Courses for Fall 2024

Title Instructor Location Time All taxonomy terms Description Section Description Cross Listings Fulfills Registration Notes Syllabus Syllabus URL Course Syllabus URL
LALS 0091-401 Sustainable Development and Culture in Latin America Teresa Gimenez MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM This interdisciplinary course exposes students to the three dimensions of sustainable development -environmental, economic, and social- through an examination of three products -peyote, coca, and coffee- that are crucial in shaping modern identity in areas of Latin America. The course integrates this analysis of sustainable development in relation to cultural sustainability and cultural practices associated with peyote, coca, and coffee and their rich, traditional heritage and place in literature, film, and the arts. ANTH0091401, ENVS0053401, SPAN0091401
LALS 0400-401 Colonial Latin America Marcy Norton MW 12:00 PM-12:59 PM The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. AFRC0400401, HIST0400401 History & Tradition Sector (all classes)
LALS 0400-402 Colonial Latin America F 12:00 PM-12:59 PM The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. AFRC0400402, HIST0400402 History & Tradition Sector (all classes)
LALS 0400-403 Colonial Latin America F 1:45 PM-2:44 PM The colonial period (1492- 1800) saw huge population movements (many of them involuntary) within the Americas and across the Atlantic. As a result, Latin America was created from the entanglement of technologies, institutions, knowledge systems, and cosmologies from Indigenous, European, and African cultures. We will learn about colonial institutions such as slavery and encomienda. We will also explore the different strategies pursued by individuals and communities to build meaningful lives in the face of often dire social and environmental circumstances. Class readings are primary sources and the focus of discussions, papers, and exams will be their interpretation. AFRC0400403, HIST0400403 History & Tradition Sector (all classes)
LALS 1060-401 Race and Ethnic Relations TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM The course will focus on race and ethnicity in the United States. We begin with a brief history of racial categorization and immigration to the U.S. The course continues by examining a number of topics including racial and ethnic identity, interracial and interethnic friendships and marriage, racial attitudes, mass media images, residential segregation, educational stratification, and labor market outcomes. The course will include discussions of African Americans, Whites, Hispanics, Asian Americans and multiracials. AFRC1060401, ASAM1510401, SOCI1060401, URBS1060401
LALS 1191-401 US Empire in the Twentieth Century Amy C Offner MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This class examines the emergence of the U.S. as a world power since 1898, and considers both the international and domestic consequences of U.S. foreign relations. In one respect, the twentieth century was a strange time to become a global empire: it was the period when colonial systems centered in Europe, Russia, Japan, and Turkey collapsed, and new nations emerged throughout Africa and Asia. This class explores the changing strategies of military, economic, and political intervention that the US pursued as colonization lost legitimacy. Within that framework, the class invites students to think about four questions: How did the idea and practice of empire change over the twentieth century? How did the United States and people within the US relate to new visions of independence emerging in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? How did global interactions both inform and reflect racial ideology in the United States? Finally, how did anti-imperialist arguments and movements change over the twentieth century? HIST1191401
LALS 1260-401 Intro to Latinx Cultural Studies Jennifer Lyn Sternad Ponce De Leon MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM This course offers a broad introduction to the study of Latinx culture. We will examine literature, theater, visual art, and popular cultural forms, including murals, poster art, graffiti, guerrilla urban interventions, novels, poetry, short stories, and film. In each instance, we will study this work within its historical context and with close attention to the ways it illuminates class formation, racialization, and ideologies of gender and sexuality as they shape Latinx experience in the U.S. Topics addressed in the course will include immigration and border policy, revolutionary nationalism and its critique, anti-imperialist thought, Latinx feminisms, queer latinidades, ideology, identity formation, and social movements. While we will address key texts, historical events, and intellectual currents from the late 19th century and early 20th century, the course will focus primarily on literature and art from the 1960s to the present. All texts will be in English. ARTH2679401, COML1260401, ENGL1260401, GSWS1260401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS1260401
