Please contact jennysw@duke.edu if you have additional courses to add and/or revisions to the list below.
I. COURSES WITH SIGNIFICANT LATINO/A STUDIES COMPONENT:
ENGLISH 173S-04 - Miami
MW 11:40AM- 12:55PM, Bell Tower 110, East Lori Carlson
Miami is a cornucopia of Latin American sensibility. Ideally situated between two Americas it acts like a magnet, drawing many Spanish-speaking immigrants to its shores. The architecture, food, music, art and life-style of the city bear the influence of Caribbean, South American and Central American cultures. In this class students will read novels and poetry, analyze films, listen to music, and sample the cuisine known as “Nuevo Latino” in an attempt to know what a certain kind of Pan-America means in the 21st century. Along the way, students will be required to write a “Guide to Miami,” utilizing information gleaned from class discussion and their own impressions of the city based on their reading assignments. This guide should be thought of as a creative writing project. Grades will be determined by class participation and the “guide.” No final exam.
HISTORY 49S - 05 First-Year Seminar: Latino Identity and Activism:
WF 8:30AM - 9:45AM, Carr 242, Gordon Mantler
The relatively recent influx of Latinos in North Carolina and elsewhere in the South has intensified debates over not only U.S. immigration policy but also American identity in general. This seminar for first-year students only aims to contextualize historically these debates by exploring aspects of the 20th century Latino experience. From ethnic Mexicans and Guatemalans to Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americans, Latinos have a long history of building distinct communities and identities as part of their American experience, often in response to widespread discrimination by the larger society. Thus, Latinos have complicated relationships with native “white” Americans and African Americans, as well as each other. Through both secondary and primary sources, we will explore the development of Latino culture and politics during the last 100 years-- including the construction of the term “Latino,” as opposed to Mexican, Chicano, Puerto Rican, etc. Students should expect to read and write extensively in this seminar.
LSGS 100S - Introduction to Latino/a Studies in the Global South
MW 1:15- 2:30 PM, West Duke 105, Antonio Viego, Walter Mignolo, Jenny Snead Williams
Cross-listed with Span 120S, Lit 162ES, and AAAS 199S
Areas of Knowlege: ALP, SS
Modes of Inquiry: CCI
See CERTIIFICATE page for full synopsis:
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.
SPANISH 106A- Spanish for the Health Professions
WF 10:05AM - 11:20AM, Carr 135, Liliana Paredes
This advanced-Spanish language course studies issues associated with access to the health care industry for the growing Latino population in the United States. Students explore cultural issues and medial practices that impact Spanish-speaking patients, and develop lexical knowledge related to common diseases. Students are exposed to community issues, applied research, and a minimum of 20 hours of service work with local community partners. Students are assessed on knowledge of content, oral and written Spanish, and participation in service. Recommended that students take a 100-level Spanish course prior to enrolling in this course. Pre-requisite: Spanish 76 or equivalent
SPANISH 106CS- Issues of Education and Immigration
WF 11:40AM - 12:55PM, TBD, Joan Munne
This advanced-Spanish language course provides community-based interaction with Durham Public Schools. In-class discussions will include topics of: Latino/a identity, access to education for immigrants, academic performance, assimilarion, general pressures of family and peers, bilingualism, and configurations of ethno-racial consciousness. In addition to class sessions, students are required to spend 20 hours outside of class with assigned community partners. Students are assessed on knowledge of content, oral and written Spanish, and participation in service. Recommended that students take a 110-level Spanish course prior to enrolling in this course. Pre-requisite: Spanish 76 or equivalent.
SPANISH 106ES- Latino/a Voices in Duke, Durham, and Beyond
WF 2:50PM - 4:05PM, West Duke 202, William Villalba
This advanced-Spanish language course explores the formation of Latino/a identity(ies) and construction of community voice(s) through the lens of cultural, political, economic, and social structures at both the local and national level. Students will discuss topics such as minority voices, power and class, the role of language, and the arts. In addition to class sessions, students are required to spend a minimum of 20 hours outside of class working with the Mariposa Stories Project in the Durham Public Schools. Students are assessed on knowledge of content, oral and written Spanish, and participation in service. Recommended that students take a 100-level Spanish course prior to enrolling in this course. Pre-requisite: Spanish 76 or equivalent
SPANISH 142S - 04 Spanish Literature
MW 11:40AM - 12:55PM Perkins LINK Claudia Milian
"Latina/o Latin American Popular Culture."
