Health and Development in Contemporary Latin America | Juan Sebastian Gil-Riano | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | Latin American nations as we know them today emerged in the nineteenth century after violent independence struggles against the Spanish Empire. Since independence, mestizaje has been an influential ideology that seeks to portray the identity of Latin American nations as comprised of a unique cultural and racial fusion between Amerindian, European, and African peoples. Through historical, anthropological, and STS approaches this course examines how concerns with racial fusion and purity have shaped the design and implementation of public health programmes in Latin America after independence and into the 20th century. Topics include: tropical medicine and race; public health and urbanization; toxicity and exposure in industrialized settings; biomedicine and social control; indigenous health; genomics and health; food and nutrition. | HSOC3524401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3660-001 | Movement Song: The Poetics of Liberation | Ricardo Bracho | R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This creative and critical poetry writing workshop will focus on the study of poets associated with antiwar, feminist, leftist, queer/trans and racial justice liberatory movements. We will study the work of Pablo Neruda, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Sean Bonney, Ntozake Shange, Jake Skeets, Chrystos, Natalie Diaz, Adelaide Ivánova, Adrienne Rich and Sonia Sanchez in relationship to the communities and movements which their work engages. Students will also work on their own poetry and will formulate innovative ways to present their work to a wider audience in the forms of video poems, zines, broadsides, social media posts, podcasts and letter print posters. | AFRC3660001, ENGL3660001, FNAR3660001, GSWS3660401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3700-401 | Abolitionism: A Global History | Roquinaldo Ferreira | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This class develops a transnational and global approach to the rise of abolitionism in the nineteenth century. In a comparative framework, the class traces the rise of abolitionism in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, examining the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade, the rise of colonialism in Africa, and the growth of forced labor in the wake of transatlantic slave trade. We will deal with key debates in the literature of African, Atlantic and Global histories, including the causes and motivations of abolitionism, the relationship between the suppression of the slave trade and the growth of forced labor in Africa, the historical ties between abolitionism and the early stages of colonialism in Africa, the flow of indentured laborers from Asia to the Americas in the wake of the slave trade. This class is primarily geared towards the production of a research paper. *Depending on the research paper topic, History Majors and Minors can use this course to fulfill the US, Europe, Latin America or Africa requirement.* | AFRC3700401, HIST3700401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3730-401 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Literature | Ashley R Brock | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Literature is an upper-division seminar taking a literary-studies approach to Latin American cultural production of the 19-21st centuries. Traditions covered may include Spanish American, Brazilian, and U.S. Latinx literature. Course content may vary. Please see the department website for current course offerings: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/hispanic-portuguese-studies/undergraduate/hispanic-studies | SPAN3730401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3731-401 | Reading as a Feminist: An Encounter with Latin American Literature | Maria Laura Pensa | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | In this course we will learn how to read contemporary latin american literature as feminists. We will navigate the stories that have accompanied or defied different “tides” of feminism in the region and illuminate the ways in which these pieces can be read through the lenses of social and gender justice. Expanding our knowledge about these issues can be both a reflective and urgent matter. The class will include short stories and poems by feminized, cis woman, lesbian, non-binary, racialized and queer authors. Our course is divided into five modules, each of them devoted to different themes. Our journey will begin in the household, since that was the traditional place assigned to women, and look into the appropriation and subversion of this narrative by different authors. We will move into disruptive narratives that challenged the duties of women in relation to their house and partners and continue with texts that directly address problems and themes of present day feminist struggles across Latin America, among which we can find gender violence, economical dependence, child abuse and abortion. Although these works will be studied within their historical context, this course aims at providing a framework that will allow the student to analyze them in a comparative fashion in terms of the themes presented in each work. In order to work on the narrative elements of these works, during our time in class and at home we will study the necessary concepts that will allow us to successfully analyze and discuss our texts. This course has as its main goal to improve and develop your writing and analytical skills as well as offering you ample opportunities to put into practice your Spanish through active discussion during class. With that in mind, all of our sessions will be discussion-based with a strong element of group work and written analysis. This course will be taught in Spanish. This class is part of the Penn-Mellon Just Futures Dispossessions in the Americas course series. | GSWS3731401, SPAN3731401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS3731401 | ||||||||