LALS 1261-401 Radical Arts in the Americas Jennifer Lyn Sternad Ponce De Leon MW 5:15 PM-6:44 PM This course explores the complex and fruitful relationship between literature and the visual arts, including painting, sculpture, installations, and performance art. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings. ARTH2990401, CIMS1261401, COML1261401, ENGL1261401, THAR1261401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS1261401
LALS 1320-401 Portuguese for the Professions Carlos Bento Dos Santos Pio TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM Portuguese for the Professions is designed for advanced-level students to develop their ability to use a wide technical vocabulary. The course will cover an array of topics in the areas of Economy, Politics, Science, Technology, Law and others as they pertain to the societies and cultures of the Lusophone countries, with particular emphasis placed on Brazil. Through readings, movies, discussions, essays and presentations, students will enhance their ability to write about and discuss these topics while employing the appropriate technical vocabulary. PRTG1320401
LALS 1475-401 History of Brazil: Slavery, Inequality, Development Melissa Teixeira MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM In the past decade, Brazil has emerged a leading global power. As the world's fifth-largest country, by size and population, and the ninth-largest by GDP, Brazil exerts tremendous influence on international politics and the global economy, seen in its position as an emerging BRIC nation and a regional heavyweight in South America. Brazil is often in the news for its strides in social welfare, leading investments in the Global South, as host of the World Cup and Olympics, and, most recently, for its political instability. It is also a nation of deep contradictions, in which myth of racial democracy -- the longstanding creed that Brazilian society has escaped racial discrimination -- functions alongside pervasive social inequality, state violence, political corruption, and an unforgiving penal system. This course examines six centuries of Brazilian history. It highlights the interplay between global events -- colonialism, slavery and emancipation, capitalism, and democratization -- and the local geographies, popular cultures, and social movements that have shaped this multi-ethnic and expansive nation. In particular, the readings will highlight Brazil's place in Latin America and the Lusophone World, as well as the ways in which Brazil stands as a counterpoint to the United States, especially in terms of the legacy of slavery and race relation. In this lecture, we will also follow the current political and economic crises unfolding in Brazil, at a moment when it has become all the more important to evaluate just how South America's largest nation has shaped and been shaped by global events. AFRC1475401, HIST1475401
LALS 2401-401 Indians, Pirates, Rebels and Runaways: Unofficial Histories of the Colonial Caribbean Yvonne E Fabella M 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This seminar considers the early history of the colonial Caribbean, not from the perspective of colonizing powers but rather from “below.” Beginning with European-indigenous contact in the fifteenth century, and ending with the massive slave revolt that became the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), we will focus on the different ways in which indigenous, African, European and creole men and women experienced European colonization in the Caribbean, as agents, victims and resistors of imperial projects. Each week or so, we will examine a different social group and its treatment by historians, as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and novelists. Along the way, we will pay special attention to the question of sources: how can we recover the perspectives of people who rarely left their own accounts? How can we use documents and material objects—many of which were produced by colonial officials and elites—to access the experiences of the indigenous, the enslaved, and the poor? We will have some help approaching these questions from the knowledgeable staff at the Penn Museum, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and the Van Pelt Library. AFRC2401401, GSWS2401401, HIST2401401
LALS 2866-401 Exploring the Ancient Maya: Image, Text, and Artefact Simon Martin W 1:45 PM-4:44 PM Few topics in ancient studies are experiencing such profound and revelatory change as that of the Ancient Maya—a complex society that covered what is today southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The decipherment of Maya script and advances in archaeological techniques, including aerial LiDAR scanning and isotopic analysis, are combining with art historical and literary sources to transform our understanding of a culture that ranks among the most famous, but enigmatic, on this continent. The ability to read Maya inscriptions has created the first historical archaeology for the ancient Americas, giving access to an Indigenous voice that has been silent for more than a millennium—with implications not only for scholarship but for the efforts of descendent peoples in asserting a modern Maya identity with existing Latin American states. This course will be a broad-based, contemporary look at archaeological practice as it operates through multiple disciplines, all in pursuit of the single goal of illuminating a vibrant and living past. ANTH2866401