Drawing on contemporary popular culture, this course explores what "Latinness and the "national" constitute in the creation and consumption of Latino identities as deployed both in the United States and Latin America.
Exploring how Latina, Latino, and Latin American bodies inhabit particular cultural and geographic contexts, the seminar addresses the ways that popular cultural forms are developed, contested, or resolved vis-à-vis issues of difference, multicultural inclusiveness, domestic history, and narratives of exile and migration. The deployment of popular aesthetic forms in both Latina/o and Latin American contexts orients us to think about the ways that popular culture operates as a structurally active agent countering exoticized or "tropicalized"referents for peoples, nations, and cultural practices. The aim of this seminar is to examine how "our" connections with U.S. Latina/o and Latin American populations are made, or separated, by popular culture and the world of the commodity. Of particular concern are such questions as: What are the pressing sociocultural and political issues confronted by U.S. national culture and how are these accounted for, if not represented, through the different perspectives and terrains that shape Latino and Latin American popular cultures? How does the seeming contemporary development of U.S. Latino cultures dialogue not only with Americanness but with Latin Americanness as well? We will unravel these questions by analyzing multiple forms of cultural production, including novels, films, television shows (e.g., "Ugly Betty" [2006-], "Dora the Explorer" [2000-]), and "¿Qué Pasa, USA?" [1977-1980]), advertising, comic strips, food fusions as "Nuevo Latino," and music.
SPANISH 145S - 01 Mexicana Throught from North and South: Writing, Art, Film
TuTh 11:40AM - 12:55PM Perkins LINK Esther Gabara
Fiction, art, and theory by Mexican women from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, 1950 to the present. Considers affective and political relationships revealed in narratives of belonging and exclusion, and new thinking about gender, race, and history. Poses questions about nations and nationalism, perceptions and performances of the body, and the social and political promise of expressive culture. Emphasis on visual culture including photography, performance, posters, new media, video and film.
SPANISH 181-01/LIT 162ZS- 01/THEATRST 129S-03: Latino/a Theatre with Attitude
TuTh 11:40AM - 12:55PM, Perkins 2-088 Leslie Damasceno
This course is about Latinos in the U.S. and about theatre: practices of power and spaces of definition. Theatre is about communication, and so is attitude. Face to face, maybe even in your face. Who gets to define what, to which public, to what effects. How do you measure success, who’s your real and virtual audience? It’s about organizing the questions to get closer to some answers, maybe... the real space of theatre. Although the latino/a community in the U.S. is extremely diversified, we’ll center our work on four nuclei that represent the largest constituencies: a) Chicano./Mexican American; b) Nuyorican/Puerto Rican; and c) Cuban-American, with approximately 4 plays/performance tests from each nuclei, plus outside readings. There will also be some 7-8 mandatory films to be seen that both complement the plays and further open up such issues as cross-over cultures and mass media. Throughout the course, we’ll look at theatrical traditions as they cross borders and transgress spaces, refining skills of reading theatrical practices through the spaces of the dramatic text. There will be a series of recurring issues that can be approached through the disciplines of the social sciences as well: race, class, sex and gender, questions of ethnicity and anthropological methodology, mixes of popular, elite and mass culture, cross-over cultures, media and literature, etc. I hope that students will, in their individual work, go from their own place of interest and run (or at least trot) with it.
II. ADDITIONAL COURSES OF INTEREST (courses with some Latino/a content):
AAAS 116 - Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies
MW 10:05AM - 11:20AM Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
The social, legal and cultural construction of racial and ethnic hierarchies in a comparative international context with the United States and the United Kingdom of central analytical concern. Racial formation and racial segregation in specific historical and national contexts including the normative case of the Anglo-Saxon core in the United States and how its dominance has led to patterns of ethnic antagonism and discrimination; the historical context of racial stereotypes and their representation in various mediums. Social justice movements and public policies designed to challenge racial and ethnic domination including controversial topics such as "positive discrimination" (United Kingdom) and Affirmative Action (United States/South Africa). May include comparative case studies from India, South Africa, Brazil, and continental Europe.