| LALS 3733-301 | Locating the Andean Radical Tradition | George Ygarza | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | The Andean region, running along the western part of south America (Abiayala), has for centuries been home to different expressions of resistance. From anti-colonial struggles to ideological movements, these different forms and practices have sought to transform the social order. Is it possible to collectively read these expressions as a layered history unique to the region? When speaking of a radical tradition, one refers to an accretion of resistance and struggle for an otherwise world that takes place across periods of time. Thus, if one is to speak of an Andean Radical Tradition, one needs to understand the temporal, political and social conditions of the Andean region in order to see how they inform movements to struggle for a different kind of reality. This course surveys key thinkers, writers, and political figures who have evoked and enunciated an Andean Radical Tradition in various ways since colonization. From the written word and critical theorization, through political mobilizations, this course will explore manifestations of a radical tradition not only as a form of refusing the colonial condition but as proposals for liberatory futures predicated on everything from socialist values to Andean cosmology. Locating an Andean Radical Tradition requires us to trace the practices of resistance and critical inquiry premised on unique characteristics and traditions of the region. This course will introduce students to radical thinkers and practitioners, covering notable primary and secondary texts from thinkers such as José Carlos Mariátegui, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Alvaro Linera and René Zavaleta Mercado. This class is part of the Penn-Mellon Just Futures Dispossessions in the Americas course series. | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS3733301 | |||||||||
| LALS 3738-401 | Coming of Age in Latin America | Jean O'Bryan Knight | MW 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course examines contemporary narratives of childhood and adolescence from Latin America. These stories critique the forces that shape young people as they attempt to define themselves in societies marked by racial, ethnic, gender, and class divisions. Texts for the course will be drawn from different geographical regions and will include novels, short stories, and films from the second half of the twentieth century through the present. | SPAN3738401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS3738401 | ||||||||
| LALS 3745-401 | Rights of/for Nature: Critical Engagements from Latin America | Carolina Angel Botero | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course delves into various approximations of the Rights of Nature movement. It specifically examines a range of legal actions that have arisen to safeguard life and emphasize human relationships with non-human entities. The course is particularly dedicated to dissecting a range of legal strategies that have come into existence to ensure the preservation of life forms beyond just humans, forging a profound connection between humanity and the diverse entities that constitute the natural world. The course will concentrate on Latin American cases as a burgeoning global movement, although the philosophical and theoretical exploration extends far beyond this region. Some topics we will discuss in class are: Earth Law and the Rights of Nature; Bringing Nature to Court and the Law; and Animal Rights. For instance, are animals part of the Rights of Nature movement? By analyzing these legal actions, students will understand how legal systems can be leveraged as powerful environmental conservation and advocacy tools. Students will also learn the importance of bridging the legal practice with how the social sciences approach these questions. | ANTH3745401, ANTH5745401, LALS5745401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3800-401 | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Culture | José Carlos Díaz | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | Studies in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Culture is an upper-division seminars focusing on significant issues or historical moments in Latin American and Latinx culture. Course content may vary. Please see specific Section Details. | SPAN3800401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3811-401 | Archiving Urban Dispossession in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil |
Keisha-Khan Perry Anne-Marie Veillette |
