Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South

Latinos, Latinas, Latino/as, Latin@s, Latines, Latinxsthat is, people of Latin American descent in the United Statesare the nation’s largest ethnoracial minority.

What trajectories, histories, and communities lie behind demographic numbers? In what ways are ethnoracial categories activated, revised, navigated, and theorized? How are Latino/a/x invisibility and imperceptibility in everyday life articulated and visualized in popular culture as well as political discourse? What are the geographies, “big problems,” and “common” experiences of Latino/a/xs and Latinidad?

Are you driven by a similar critical spirit, raising similar questions and wanting to seize the reflexive moments, the contradictions, the perplexities, and the impact behind these systems and structures of representation?


LSGS'S Pioneering Vision

Launched in 2007, Duke’s Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South (LSGS) provides a dynamic and relevant pedagogy where the topics just mentioned are not considered in isolation from one another.

LSGS recognizes that knowledge formations inescapably extend beyond national borders, as does the experience of Latinx peoples.

Duke’s Program has a unique and purposeful focus, turning to the regional, the national, the hemispheric, and the Global South’s indeterminate positions.

In this sense, LSGS is at the threshold of a really exciting future.


Another Way of Looking at the World:
The South, The Global South,
Global Latinx Studies

The Program builds on its institutional geography in the U.S. South and situates the inquiry and interpretation of Latino/a/x Studies in this region through broader paradigms of southern worlds.

LSGS extends and bridges the U.S. South to the conceptual geography, interrogative framework, and mobile term of the Global South.

LSGS’s critical gesture toward an open area of knowledge allows for a global Latinx Studies in practice.

The Global South’s fluctuating sites, myriad connections, and shifting subject positions and contexts bring out possibilities vis-à-vis historical events, regional differences, demographic and cultural transitions, and geopolitical hierarchies. The Global South promotes debate, creative rethinking, new forms of communication, and casts light on the entanglements of our contemporary moment and human webs of mobility.


LSGS enables historical and emerging considerations of the construction of race and ethnicity transnationally. It connects with the cross-disciplinary analysis and knowledges imparted in African and African American Studies, Afro-Latinx Studies, American Studies, Critical Latinx Indigenous Studies, Latin American Studies, and New Southern Studies.

The primary focus of the field of Latinx Studies are Latino/a/x populations in the United States, and increasingly, in other diasporic geographies: Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, to name a few examples.
 

More than a Certificate:
The LSGS Learning Experience

LSGS allows students to expand on their knowledge of the U.S. Latino/Latina/Latinx population by combining classes from across the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools.

Indispensable to an LSGS certificate is what New York Times op-ed columnist and Pulitzer Prize recipient Thomas L. Friedman has dubbed “STEMpathy.” This view draws an explicit and public nexus with careers that combine science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills with human empathy.

An LSGS certificate is a human and academic strength. The Program strives to sharpen and contribute to a collection of foundational and practical skills that can be tapped in any professional endeavor and aspect of life.

Creativity, curiosity, exploration, innovation, conceptual awareness, problem-solving: these are all a pathway to the LSGS certificate major as well as to your personal and unique journey after Duke.

The Program’s curriculum includes courses and an undergraduate certificate program.

A variety of supplemental educational opportunities is also available. These include lectures and events involving prominent scholars, artists, writers, musicians, and performers; financial assistance for student-organized academic discussions; conference awards; advising; and a resource room.


LSGS Equips You for Future Opportunities:
Diverse Professional Destinations

Since its founding, some of the Program’s alums have joined the workplace as artists, consultants, counselors, engineers, entrepreneurs, health researchers, teachers, and more. They have also pursued postgraduate study at such institutions as Emory University, Northwestern University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, and Yale University.
 



Background Knowledge

What is Latino/a/x Studies?

The interdisciplinary field of Latino/a/x Studies has a long genealogy and is continuously evolving. LSGS’s curriculum is conversation with and covers the field’s seminal scholarship as well as new directions.

If you're up for digging a little deeper, below are some selected sources that can provide great assistance, appreciation, and fill up some background gaps on Latino/a/x thought and history.
 

Edited Volumes


The Journal of the Field


National Coverage