ENGLISH 109S - Special Topics in Writing
Th 3:05PM - 5:35PM Allen 304I Oscar Hijuelos
In this course, which meets on a weekly basis, students will be invited to bring in short stories, novels, memoirs in progress, such pieces to be shared and critically discussed in class. Students will also be invited to commence any form of narrative, if they so choose.
Class members will function as each others’ editors and critics. Books at instructor’s whim will be discussed along the way. Since course meets only once a week, any latenesses and absences will have an impact on final grade. Please submit a writing sample.
ENGLISH 170 - Special Topics in Genre (DS1, DS2, DS3, or DS4, as determined by instructor)
WF 11:40AM - 12:55PM L.S.R.C. A247 Oscar Hijuelos
This course will examine a number of short works of fiction with an eye to closely examining and appreciating the aesthetics and techniques of briefer fictional forms. Our goal will be to read these works as both critics and writers. Assigned texts may include: "Sula" and the "Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison; "In dreams Begin Responsibilities" by Delmore Schwartz , "Barabas" by Pars Lagersvist, "The Man who Died" by D.H. Lawrence, "Pedro Paramo," by Juan Rulfo, "The Aleph" by Borges, and "The Monkey's Paw," as well as several short works of holocaust fiction, "Welcome to the Gas Chamber" and "Blenheim, 1912." Students will be asked to keep a journal recording their responses to these works and occasionally to write a few pages in the style of a particular narrative.
PSY 133- 01/ AAS 134-01 - Psychology of Ethnicity and Context
TuThu 1:15-2:30 Gabriela Stein
Focuses on children and families as they are shaped and impacted by race, culture, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and community/neighborhood context. Aspects considered include: parental beliefs, expectations, disciplinary strategies, children's mental health and academic and career goals. The course focuses on how ethnicity impacts development and mental health for Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Prerequisite: Psychology 97 recommended.
HISTORY 104/ SXL 120- Lectures in Special Topics
MWF 3:05PM - 3:55PM Peter Sigal
This course will use interdisciplinary methods to analyze the construction of sexualities in the Americas, with a particular focus on the ways that sexualities have been created in a transnational frame from the late fifteenth century through the present. I will argue in the course that transcultural and transnational interactions have driven the creation and re-creation of sexual ideologies, behaviors, and imaginations throughout the entire time span covered. The course will take an explicitly transnational approach, emphasizing the ways that sexualities have radiated outward from centers (Europe and the United States) to peripheries, only to have the center/periphery distinctions problematized through the cultural effects of the periphery on the center. Thus students will find that the radical changes that took place in the construction of European sexualities in the period beginning in the late eighteenth century related closely to European contact with indigenous peoples in the Americas. The creation of the United States set into motion a hegemonic discourse in which a U.S. dominated approach to sexuality would become, in the twentieth century, a globalized moralistic framework. But here too sexualities radiated in different and unexpected directions as hegemonic discourses and tropes such as the hyper-sexualized African American man and the Brazilian sexual utopia (or den of sexual decadence, depending on one’s vantage point) show the transnational construction of sexual imaginations in the United States as well as the influence of colonialism, imperialism, globalization, and slavery on the construction of sexualities.
HISTORY 174B - Modern Latin America
MW 2:50PM - 4:05PM West Duke 08A Jocelyn Olcott
British historian E.H. Carr famously defined history as “an unending dialogue between the present at the past.” Indeed, when Latin American leaders and activists set out to convey a message to a larger public, they deploy the language of history. The current Zapatista movement in Chiapas conjures the specter of a fallen revolutionary leader. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez invokes the independence leader Simon Bolivar to guide his Bolivarian revolution. In this course, we will explore Latin American history since the independence rebellions, giving particular attention to the ways that contemporary debates over democracy, sovereignty, economics, social justice, and cultural transformations draw upon both real and imagined histories. Drawing on memoirs, films, and novels as well as more conventional historical accounts, we will consider the ways in which the region’s past resonates in the dramatic changes occurring today.
*Also visit http://clacs.aas.duke.edu/program/courses.php for courses with Latin American and Caribbean Studies content at Duke.