M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | The course will focus on the city of Salvador, located in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Popularly known as the “Black Mecca,” the city has the largest concentration of African descendants in the world, second only to Lagos, Nigeria. Salvador was the country’s first capital, and as one of the most important slave ports in the Americas, it holds special significance for the country’s connection to Africa and the broader Black Atlantic. While the city is celebrated as a place where Afro-Brazilian culture has flourished, Black people continue to suffer from widespread marginalization and racial violence. Salvador, like other cities across Brazil, Latin America, and the Global South, is undergoing rapid redevelopment aimed at modernizing public spaces (markets, streets, sidewalks) and heritage sites (old mansions, forts, parks) for domestic and international tourism. Over the past three decades, the City Center (popularly known as the Pelourinho [whipping post] located in the central square) has been targeted for restoration of its historic mansions that have existed since the colonial period. This process has involved the violent displacement of sex workers, street vendors, and residents who have occupied the buildings for over a century. This has impacted the surrounding areas in the city-center such as the coastal fishing community of Gamboa de Baixo that now leads a resistance movement against these removals. The course will explore the relationship between urbanization and dispossession and how race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect to reinforce spaces of domination as well as to create spaces of resistance. Keisha-Khan Perry has authored a book about Salvador as part of a global circuit of dispossession that threatens Black and poor residents in the city and has been a longtime collaborator of Gamboa de Baixo activists who are mostly poor Black women. Anne-Marie Veillette has completed a dissertation focused on Rio de Janeiro, another Brazilian city with a long history of resistance to removals. We have both observed in our work on Brazilian cities that the preservation of collective memory of Black spaces, culture and people represents a key issue in these urban struggles. Thus, the course will explore the myriad ways in which Black urban communities in Salvador have resisted dispossession and its interconnected forms of violence (policing, inadequate public health, and poor schooling). More importantly, we will work in collaboration with activists in Salvador to archive the rich history of political activism around housing and land rights from a grassroots perspective. Throughout the semester, we will use a digital classroom to meet weekly with Bahian activists, to discuss key concepts, and to share media. During the Spring Break, we will travel to Salvador for one week to tour the city, to work with activists in person, and to present our ongoing work to community members. Overall, the course will provide Penn students with theoretical and methodological training for research and engaged work in urban studies. We hope to attract both humanists and design/planning undergraduate and graduate students interested in integrating theoretical rigor, ethnographic fieldwork, archiving, and cartography in their work on cities. More importantly, students will gain practical experience in collaborative methodologies, which will necessarily encourage us to grapple with critical questions of transnational solidarity, political ethics, and the relationship between universities and social movements. | AFRC3811401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3904-401 | Latin American Marxisms | Ericka Beckman | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | This course examines Marxist thought in Latin America, from the early twentieth century to the present. We will study a range of materials from across Spanish America, including essays, novels, films and speeches. We will ask after the specificities of Latin American Marxist thought (on the land and indigenous questions, dependency, guerrilla warfare, etc), at the same time as we contextualize those specificities within a wider Marxist tradition. We will also inquire into the waning and resurgence of Marxism in recent decades in the region. | SPAN3904401 | |||||||||
| LALS 3906-401 | The Ethnographer in Latin American Literature and Film | Ashley R Brock | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | This course asks students to read ethnographic accounts as literature and to read literature in light of interdisciplinary concerns surrounding representation and cultural difference. The course is transhistorical and transatlantic but with a strong focus on Latin America. | SPAN3906401 | |||||||||
| LALS 4250-401 | Latinx Cultural History | Johnny Irizarry | T 5:15 PM-8:14 PM | This course takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the resiliency and impact of Latinx cultural and artistic contributions, aesthetics, expressions, and institution building in the United States from the Civil Rights Era to the present. We will explore how Latinxs culturally define being "American", and how their artistic expressions shape and influence the creativity and productivity of American and global arts & cultural expressions. More broadly, we will explore the Latinx interactions of race, culture, society, economy, and politics in the U.S. | SOCI2932401 | |||||||||
| LALS 4650-401 | Race and Racism in the Contemporary World | Michael G. Hanchard | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | This undergraduate seminar is for advanced undergraduates seeking to make sense of the upsurge in racist activism, combined with authoritarian populism and neo-fascist mobilization in many parts of the world. Contemporary manifestations of the phenomena noted above will be examined in a comparative and historical perspective to identify patterns and anomalies across various multiple nation-states. France, The United States, Britain, and Italy will be the countries examined. | AFRC4650401, PSCI4190401 | |||||||||
