In addition to courses offered by the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South (course code LSGS), we identify courses from across the University which contain Latino/a Studies content. We encourage students to enroll in these courses, as well as those offered by the Program in Latina/o Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill.
The introductory course (LSGS 101S) for the undergraduate certificate, "Latino/a Studies in the Global South," is offered again in Fall '13. Students interested in the certificate are encouraged but not required to take this introductory course first. For more information on the certificate or to inquire about courses, contact .
FALL 2013 Courses that count toward the LSGS Certificate:
(Note: only courses in the top section of this list automatically count for credit toward the certificate. There is a separate note for courses in the lower section of this list.)
LSGS 101S.01/ LIT 143S.01 (18)/SPAN 160S.01 (18)/ AAAS 104S.01 (18)-- Intro to Latino/a Studies
TuTh 11:45 AM-1:00 PM
Claudia Milian
Intro to the interdisciplinary field of Latino/a Studies, and how it reconfigures the study of the United States and the Americas. Considers literature, history, sociology, economics, politics, culture and language in examining terms such as: Latino, latinidad, Global South, transnational, globalization, and multiculturalism. Exploration of alignments and divergences of Latino/a Studies with African and African American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Critical US Studies. Classroom learning will connect with the community outside of Duke. Required intro course for students in the Latino/a Studies in the Global South certificate program.
LSGS 254.01/CULANTH 254.01-- the America Borderlands
WF 10:05 AM-11:20 A.M.
Diane M. Nelson
There is no such thing as absolute dirt. Dirt is matter out of place – it creates categories, engenders both disgust and fascination...--Mary Douglas
This course uses the concept of “dirt” to explore culture and politics in the Américas. Dirt is literal: land, soil, the earth and all its products that sustain life on the planet. The anthropological notion of culture comes from agriculture, and as we will explore, is always involved with power and thereby politics. Dirt is also contextual, the opposite of clean, the unuseful, waste, excreta, left-over. And dirt is metaphorical, “matter out of place.” By its very presence it makes often unmarked categories and borders more visible (a clump of soil isn’t “dirty” in the garden, but it is on the dining room table, thus calling our attention to the difference between inside and outside; dancing becomes “dirty” when it brings what “belongs” in the bedroom into the ballroom).
Exploring the first sense we will examine relationships to the land, including indigenous understandings of telluric deities’ roles in agriculture and health, the impacts of industrialized crop production in Latin and North America, the role of migrant work done by Latin@s in US agriculture, and the effects on land and livelihoods of mining, genetically modified crops, and “invisible” trade agreements that are transforming people’s relations to dirt throughout the hemisphere. We will also examine the way “women’s work” is so often connected to cleaning and the everyday labors of housework, childcare, consumption and (over and over) cleaning up afterwards, and how these tasks are so often performed by migrant women to the US (‘freeing” their often whiter, wealthier sisters for more satisfying work). These forms of “women’s work” have also been industrialized through maquilas and plantation divisions of labor (where women “clean” bananas for export). In turn, women’s and Latin Americans’ bodies more generally have been made into the material on which scientific experiments act through their use in drug trials, especially the development of the birth control pill. We will also address the way “matter out of place” includes actual waste, including those who work and live in the growing sprawl of garbage dumps, as well as the circulation of substances and humans outside of legal frameworks, exploring the “grey economies” surrounding corruption, remittances, and new financial models. Yet “to clean” as in limpieza is also a form of spiritual healing and central mode of survival in the diaspora.
These all connect to the metaphorical work that “dirt” does concerning subjectivization, as self-other, inside-outside are (often violently) defined. The apparent irrationality of US border politics (as strawberries rot in the fields for lack of workers) may need an exploration of the simultaneity of danger and desire that surrounds those considered “out of place” to become meaningful —and thereby changeable, bringing us back to politics.
LSGS 290S.01/WOMENST 390.02/ LIT390S-7.01/ SXL 390S.01-- Intro to Psychoanalytic Theory
TuTh 3:05 PM-4:20 PM
Antonio Viego
“Let’s Get Shrunk: Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory in the Age of Disgracebook.” In this seminar we will read key works in psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Melanie Klein. We will explore psychoanalytic theory by focusing on specific topics such as hysteria, perversion, sexuality, the pleasure principle and the death drive, the unconscious, the id/ego/superego. Throughout the semester, we will examine the relationship in psychoanalysis between theory and practice as well as entertain the possibility that the theories based on clinical practice might have some applicability for grappling with questions concerning power, politics, conceived in a global context, and what philosopher Michel Foucault referred to in his later work as the “care of the self.” Is psychoanalysis dead? What is the point of psychoanalysis? Is psychoanalysis feasible in today’s world? How is psychoanalysis different from psychology? We will approach psychoanalysis’ differences from psychology by paying specific attention to literature from the fields of ethnic psychology and multicultural psychology in the U.S., in particular, Latino psychology.
