Global Arc

This course provides an overview of U.S. Latina feminist thought and cultural productions in dialogue with Black and women of color feminisms. Through a variety of readings that include historical, critical and creative works, we will look at questions of race, class, colonialism, diaspora, sexuality, citizenship and belonging as lived and experienced by Latinas in the United States. Our class will provide a survey of Latina contributions to feminist and queer theories; decolonial and anticolonial theory; and to theories of aesthetics, archive and performance.

How can we grasp and conceptualize the experience of being displaced from home, stranded in a refugee camp, or living undocumented in a foreign country? This interdisciplinary course explores this question by interpreting literature, cultural and political theory, international law, film, and art on forced displacement by twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American authors and artists. Its goal is to provide students with a sophisticated critical vocabulary and a sound historical perspective to grapple with the cultural, ethical, historical, and political implications of today's global migratory and refugee crises.

Central America resurfaced with El Salvador's war on gangs, arresting over 75,000 people in the past two years. This course will examine the history and politics of carceral logics around crime and race in Central America through an intersectional and ethnographic perspective. Starting with a historical excavation, we'll focus on Central America's war on gangs from a transnational perspective, including the role of the U.S. in the making of a "gang crisis", and we will examine the policing of black and indigenous populations. Throughout the course, we will discuss how carceral politics shape forms of intimacy, especially in the family realm.

As authoritarianism spreads across America, this course offers a feminist reading of authoritarian politics in Central America--centered on its everyday forms of racism, sexism, and classism intensified under neoliberal politics. From an ethnographic perspective, this course excavates the intersectional memories of authoritarianism, democratic disenchantments, and radical pessimism. Then, it discusses the fascist cooptation of family, bodies, and labor, the political ecologies of authoritarianism, and the feminist forms of activism under authoritarianism.

As carceral systems expand across the Americas, this course articulates two feminist traditions for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex in the U.S. and against punitive systems in Latin America to explore how communities theorize and organize under carceral systems, envisioning and rehearsing diverse forms of justice. Building on abolitionist, feminist, and anthropological literature in dialogue with grassroots organizers, this course introduces students to theories on the carceral state, interrelated forms of violence, and organizing for justice under carceral states, including the U.S., but with a special focus on Latin America.

This course will focus on the causes and consequences of China's relations with Latin American countries in the 21st century. Part I will examine the economic and environmental dimensions of China-Latin America relations through two dynamics: trade and development finance. Part II will cover political and security dimensions, including defense cooperation, regional integration, and US-China competition. Students will produce a policy paper outlining a current challenge for a Latin American country navigating its relationship with China and recommending policy solutions.

The history of Latin American art is characterized by experimentation, politics, censorship, and controversy. Why do works of art have such power? Can art express itself with the same freedom in democratic contexts as under dictatorships? How are the memories of repression, colonization, and slavery expressed? This course explores the power of images and images of power. We will examine case studies focusing on works by Mónica Mayer, León Ferrari, Rosana Paulino, Lea Lublin, Paz Errázuriz, Alfredo Jaar, Clemencia Lucena, Artur Barrio, and Hélio Oiticica, between other.

During our course, we will analyze in a philosophical perspective the role that motherhood and archives have played in confronting the oblivion and injustice caused by enforced disappearance in Mexico. Our critical analysis will involve the close examination of three key elements: history, the archive, and justice. Some of the thinkers and writers who will allow us to address these elements are: Giorgio Agamben, Sayak Valencia, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Achille Mbembe, Susana Draper, Miranda Fricker, Sara Uribe, among others.

This course examines the legacies of mass atrocities and institutions and processes that governments and citizens have used to address them, referred to as transitional justice. This may include truth commissions, criminal trials, reparations programs, and institutional reforms, among others. In this course, we will compare different approaches to transitional justice adopted in several Latin American countries from the 1980s to the present. Students will explore core concepts in transitional justice theory and will gain insight into the challenges transitioning societies face in their efforts to address difficult pasts.

How does literature record and communicate "rightlessness" (the loss or absence of rights)? How does it imagine and champion new rights--to life, freedom, and asylum? This course reads literature and art (fiction, poetry, comics, film, installations, photography) to introduce students to Latin America's contributions to the human rights agenda. We will examine how culture documents violations--genocide, ecocide, femicide, and refugee crises--and how it envisions new rights for the rightless. Seminars in English, readings available in English and Spanish.