| LALS 5015-401 | Black Social Movements: A Transnational Perspective | Michael G. Hanchard | R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This course invites graduate students and advanced undergraduates with prior authorization to explore scholarship and primary materials on the transnational dimensions of black social movements. Recent phenomena such as the world- wide protest against the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd and the political assassination of Rio de Janeiro city council member Marielle Franco are two examples of the ways in which events involving black death in one locale resonate in multiple sites across the globe. Uprisings and demonstrations seemingly divided by language, culture and nation-state find common cause in collective action in response to patterns and instances of injustice and inequality. Course materials provide documentary evidence and analysis of the transnational circuitry of black social movement networks that have arisen in response to racisms targeting black and brown population. Members of scheduled castes in India, aboriginal populations in Australia and New Zealand, and Afro-descendent populations in the Americas and Europe, have become agents of change and forged substantive alliances and strategic coalitions with other social movement tendencies. Scholarship from social movement theory, Black Studies, comparative history and political theory help constitute the core reading for this course. Film, documentary narrative and autobiography will supplement reading assignments. | AFRC5015401, PSCI5015401, SOCI5015401 | |||||||||
| LALS 5570-401 | Archaeology of Landscapes | Mark T Lycett | R 10:15 AM-1:14 PM | Traditionally, archaeological research has focused on the "site" or "sites." Regional investigation tends to stress settlement pattern and settlement system determined through archaeological site survey. This seminar will stress the space between the sites or "points" on the landscape. Most previous attempts at "landscape archaeology" tended to focus on the relationship of sites and the natural environment. This course will highlight the cultural, "anthropogenic," or "built environment"--in this case human modification and transformation of the natural landscape in the form of pathways, roads, causeways, monuments, walls, agricultural fields and their boundaries, gardens, astronomical and calendrical alignments, and water distribution networks. Features will be examined in terms of the "social logic" or formal patterning of cultural space. These can provide insights into indigenous structures such as measurement systems, land tenure, social organization, engineering, cosmology, calendars, astronomy, cognition, and ritual practices. Landscapes are also the medium for understanding everyday life, experience, movement, memory, identity, time, and historical ecology. Ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological case studies will be investigated from both the Old and New Worlds. | AAMW5570401, ANTH5570401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202410&c=LALS5570401 | ||||||||
| LALS 5745-401 | Rights of/for Nature: Critical Engagements from Latin America | Carolina Angel Botero | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course delves into various approximations of the Rights of Nature movement. It specifically examines a range of legal actions that have arisen to safeguard life and emphasize human relationships with non-human entities. The course is particularly dedicated to dissecting a range of legal strategies that have come into existence to ensure the preservation of life forms beyond just humans, forging a profound connection between humanity and the diverse entities that constitute the natural world. The course will concentrate on Latin American cases as a burgeoning global movement, although the philosophical and theoretical exploration extends far beyond this region. Some topics we will discuss in class are: Earth Law and the Rights of Nature; Bringing Nature to Court and the Law; and Animal Rights. For instance, are animals part of the Rights of Nature movement? By analyzing these legal actions, students will understand how legal systems can be leveraged as powerful environmental conservation and advocacy tools. Students will also learn the importance of bridging the legal practice with how the social sciences approach these questions. | ANTH3745401, ANTH5745401, LALS3745401 | |||||||||
| LALS 6970-401 | Studies in Latin American Culture | Jorge Tellez | R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | Topics vary. Please see the Spanish Department's website for the current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/hispanic-portuguese-studies/pc | SPAN6970401 | |||||||||
| LALS 9215-401 | Genealogies of Race and Language in Educational Research |
Nelson L Flores Katherine O'Morchoe Suzanne Inkyung Oh Erica Marie Poinsett |
T 5:00 PM-6:59 PM | This course explores the historical and contemporary co-construction of race and language in educational research. As opposed to treating race and language as self-evident and universal concepts, the course adopts a genealogical perspective that examines their historical development within the context of European colonialism and critically analyzes the legacy of these colonial ideologies in contemporary educational research, policy and practice. Students engage with a range of foundational theoretical and methodological texts to develop a robust understanding of the historical and contemporary relationship between race and language. Students also read, analyze and critique educational research that has sought to apply these theoretical and methodological insights. The course will culminate in students undertaking genealogical research projects on questions of race and language connected to their own educational research interests. | EDUC9215401 |