LSGS 290S.02--Latino/a Students' Educational Experiences (Special Top)
Th 3:05 PM-5:35 PM
Jason Mendez
LSGS 306.01/ SPAN 306.01-Health, Culture, and Latino Community
TTh 3:05-4:20
Rosa Solorzano
Exploration of health issues in the Spanish-speaking world shaped by social, cultural, political, ethnic, and economic determinants. Topics: cultural competency, community beliefs, medical practices and policies, preventive medicine, mental health. Projects include presentations, writing, research, and conversations with local and global contacts. Evaluation on knowledge of content, oral and written proficiency in Spanish. One 300-level Spanish course recommended prior to enrolling. Pre-requisite: Spanish 204 or equivalent
LSGS 308S/ SPAN 308S.01-Latino/a Voices in Duke, Durham
TTh 10:05-11:20 (section 1)/TuTh 1:25-2:40 (Section 2)
Formation of Latino/a identity(ies) and community voices through the lens of cultural, political, and social issues at local and national level. Topics: Minority voices, power and class, linguistic and artistic expression. Required weekly service work with GANO and the Mariposa Stories Project. Assessment on knowledge of content, oral and written Spanish, service. Recommended students take 300-level Spanish course prior to enrolling
Section 1--Prof. Eileen Anderson
This course will explore the ways Latino/a identities are formed in the United States through their representations in film, literature, art, and essays. The three main areas of focus will be language, race, and gender. There is a service-learning component to the course which will require students to volunteer outside the classroom under the supervision of the instructor. Students are assessed on knowledge of content, oral and written Spanish, and participation in service. It is recommended that students take a 300-level Spanish course prior to enrolling in this course. Prerequisite: Spanish 204 (previously 76) or equivalent. Service-Learning Course.
Section 2--Prof. Bethzaida Fernadez
This course explores key issues surrounding Latino identities and experiences in Durham and beyond. Discussions are built around readings, documentaries, and interactions with the local Latino community. This section includes an experiential component that requires students to visit and make observations at different sites and organizations in Durham and document some of these experiences. This is not a service learning section. Course topics include acculturation (cultural competence and values), migration, health, economics and education. Course discussions, experiences and projects seek to facilitate opportunities for building bridges between Duke and the local Latino community. Assessment is based on knowledge of content, oral and written Spanish, and participation in the experiential component of the course. Pre-requisite: sp204. Recommended: a previous 300-level course prior to taking this class.
LSGS 412D.001/SPAN 412.001/ICS460D.001/CULANTH 367D.001/HISTORY 412D.001-- Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas
M 1:25-2:40
Walter Mignolo
The basic philosophical architecture of the three great civilizations of America; Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations. Links the current indigenous revival in the Andes (Bolivia and Ecuador) and in the South of Mexico and Guatemala with the survival of their historical legacies. Discussion sections offered in Spanish and English.
LSGS 490S.01/SPAN 490S.01-- Latino/a Autobiography and Memoir
TuTh 3:05-4:20
Claudia Milian
This seminar considers cultural and intellectual approaches to the construction and emergence of individual self-awareness and self-reference, exploring a variety of representations of the autobiographical voice, textual authority, and the boundaries between fact and fiction. These acts and discursive manifestations of individual life experience will be studied from the sociocultural and political modes of the U.S. Latino and Latina category. Accordingly, we will ask: In what ways do the stories of Latino and Latina cultural workers reconstruct factual and fictional modes of their subject formation and distinctive moments in U.S. society? And what do these articulations alter in relation to "unifying" values, traditions, and sociopolitical memberships? Of particular concern is how these cultural producers live and literarily represent both the America and the Latin/o America of their time. Through autobiography, memoir, literary criticism, theoretical readings, as well as visual and poetic approaches to subjectivity, we will interrogate how self, place, and "community" are negotiated. For our critical purposes, we will also deliberate on the following concerns: How is "Latino" or "Latina" lived experience theorized, and do these personal accounts introduce new forms of knowledge? What connections can one find between the shifting autobiographical ("Latino/a") "I" and the larger social world "out there"? Do the social and discursive spaces of these works provide points of agreements on "Americanness" as much as "Latinoness"? Course readings include Danielle Cadena Deulen’s The Riots; Francisco Goldman’s Say Her Name: A Novel; John Leguizamo’s Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends: My Life; David Shields’s Reality Hunger: A Manifesto; Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives; Irene Vilar’s Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict; and Priscilla Wald’s Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form.