LALS 3020-401 Diplomacy in the Americas - The Penn Model OAS Program Catherine E.M. Bartch TR 4:30 PM-5:59 PM "Diplomacy in the Americas" an academically based community service course in which students work with Philadelphia and Norristown public school students to explore solutions to critical problems facing the Americas. Entrenched political, economic, and social inequality, combined with environmental degradation, weak institutions, pervasive health epidemics, weapon proliferation, and other issues pose formidable hurdles for strengthening democratic ideals and institutions. The Organization of the American States (OAS), the world's oldest regional organization, is uniquely poised to confront these challenges. "Diplomacy in the Americas" guides students through the process of writing policy resolutions as though the students were Organization of the American States (OAS) diplomats, basing their research and proposals on democracy, development, security, and human rights - the four pillars of the OAS. Students will also read literature about what it means to educate for a democracy and global citizenry, and they will have the opportunity to turn theory into practice by creating and executing curriculum to teach and mentor the high school students through interactive and experiential pedagogies. PSCI2420401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS3020401
LALS 3158-401 ¡Huelga! The Farmworker Movement in the United States Amy C Offner R 3:30 PM-6:29 PM This intensive research seminar invites students to explore the history of farmworkers in the United States during the twentieth century. Research will primarily but not necessarily exclusively focus on the west coast, a region in which many archival sources have been digitized. Students may explore a wide variety of topics, including but not limited to: farmworker unions; the relationship between farmworker mobilizations and other movements in the US and abroad; the experiences of workers from the Philippines and Latin America and the role of US imperial and immigration policies in the lives of farmworkers; farmworkers' confrontations with and participation in systems of racism; the Great Depression in rural communities; the history of gender and family in farmworker communities; the history of environment and health; struggles over citizenship and social rights; counter-mobilizations of growers and the right; religion in farmworker communities; legislative and legal strategies to obtain rights denied agricultural workers in federal law; artistic, musical, and cultural production; or the relationship between consumers and the workers who produced their food. HIST3158401
LALS 3655-001 Writing Class Ricardo Bracho W 3:30 PM-6:29 PM Gayatri Spivak has stated, “Of race, class and gender, class is the least abstract.” While materially true, in literary, theatrical, perofmative and cinematic representational schemes, class is often occluded, made permeable in opposition to longstanding economic realities or simply wished away in order to focus on plot and pleasantry. Within this course, students will instead focus their writing on class, whether that be on the middle classes, the bourgeoisie, ruling class, or the world’s majority: the working class. Work on class can take the form of satire or solidarity; expose conflict and antagonism between and within a given class; historicize individual relationships within the history of property relations; focus on finances, wealth, or poverty; portray class ascent or descent. Writing may be in any genre: poetry, fiction, memoir, political essay, film script, play or performance. We will read and view work by artists such as Tillie Olsen, Kae Tempest, Leslie Feinberg, Zadie Smith, Cherrie Moraga, Alma Luz Villanueva, Helena Maria Viramontes, Gary Indiana, Gloria Naylor, Paul Beatty, Robert Altman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the Dardenne Brothers, Ken Loach, Lucrecia Martel, Bertolt Brecht, Clifford Odets, Adrienne Kennedy, Studs Terkel, Jean Toomer, Valerie Solanas, and the Chicano, Black and Nuyorican Theater Movements. We will develop work in/on class via writing exercises, attend readings, plays and performances both on and off campus. Students will do a midterm presentation of their work in progress. Final projects can be a short story, essay, a suite of poems, a play or film script, a short video, a collection of vignettes or a mélange of these genres. Let the writing of class begin! ENGL3655001, GSWS3655001, THAR3655001
