Global Arc

This required gateway course will consider how Latinos are transforming the United States even as they embrace a racialized pan-ethnic identity. Readings expose students to the demographic underpinnings of the dramatic growth and historically unprecedented geographic dispersal, the ethical dilemmas posed by undocumented immigration, the historical and contemporary trends in social, economic, and political participation, and the hybrid cultural imprints forged in musical, literary, and artistic work. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This is an introductory survey of critical topics, themes, and approaches to the interdisciplinary field of Latin@x Studies. Drawing from anthropology, sociology, history, literature, critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, this course will analyze the role and position of Latin@x in the United States alongside the policies and practices of the US in the Caribbean and Latin America. The course will explore questions of citizenship, immigration, imperialism, settler/colonialism, border crossing/borderlands, mass incarceration, policing, globalization, and other emerging formations of latinidad from a transnational perspective.

This course begins from the disjoint and relation between the narrated autobiography and the lived life. In reading works by authors including Myriam Gurba, Wendy C. Ortiz, Carmen Maria Machado, Richard Rodriguez, and Junot Diaz, we will explore not only how writers experiment with the project of narrating a life that contends with the structures and strictures of racial matrices, gender binaries, and traumatic abuse - but also how writers test the boundaries of what autobiographies more generally are and are for.

This course examines what it means to be Caribbean, or of Caribbean descent, in the diaspora- either the United States, England, and France due to their stake in colonizing the Caribbean in the quest for imperial power and modernity, and how Caribbean culture has been defined in historical and contemporary contexts through a survey of Caribbean diasporic literature. In this course students will learn how legacies of colonialism and modernity affect Caribbean populations and how they negotiate empire, identity, language, culture, and notions of home.

In this seminar, you will read, discuss, and write about published and unpublished research from political science, psychology, and media studies to examine Latino/a/x identity in the U.S., and the ways in which electoral politics affects and is affected by this social identity. The class will situate Latino/a/x identity and its political targeting and mobilization in U.S. elections in comparison to that of other ethno-racial and religious identity groups. Similarities and differences between groups and their effects on politics will be considered to better understand the broader landscape of identity politics in U.S. elections and campaigns.

Founded and built by immigrants, the U.S. has a complicated relationship with newcomers. How have politics shaped U.S. immigration policy and with what effects on the character of inflows and American identity? Are changing demographics tied to exclusionary attitudes and public views about immigration policy? Do Hispanic attitudes conform to nativist fears? What role do norms, culture and economics play in public attitudes about immigrants? Do members of Congress follow their constituents' preferences when voting on immigration policy? This class will tackle these and related questions about immigration politics and policymaking in the U.S.

In this course students will be reading works from the Latinx literary canon as a survey of diverse Latinx voices. Through the course theme, students will examine how select Latinx authors write about community, identity, race, gender, resistance, and culture in a manner that captures The Latinx Experience. Selected texts will showcase how home is contested as their characters navigate their lives 'here' and 'there' via notions of diaspora, migration, and belonging, languages, and borders. This course analyzes Latinx literary works, including the course novels, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, Sabrina & Corina, and The House on Mango Street.

This course explores the construction, imaging, and experience of the racialized body while considering modern regimes of power. It examines the legacies of White supremacy and Coloniality in relation to cultural production and the body. This course's pedagogical approach is rooted in Chicana/o Studies and will examine power in relation to Latinx and other communities of color--it does not focus on Mexican/Latinx communities exclusively. When analyzing power, it recognizes the importance of contextualizing visual, audio, and embodied performative representations of culture to understand how the body speaks back to power.

This course explores contemporary productions of Latinx culture through a survey of Latinx literature, music, and performance, such as examining some of the biggest headliners in Latinx music now, such as Bad Bunny and Karol G. Through reading texts in the Latinx literary canon, this course asks 'how are Latinxs writing their stories' in multi-layered and transdisciplinary ways that are both written and performed i.e. slam poetry, music videos, literary representations, and general performances. Students will explore multiple genres and diverse voices in a multimedia classroom to learn how subversive narratives are written and their impact.