55 courses with the subject LATI, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
LATI 151Caribbean Literature and Culture: Aesthetics of Resistance4
Cross-Listed as SPAN 151 Explore literary, visual and musical expressions of resistance against colonialism and neocolonialism in the Caribbean, and examine street performance as a means of redefining public space and creating community. Students will learn about the tensions between culture and capital. Offered as a First Year Course only. Occasionally.
Cross-Listed as HIST 181 This course offers a general survey of the complex and heterogeneous region we somewhat reductively term Latin America. It follows a roughly chronological approach, beginning with the eve of encounter and continuing through the contemporary era. Discussions will consider themes such as the institution and legacy of colonialism, the search for new national identities, and the onset of modern racial and political strife. The course will emphasize the import of global economic, political, and cultural trends on the formation of the region. Offered every year.
LATI 235Captives, Cannibals, and Capitalists in the Early Modern Atlantic World4
Cross-Listed as AMST 235 and HIST 235 This course explores cross-cultural encounters in the Americas that characterized the meetings of Europeans, Africans, and Americans in the early modern world between 1492 and 1763. During this period, the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent land masses became critical locations for economic, biological, and cultural exchanges. This course focuses on the Americas as sites for discovery, mutual incomprehension, and exploitation. The course explores the ways that conquest, resistance, and strategic cooperation shaped peoples’ “new worlds” on both sides of the Atlantic. It also considers how colonialism framed and was framed by scientific inquiry, religious beliefs, economic thought, and artistic expression. Students interrogate primary sources-written, visual and aural–that emerged from these encounters and the secondary literatures that have sought to make sense of them. Offered occasionally.
Cross-Listed as ENVI 239 , GEOG 239 This course provides students a basic understanding of the most important biophysical and social characteristics of the dominant landscapes of the Neotropics. The Neotropical realm refers to the biogeographic region that includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and South America’s temperate zone. These areas provide a range of services-both locally and globally-including water sources, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. They are also home to various human populations and support the livelihood of local and global human populations. Among others, these include tropical rain forests, Andean páramos, tropical dry forests, wetlands, deserts and temperate forests of southern South America. For each of these landscapes, we will learn the key biophysical processes that govern their functioning. We also study the peoples that live in them including indigenous communities, afro-descendants, and mestizos. Finally, using examples of these areas, we also analyze human-environment interactions including land-use change, biodiversity, resource and cultural conservation, and climate change impacts and responses. Every year; Fall semester.
Cross-Listed as AMST 244 and POLI 244 Comparative study of Latinx political struggles in U.S. cities. How did Chicana feminists transform student social movements on college campuses? In San Antonio, Denver, and Los Angeles, how did multiracial coalitions elect pioneering Latino mayors? And in Chicago, who fought for immigrant rights and who stood in their way? We will explore the themes of subordination and empowerment through study of anti-immigrant ballot initiatives in California, Cuban dominance in Miami politics, multiracial violence in Los Angeles, and battles over labor conditions, affirmative action, bilingual education, and racial profiling. Alternate years.
Cross-Listed as POLI 245 Comparative study of political institutions and conflicts in several Latin American countries. Through a mix of empirical and theoretical work, we analyze concepts and issues such as authoritarianism and democratization, neoliberalism, state terror and peace processes, guerrilla movements, party systems, populism, the Cuban Revolution, and U.S. military intervention. Themes are explored through diverse teaching methods including discussion, debates, simulations, partisan narratives, lecture, film, and poetry. This class employs an innovative system of qualitative assessment. Students take the course “S/SD/N with Written Evaluation.” This provides a powerful opportunity for students to stretch their limits in a learning community with high expectations, but without a high-presure atmosphere. This ungraded course has been approved for inclusion on major/minor/concentration plans in Political Science, Latin American Studies, and Human Rights and Humanitarianism. Every year.