LSGS 690.01/WOMENST 690.01/LIT 690-6.01--Historicizing Mother-Child Relations*For graduate students
W 1:25-3:55
Antonio Viego
A comparative approach to Latino Studies in the Global South that draws on the methods and materials of other disciplines. Focus on interdisciplinary study.
This seminar addresses the figure of the “mother” and the “mother-child” social tie as theorized in 20th century psychoanalytic literature primarily through the work of Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan and D.W. Winnicott. This course presupposes no prior knowledge of psychoanalytic theory. Overall we will be interested in how the “mother function” has been articulated in the psychoanalytic period 1930-60 and how this articulation has inscribed itself in societies at large as a species of bullying script. We will examine toward the end of the semester a more contemporary situation regarding the question of Latina maternity in the U.S. and how Latinas have been constructed as bio-machines of “super health” in the extant literature.
DOCST 153FS—The US/Mexico Border (Focus Class)
TuTh 3:20-4:35
Charles Thompson
DOCST 390S/ ARTVIS 390S/ LATAMER 390S—Building Creative Communities
M 3:20-5:50
Miguel Rojas Sotelo
This course explores how cultural bridges are created between migrant and local communities; in particular the ones build around youth and education (the so-called Dreamers and Duke Students). The course will incorporate a theoretical framework and a practical, hands-on experience on the topic of creative practices and community building. The theoretical framework will introduce students to Decolonial-Aesthetics, that is an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary way to look at culture and its products. A series of case-studies will illustrate the theoretical framework, related specifically to education, human rights, environmental survival, and artistic practices in the Americas. For example: social movements that use aesthetic means to portray their demands (such as The Mothers of May Square in Argentina, the Landless Movement in Brazil, the Coalition of Farm Workers in Immokalee, Florida, among others), utopian ¿green¿ communities in the savannas of the Amazon (Gaviotas in Colombia), and community based and socially engaged creative practices (particularly in the work of some creative communities in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Chile and Mexico). Students will have the opportunity to explore the issues and exchange experiences while documenting stories of our community in Duke and Durham. An individual and collective project (a photo mural, collective performance, dramatic reading, short documentary) will be develop as part of the course. The actual project is based on the ideal of unleashing human potential, exploring new possibilities and building inclusive and vibrant communities. The rich and diverse community that composes Duke and Durham will be an ideal setting for a class project, allowing students to create a collective, transferable art project of the stories/histories of the other youth in our community. The course will count, in addition, with three media-workshops in which the three course will get together with communities around Duke (times and locations TBA). Service Learning course.
POLSCI 343S/ PUBPOL 216S/ CANADIAN 305S—The US Border
TuTh 10:05-11:20
Stephen Kelly
The United States shares land borders with only two countries; a 5,525-mile border with Canada and a 1,969-mile border with Mexico. While historically our borders have been easy to cross and often barely visible (in one Vermont town the border runs through the center of the public library), our conceptions of what we expect from them changed dramatically after 9/11. This course will look at the history of how the U.S. established borders with its North American neighbors, how border management has changed in recent years, and how this has impacted our security and reputation for openness. The instructor, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, has visited vast sections of the U.S. border by car, on foot and in the air during assignments in Canada and Mexico. The course will also include guest lecturers from the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, role-playing by students of U.S. Consular Officers making decisions on issuing a visa, and video teleconferences with residents from the Borderlands. Students will work in teams to come up with their own solutions to the big border policy issues of our day, and express them in State-Department-style memos, oral briefings and tabletop exercises.
WRITING 101—For Spanish Press 2
Tu Th
Nicolas Elibaum
Para Español Marque 2: Multilingualism in the Unites States
Do immigrants change the language patterns of the US? Or does the US change the language patterns of immigrants? Is the US becoming a bilingual or multilingual society? What factors encourage or discourage multilingualism? What would a multilingual society look like? How is the role of Spanish different from that of other languages in the US?