LALS 3706-401 Oral History Ann C. Farnsworth M 3:30 PM-6:29 PM From wax cylinders to reel-to-reel to digital video, recording technologies expanded the historical profession dramatically during the twentieth century. We will read some classics, such as Barbara Myerhoff’s Number Our Days and Alessandro Portelli’s Death of Luigi Trastulli, as well as scholarly pieces aimed at working historians and very new work, such as Dylan Penningroth’s Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights. We will also explore the interface between documentary filmmaking, pod-casts, and more traditional Oral History forms. However, this course centers on methodology—students will learn about ‘best practices’ in the field and will work toward creating an interview record that can be housed in an archive and accessed by other researchers even as interviewees and their families retain intellectual property rights. HIST3706401
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 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS3730401
LALS 3745-401 Rights of/for Nature: Critical Engagements from Latin America Carolina Angel Botero R 10:15 AM-1:14 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 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS3745401
LALS 3800-401 Studies in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Culture MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM 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 3800-402 Studies in Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Culture MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM 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. SPAN3800402
LALS 3800-403 Black Womanhood in Latin America and the Caribbean Odette Casamayor 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. SPAN3800403
LALS 3806-401 Latin American Collections: Art, Literature, and Cultural Practices in Times of Information Overload Ashley R Brock TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM This course explores the phenomenon of Latin American dictatorship through literature, film, graphic novels, and visual and public art, asking how these different media and genres depict and respond to state violence, censorship, and trauma. CIMS3806401, SPAN3806401 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS3806401
LALS 3910-401 Sustainable Development And Culture in Latin America Teresa Gimenez MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM This interdisciplinary course exposes students to the three dimensions of sustainable development -environmental, economic, and social- through an examination of three products -peyote, coca, and coffee- that are crucial in shaping modern identity in areas of Latin America. The course integrates this analysis of sustainable development in relation to cultural sustainability and cultural practices associated with peyote, coca, and coffee and their rich, traditional heritage and place in literature, film, and the arts. This is an upper level seminar open to majors and minors of Spanish and those who have completed Pre-requiste SPAN 1800 or SPAN 1900 or permission of the Undergraduate Chair. ENVS3053401, SPAN3910401
LALS 4240-401 Latinx Communities and the Role of CBO's in Social Change Johnny Irizarry W 5:15 PM-8:14 PM The purpose of this course to create a Latino Studies/Service Learning ABCS course that cultivates dialogue and knowledge about the social, political, cultural and historical complexities of the Latinx experience in the United States (Philadelphia in particular) and the roles Latinx CBO's play in meeting the needs of Latinx communities and in impacting social change. SOCI2931401
LALS 5110-401 Ethics, Archaeology, and Cultural Heritage Richard M Leventhal T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This seminar will explore some of the most important issues that are now a central part of archaeological, anthropological and historical research throughout the world. The identification and control of cultural heritage is a central part of the framework for research within other communities. Issues for this course will also include cultural identity, human rights, repatriation, colonialism, working with communities and many other topics. Field research today must be based upon a new series of ethical standards that will be discussed and examined within this class. Major topics include: cultural heritage - definitions and constructs, cosmopolitanism and collecting, archaeology and looting, cultural heritage preservation, museums - universal and national, museum acquisition policies, cultural identity, international conventions (including underwater issues), national laws of ownership, community based development, cultural tourism, development models, and human rights. ANTH5110401
LALS 5420-401 Parallel Plagues: Infectious Diseases and their Control in Peru and The United States Michael Z. Levy Infectious agents continue to emerge, killing and harming humans and animals with unrelenting regularity. The emergence and control of these agents are, in some ways, remarkably different in different geographies. In other ways the patterns and consequences of infectious agents are very similar. The course will be structured around a series of pairings of infectious disease problems that affect Peru and the United States. Some pairings will be in terms of the agents themselves; others will be more thematic. In each case we will trace two lines of inquiry, one in each country, but always with an eye to the harmonics--where these lines resonate--even if they do not interact. The primary goal of the course is to investigate the historical, political and economic forces driving infectious disease in Peru and the US. A co-primary goal is to bring students and faculty from Penn and our partner institutions in Peru, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, to work their way through topics in infectious disease control, which are inherently challenging. The course will be taught in English but a workable knowledge of Spanish will be helpful. PUBH5420401