Cross-Listed as POLI 248 When Guatemala’s elite rejected the 2023 election results, how did Mayan activists and the indigenous Xinka Parliament use mass mobilization to successfully inaugurate the first progressive president in decades? When U.S. billionaires initiated the hyper-privatized Economic Development and Employment Zone (ZEDE), how did Afro-Honduran communities defend their ancestral Garifuna lands in court and cancel the unconstitutional project? And in Panama, environmentalists achieved a 2023 ban on new mines and closed one of the world’s largest copper mines, but can they stop the new president from re-opening the mines? With an emphasis on the agency, resilience, and voices of diverse communities throughout the isthmic region of Central America, this course examines the achievements of political parties, social movements, and local organizers. Topics include Left-Right party politics in Costa Rica; the “Sons of Mother Earth” Afro-Indigenous party on the Miskito Coast; feminist and anti-feminist battles in Nicaragua; migrant caravans as a form of resistance; and grassroots challenges to iron-fisted “mano dura” policing and mass incarceration in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). Every other year
LATI 248Struggles for Reproductive Justice: A Global Perspective4
Cross-Listed as SOCI 248 and WGSS 248 This course focuses on reproductive health as a human right following the reproductive justice framework. It will focus on women and how they navigate the system to expand their rights. The course will pay particular attention to women who are marginalized due to their race, class, gender identity, indigeneity, and religion. In doing so, this course studies reproductive health and human rights in relation to the broader structural context in the Americas (e.g. national laws and international conventions). As the topic of women’s reproductive rights is vast, we will be focusing on abortion, domestic violence, and motherhood. Students in the class will study these issues from the perspective of women’s organizations that have mobilized to expand reproductive rights. This course will be comparative in nature as it will focus on reproductive rights in the U.S. and Latin America from the 1980s onwards. These two regions are intimately connected politically and economically, and in regards to reproductive rights. For example, the gag rule introduced by the Reagan administration in 1984 jeopardized the reproductive health services provided in Latin American countries that received funding from the U.S. government. Yet another way that these two regions have been coupled is through feminist networks that have been working to expand reproductive rights in the Americas. Every year.
Cross-Listed as GEOG 249 This course offers geographical perspectives on one of the world’s most vibrant regions, Latin America and the Caribbean. Extending from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, this world region stretches across diverse landscapes, from tropical rainforests to the snowcapped peaks of the Andes, from mega-cities to verdant plains and sparsely populated deserts. This course combines thematic and regional approaches to understanding the geography of Latin America. Major topics include the dynamics of climate, physical geography, and natural hazards; how indigenous peoples of the Americas transformed their environments, especially through agriculture; how European colonialism and the Columbian Exchange altered patterns of land use, labor, and trade; the development patterns of modern nation-states within a globalized economy; the environmental and social impacts of commodity production (e.g. coffee in Central America, rubber in the Amazon); challenges to and persistence of small-scale agriculture in the Andean region; the causes and consequences of tropical deforestation; conflicts over land and natural resources; the resilience and political resurgence of indigenous groups and people of African descent, and the evolution of pluriethnic or multinational states; the causes of mass urbanization and the environmental problems of cities; patterns of international migration, including flows between Latin American countries and towards the US and Europe; and the development of Latino culture and identity in the U.S. Along the way, we will examine the human-environment geography of various regions and countries such as The Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, Brazil, the Andean Countries, and Argentina. Every year.
Cross-Listed as ANTH 251 This course examines and critically analyzes various approaches to the study of how different individuals and communities in particular historical and cultural scenarios in contemporary Latin America create meanings about their past experience with political violence. The course addresses questions related to the tension between remembering and forgetting, the presence of conflicting memories and truths and how these are negotiated or not through distinct forms of representation. The cultural analysis of different means of representation: human rights and truth commission reports, testimonials, film, art and memorials will be the basis for class discussions on different notions of truth and different forms of truth-telling. A close examination of these forms of representation will reveal the extent to which they can conflict with each other while at the same time feed on each other, creating “effects of truth” and leaving room for secrecy as a mode of truth-telling. Finally, the course will also compel students to think about what consequences the politics of memory have for the future. Alternate years
ANTH 101 or ANTH 111 . Alternate years. (4 Credits)
LATI 258Immigrant Voices in Times of Fear4
Cross-Listed as SOCI 258 According to the International Organization for Migration (OIM), in 2019, the United States had the largest foreign-born population in the world. During the same year, immigrants represented 15% of the United States population while 53% of the foreign-born migrants came from Latin America. At the same time, we are observing the securitization of the US-Mexico border that is resulting in the removal of undocumented individuals from the U.S. in large numbers, specifically Latino men. The course examines recent U.S. immigration as part of a global (historical) phenomenon to understand how we got to where we are. While we will become familiar with immigration policies, we will pay attention to the experiences of immigrants, particularly those coming from Latin America. We will explore questions such as: What motivates people to migrate? How does migration reconfigure social relations, such as parental and community relations? This is a discussion-based course and includes guest speakers and a civic engagement project with a local organization. Every year.
Cross-Listed as ENVI 281 and HIST 281 This course explores the interaction between landscape and power in Andean history from the colonial period to the present day. The dramatic mountains have both shaped and have been shaped by sociopolitical relations, from the “vertical archipelagos” of ancient Andean peoples to the extractive economies of the Spanish and post-colonial Andean states. The course incorporates analytical perspectives from environmental, cultural, and urban history, alongside eyewitness accounts, to consider the relationship between the natural and built environments, on the one hand, and Andean racial and social identities, on the other. In selected years, this course will involve collaboration with contemporary Andean communities deploying oral history as a means of community and environmental preservation. Alternate years.