Our research and writing will focus on the connections between migration and language. While we will discuss these issues in general, most of our attention will focus on the Spanish language and Latin American migration. We will discuss how migration and language interact in different fields: education, law, the economy, media, and politics.
The class will have two components: 1) research and writing and 2) service-learning. The service-learning component is an important part of the class and is mandatory. It includes approximately two hours of service each week of the semester at a public school in Durham (20 hours total).
For our service-learning we will work as tutors with ESL students at three schools. This will give us a chance to participate first-hand in a key setting where the connection between migration and language plays out: ESL education in US public schools. In addition to tutoring, we will work on class projects based on your service at the schools.
Courses at UNC-CH: Duke students are welcome to take courses at area universities, and UNC-CH offers a variety of Latino/a Studies offerings each semester. Contact for futher information on these courses and receiving credit toward the undergraduate certificate.
Sample course at UNC-CH this Fall:
English 864.001 (GRAD level): Latina/o Literature, Culture & Criticisms: Latina Feminisms with Professor Laura Halperin, W 11:00-1:50
This course will introduce graduate students to a variety of (U.S.) Latina feminisms. We will read reflections on what it means to be a Latina writer, and we will learn about formations of Latina feminisms. Building on US Third World feminist ideas that the personal is political, we will analyze texts across an array of genres, including critical theory, critical essays, memoirs, poetry, vignettes, historia(s), documentaries, and novels. In our analyses, we will challenge the idea of a monolithic Latina feminism, and we will explore the multiplicity of Latina feminisms. The first part of the course primarily will focus on Chicana feminisms, given the formative role Chicana feminisms have played in the establishment and articulations of other Latina feminisms. The second part of the course will focus on writings and films by and about Puerto Rican, Dominican American, and Cuban American women, and it will examine how these works emanate from and speak to particular sociopolitical contexts. Throughout the course, we will critically interrogate the very idea of a Latina feminism, or of Latina feminisms, and we will ask what makes a text or writer Latina and/or feminist.
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Additional Courses of interest (with some Latino/a Studies content)
These courses do not automatically count toward the certificate, although some could depending on student projects within the course. Consult with the Program on this issue.
AAAS 242S/ SXL 264S/ WOMENST 364S—Race, Gender and Sexuality
TuTh 4:40-5:55
Departmental Staff
AAAS 247S/ AMI 246S/ ICS 320S/ LATAMER 320S/ LIT 320S—Social Movements/Social Media
Tu 10:05-12:35
Negar Mottahedeh
AAAS 251/ CULANTH 208—Anthropology of Race
TuTh 10:05-11:20
Lee Baker
AAAS 290S/ CULANTH 290S/ ICS 290S/ WOMENST 290S—Special Topics: Women of Color in the Americas
TuTh 4:40-5:55
Layla Brown
This course explores writings by and about women of color in the Americas and the complex politics of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other categories of power in these women¿s lives. Ranging from theoretical to first-person narrative, the readings in this course will explore issues of identity, representation, socio-economic policy and political rights as they impact women of color in the Americas. We will examine women of color feminist critiques of poverty and capitalism, nationalism, sexualized violence, stigma and stereotype, reproductive politics, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia.
AAAS 343/ LATAMER 343/ SOCIOL 343—Migration and Human Trafficking
M 6:15-8:45
Michaeline Crichlow
AAAS 385S-01--Ethnography of the African Diaspora Th 4:20-7:30 p.m.; Friedl 240 J. Lorand Matory
Ethnography is the vivid written description, contextualization, and theorization of people's lives following the intensive personal field research. Through classical and contemporary ethnographies by the likes of DuBois, Herskovits, Hurston, Fernando Oritz, Ruth Landes, John Gwaltney, Karen McCarthy Brown, and John Jackson, this course reveals the diversity of black cultures around the Atlantic perimeter. By the end of the semester, students will write their own short ethnographies, based upon the close observation of a local population and illuminated by such concepts as "social death," "social stratification," "double consciousness," "creolization," "strategic essentialism," "rhizomes," and "the black Atlantic." Cross-listed in Cultural Anthropology.
