Global Arc

In this course, we will analyze the place of racism in the link between culture and power in processes of nation building in Latin America. We will study three historical milestones associated with specific intellectual and political moments: the positivism of the early twentieth century, the developmentalism of the 1950s, and the current neoliberal era. We will analyze how ideas of race have changed over time and their role in the construction of national projects in Argentina, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. This course will be taught in Spanish.

In Latin America, writers have a special relation to politics: some (Sarmiento) ruled their countries; others, like Mario Vargas Llosa, tried to become presidents; some, like García Márquez, cultivated friendships with powerful leaders like Fidel Castro; almost all writers have used the novel form to analyze, discuss, and question their country's political history, including the darkest episodes of dictatorship and repression. We will read a selection of authors who have played key roles as politicians, either formally or informally, and who have written stories that encapsulate the complex tangle linking money, power, and language.

In response to the rise of neoliberalism, Latin(x) American artists and writers turned to memory as a poetic force to challenge the monumentalization of history. This course examines how feminist and queer perspectives highlight the tension between fragments and totality, residues and fixed narratives, reimagining memory as a form of resistance. It explores memory across various media, analyzing themes of gendered violence, feminicide, post-dictatorship trauma, and racial marginalization in the works of artists and writers like Cecilia Vicuña, Óscar Muñoz, and Rosana Paulino, among others.

An exploration of material culture with the first modern novel of the Western world. It is about contemporary, 21st-century reading practices as well as those that prevailed at the time of the Quixote's production. We will survey intersections of material and digital objects in addition to digital surrogates. Hands-on experience of Firestone's rare books will introduce us to the dramatic effects of varying formats. Our modern, paperback versions will also reveal how media shape our understanding of the text. Images and contemporary reading practices of the "app generation" will increase our grasp of how media shape textual interpretation.

An advanced Spanish-language course that focuses on medical and health topics in the Hispanic/Latino world. Students will learn and practice specific vocabulary and structures useful for conducting a medical interview in Spanish. Aspects of Latin American and Hispanic/Latino cultures in the health and medical fields are explored by means of examining authentic texts and through the contribution of guest speakers. There is a mandatory community service project.

This course will explore dominant ideas of "nature" that have shaped Latin America as a space of "natural frontiers" for commercial exploitation, territorial power, adventure, and exuberance. We will also become familiar with the specific histories from which these ideas emerge, their ecological and planetary impacts, and how Latin American ordinary people, creators, and intellectuals (including women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-Latin Americans) have challenged these imaginaries by foregrounding their forms of world-making with the non-human. Ultimately, this course will explore dominant and alternative forms of inhabiting the planet.

Ever since Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 15th century, Indigenous peoples have faced marginalization, domination, and exploitation. Europeans often believed that these communities lacked a history because they did not use a Western alphabetic writing system. In this course, we will explore key themes, such as: Pre-Hispanic knowledge; religious conversion through images; Indigenous knowledges, Indigenous resistance to colonial rule and the shifting transcultural and political dynamics of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities; and contemporary Indigenous thought, focusing on decoloniality and oral history.

This course explores the voices of Indigenous people and women who challenged the intellectual inferiority imposed upon them due to their race and gender. Through their writings, these individuals defied societal expectations and left a lasting legacy that transcends their time. We will take a critical approach to examine how these intellectuals navigated their societies, confronting dominant power structures and questioning social hierarchies designed to marginalize them from knowledge production.

This course examines Latin American music from the colonial era, when it served as a tool for religious conversion, to the present, when genres like rock and reggaetón protest oppression and social inequities.We will explore genres like sacred music, opera, salsa, reggaetón, and more, analyzing how they reflect political contexts and social realities such as imperialism, violence, and identity. We will also consider how U.S.-based Latin American composers revisit iconic figures like Frida Kahlo, Sor Juana, and Simón Bolívar. The course will conclude with a salsa lesson to connect practice with the cultural traditions studied in the course.

This course explores the national, ethnic, and political ideas embedded in the gastronomic cultures of Spanish-speaking countries and Hispanic communities in the US. We examine questions of cultural identity, historical memory, migration, and social inequality, while developing advanced communicative skills in Spanish. Through the analysis of diverse texts--such as essays, short fiction, audiovisual materials, and ethnographic accounts--alongside experiential and community-engaged learning opportunities, students will deepen their linguistic proficiency while gaining critical cultural literacy.