Cross-Listed as HIST 282 This course presents an historical overview of the interaction between artists, the state, and national identity in Latin America. After an introduction to the import of images to crafting collective identities during the colonial era and the 19th century, we will focus on the 20th century. Topics to be discussed include the depiction of race, allegorical landscapes and architectures, the art of revolution, and countercultures. Multiple genres will be explored with an emphasis on the visual arts, architecture, and popular music. Alternate years.
Cross-Listed as HIST 283 This course traces depiction of the Amazon rainforest from the 16th century to the present with an emphasis on three central allegories - the Amazon as cultural crossroads; the Amazon as untapped economic resource; and the Amazon as a-historical paradise (or hell). Every other year.
Cross-Listed as HIST 285 During the Cold War, Latin America was a decidedly “hot zone.” This course considers this phenomenon as a result of internal and external pressures, including political and socioeconomic instability, a deep tradition of revolutionary and socialist activism, and the region’s conflictive relationship with the United States. The class examines dramatic moments of the Latin American Cold War, such as the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, and the Dirty Wars in Chile and Argentina. It also examines less heralded aspects of the Latin American Cold War, such as its important role in fostering transhemispheric solidarities, the creative possibilities of Cold War cultural production, the emergence of a youth counterculture, and the many attempts by Latin Americans across the political spectrum to reject the premise of the Cold War altogether. Alternate years.
SPAN 305 or SPAN 306 (though SPAN 307 recommended) and another 300-level Spanish course, or consent of the instructor. Generally taught alternate years. (4 Credits)
LATI 341Comparative Social Movements4
Cross-Listed as POLI 341 How did the Arab Spring and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement deploy a similar tactical repertoire, yet provoke different outcomes? Comparing movements for Black lives in Colombia and South Africa, does participant diversity boost or undercut mobilization? And does mobilization of identity explain how indigenous Bolivians ejected U.S. corporations and scored lasting victories against the white power structure? This advanced research seminar engages theories that seek to explain the origins and development of movements, including LGBTQ+ movements struggling to avoid deradicalization in Germany, feminist organizations in Nicaragua navigating tensions between autonomy and agenda-setting, mobilization of Brazilian prisoners resisting pandemic lockdowns within lockdowns, and artists making visible the erased contributions of Kenyan women to the global climate justice movement. Students planning to conduct social movements research while studying away may write a research prospectus to launch that field research project.
Sophomore standing or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 Credits)
LATI 342Urban Politics of Latin America4
Cross-Listed as POLI 342 In Sao Paulo and Mexico City, how are multi-racial coalitions challenging police violence and housing segregation? Has Bogota’s election of an openly gay mayor made the city safer for LGBTQ+ Colombians? And in El Alto, how did a 34-year old Aymara woman build a coalition of street unions and Bolivian youth to beat the party establishment and capture City Hall? Democratic elections have penetrated metropolitan Latin America, offering excluded communities new avenues for making demands. In this research seminar, we will explore how the changing rules of political competition affect urban struggles around representation, gender inequality, housing discrimination, and the informal sector. The course examines mayoral elections and urban movements in cities such as Caracas, Lima, Medellin, Montevideo, Porto Alegre, and Santiago de Chile. Student responsibilities include seminar leadership roles, a research project, and presentation of your findings in a public colloquium.
SPAN 309 or consent of the instructor. Generally taught alternate years. (4 Credits)
LATI 381Transnational Latin Americas4
Cross-Listed as INTL 381 and HIST 381 Examines critical and primary literatures concerning the transnational, hemispheric, Atlantic, and Pacific cultures that have intersected in Latin America since the early colonial era, with a particular focus on the 19th and 20th centuries.
An integrative, research-oriented capstone which gathers senior majors of diverse regional and disciplinary focuses during the final semester. A faculty convener will integrate a schedule of issue-area seminars, faculty methods and topics presentations, talks by visiting speakers, and student reports on research projects. The course culminates in a lengthy final paper. Every fall.
Approval of program director and permission of instructor and department chair. (4 Credits)
LATI 611Independent Project1
An opportunity for advanced students to pursue an independent research project of some scale under the supervision of a sponsoring faculty member. Such a project must begin with a brief written proposal to the faculty supervisor and the program director.
Junior standing and permission of instructor and department chair. Every spring. (1 Credits)
LATI 612Independent Project2
An opportunity for advanced students to pursue an independent research project of some scale under the supervision of a sponsoring faculty member. Such a project must begin with a brief written proposal to the faculty supervisor and the program director.
Junior standing and permission of instructor and department chair. Every spring. (2 Credits)
LATI 613Independent Project3
An opportunity for advanced students to pursue an independent research project of some scale under the supervision of a sponsoring faculty member. Such a project must begin with a brief written proposal to the faculty supervisor and the program director.
Junior standing and permission of instructor and department chair. Every spring. (3 Credits)
LATI 614Independent Project4
An opportunity for advanced students to pursue an independent research project of some scale under the supervision of a sponsoring faculty member. Such a project must begin with a brief written proposal to the faculty supervisor and the program director.