CULANTH 290-02/ LIT 490-1/ PORTUGUE 490-1—Current Issues: Brazil, Race, Sex and the Body
TuTh 4:40-5:55
Lamonte Aidoo
Brazil is commonly understood as an example of a "racially democratic" nation, but as scholars have recently shown, racism permeates all aspects of Brazilian society. This course examines the development of the theorization of race, racial identity and race relations in contemporary Brazil, and will explore very closely the role of sex, and sexuality in the construction of race relations. We will attend to questions such as: how is desire racialized? How is racial difference produced through sex as a material practice and what is the function of sex in racial (self)formation? How do we reconcile questions of pleasure and desire and the structures of power and national identity? The approach of the course will be interdisciplinary, drawing upon works from anthropology, literature, history, music, and film. Topics will include colonialism and enslavement, abolition, nationalism, social activism, and popular culture. We will also consider how Brazilian social relations differ from or conform to other racialized patterns in other nation-states in the Americas. Particular attention will be placed on the impact of the interrelationship between race, gender, class, and nation on the lives of black Brazilians.
CULANTH 290-03/ PORTUGUE 490-2—Current Issues: Blackness in Latin America
TuTh 11:45-1:00
Lamonte Aidoo
This course focuses on the position of Blacks in the national histories and societies of Latin America from slavery to the present-day. Emphasis is on a interdisciplinary engagement with issues and the exposure of students to the critical discussion of national images and realities about blackness, and Africa-descended institutions and practices. The role of racial issues in national and transnational encounters and the consequences of migration of people and ideas within the hemisphere are explored in addition to questions of representation in cultural production. Course to examine cultural art forms such as Salsa, Samba, Merengue, Bachata and Reggaeton. Countries to be explored include :Cuba, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Mexico, Haiti, and Peru.
CULANTH 290S/ PUBPOL 290S—Current Issues: Human Rights in Latin America
TuTh 10:05-11:20
Robin Kirk
HISTORY 326—Latin America: Colonialism
TuTh 1:25-2:40
M. Pitts
HISTORY 329—Modern Latin America
TuTh 10:05-11:20
M. Pitts
This course offers a sweeping introduction to Latin American history from independence to the present. It moves beyond characterizations of the region as a backwards bastion of authoritarianism, socioeconomic injustice, and religious traditionalism and reinterprets it as the site of some of history¿s great social experiments. From some of the world¿s earliest experiments with republican governments, to massive social upheavals that employed corporatist or Marxist models to challenge entrenched hierarchies, to widespread experimentation with bureaucratic-authoritarian models of government, to recent trailblazing progress in transitional justice, civil rights, and social justice. Latin America has figured centrally in the production of world history. The course focuses on the broad themes that have structured Latin American history, including the construction of the nation, challenges from below to elite visions of citizenship, and economic dependency on the global North.
LATAMER 390S/ENVIRON 390S—Special Topics: Current Environmental and Natural Resource Issues in Latin America
TuTh 1:25-2:40
Maria Velez
Latin America’s ecosystems offer important environmental services not only for the satisfaction of its inhabitants’ basic needs, but also for regulating the world¿s environment, as in the case of the Amazon forest. However, in recent decades, economic, social and political transformations have resulted in an accelerated process of degradation, including overfishing, deforestation, mining but also air and water pollution.In this course, students will acquire an understanding of Latin America’s principal environmental problems with a focus on the challenges in the management of natural resources. To that end, using an economic framework, case studies will be discussed to understand policy and economic instruments applied by the state and decentralized solutions implemented in the region. Collective Titling in the Pacific Coast of Colombia, Protected Areas in the Brazilian Amazon, Payment for Environmental Services Schemes in Costa Rica and Mexico, Individual Transferable Fishing Rights in Chile, Participatory Water Management in Brazil are some of the topics to be studied. Different methodologies will be used during the semester: lectures, students´ presentations, debates, and classroom experiments, among others. (This course will be taught in English by Mellon Visiting Professor, Maria Velez, from the School of Management, Los Andes University, Bogota, Colombia)
LIT 80S--The Cinema of Immigration WF 3:05-4:20 Laura Jaramillo
In this course, we will explore how the figure of the immigrant has functioned in national and transnational film cultures from the early twentieth century to the globalized present. Examining a variety of genres, from documentary to feature films, we will consider how the phenomenon of immigration both as it affects individuals and larger social groups, often calls national borders, identity, and language itself into question. The iflms in the course will provide a point for our aesthetic and formal concerns, while the assigned texts will anchor our discussions in the economic and social dimensions of immigration.
WOMENST 239D/ HISTORY 374D—Women/Gender/Sexuality in US
MW 10:05-10:55
Sarah Deutsch