LALS 5745-401 Rights of/for Nature: Critical Engagements from Latin America Carolina Angel Botero R 10:15 AM-1:14 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 https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202430&c=LALS5745401
LALS 6550-401 Black Political Thought: Difference And Community Michael G. Hanchard R 1:45 PM-4:44 PM This course is designed to familiarize graduate students with some of the key texts and debates in Africana Studies concerning the relationship between racial slavery, modernity and politics. Beginning with the Haitian Revolution, much of black political thought (thinking and doing politics) has advocated group solidarity and cohesion in the face of often overwhelming conditions of servitude, enslavement and coercion within the political economy of slavery and the moral economy of white supremacy. Ideas and practices of freedom however, articulated by political actors and intellectuals alike, have been as varied as the routes to freedom itself. Thus, ideas and practices of liberty, citizenship and political community within many African and Afro-descendant communities have revealed multiple, often competing forms of political imagination. The multiple and varied forms of political imagination, represented in the writings of thinkers like Eric Williams, Richard Wright, Carole Boyce Davies and others, complicates any understanding of black political thought as having a single origin, genealogy or objective. Students will engage these and other authors in an effort to track black political thought's consonance and dissonance with Western feminisms, Marxism, nationalism and related phenomena and ideologies of the 20th and now 21st century. AFRC6550401, GSWS6550401
LALS 6610-401 Language Diversity and Education Nelson L Flores
Katherine O'Morchoe
Suzanne Inkyung Oh
Erica Marie Poinsett
W 2:00 PM-3:59 PM Exploration of issues affecting educational policy and classroom practice in multilingual, multicultural settings, with an emphasis on ethnographic research. Selected U.S. and international cases illustrate concerns relating to learners' bilingual/bicultural/biliterate development in formal educational settings. Topics include policy contexts, program structures, teaching and learning in the multilingual classroom, discourses and identities in multilingual education policy and practice, and the role of teachers, researchers, and communities in implementing change in schools. EDUC5252401
LALS 6610-402 Language Diversity and Education Nelson L Flores
Katherine O'Morchoe
Suzanne Inkyung Oh
Erica Marie Poinsett
W 5:15 PM-7:14 PM Exploration of issues affecting educational policy and classroom practice in multilingual, multicultural settings, with an emphasis on ethnographic research. Selected U.S. and international cases illustrate concerns relating to learners' bilingual/bicultural/biliterate development in formal educational settings. Topics include policy contexts, program structures, teaching and learning in the multilingual classroom, discourses and identities in multilingual education policy and practice, and the role of teachers, researchers, and communities in implementing change in schools. EDUC5252402
LALS 6900-401 Studies in 19th- and 20th-Century Spanish American Literature M 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 SPAN6900401
LALS 6971-001 Afro-Latin America Odette Casamayor T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM In-depth analysis of the black experience in Latin America and the Spanish, French and English-speaking Caribbean, since slavery to the present. The course opens with a general examination of the existence of Afro-descendants in the Americas, through the study of fundamental historical, political and sociocultural processes. This panoramic view provides the basic tools for the scrutiny of a broad selection of literary, musical, visual, performance, and cinematic works, which leads to the comprehension of the different ethical-aesthetic strategies used to express the Afro-diasporic experience. Essential concepts such as negritude, creolite, and mestizaje, as well as the most relevant theories on identity and identification in Latin America and the Caribbean, will be thoroughly examined, in articulation with the interpretation of artistic works. Power, nationalism, citizenship, violence, religious beliefs, family and community structures, migration, motherhood and fatherhood, national and gender identities, eroticism, and sexuality are some of the main issues discussed un this seminar. AFRC6971001, ENGL7971001, SPAN6971401