54 courses with the subject LALS, 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.
LALS 104Young People, Gun Violence, and Human Rights1
The First-Year Writing Seminar adds to students’ understandings of young people, human rights, and gun violence in the United States and in Central America. In the first part of the course students engage in the debates around gun control, school safety, and the US’s failure to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international human rights treaty designed to protect the human rights of young people. In the second part of the course we examine several Central American nations where armed violence has had a dramatic impact on the lives of young people, and been a contributing factor of forced displacement, loss of education, and migration to the US. An ongoing and significant consideration in the course is the role of youth-led advocacy and legislative efforts around gun control legislation, as well as safe gun education, firearm buy-back programs, and violence prevention projects. Tracey Holland. Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ENST 164 and HIST 164 ) This course explores the history of Latin America by centering the environment. Beginning with examples in the ancient Americas and continuing through the colonial and national periods, this course explores how human ideas about the environment, along with tangible regimes for exploiting “natural” resources, have shaped the history of Latin America. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions cover topics such as: the flora and fauna of the ancient Americas; organisms and landscapes of the “Spanish Conquest”; ranching, farming, and export agriculture; mining, drilling, and extractivist industries; hurricanes, volcanoes, and “natural” disasters; urbanization, pollution, and climate change; and debates over environmental protections and human rights. Accordingly, this course addresses the questions: what discourses, representations, and ideas have shaped the meaning of the environment in Latin America? How has the environment shaped broader meanings of Latin America itself? And what is at stake today for the people of Latin America today as governments, corporations, and NGOs take different approaches to environmental issues? Daniel Mendiola. Two 2-hour periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HIST 205 ) This intensive allows students to gain hands-on experience with Spanish language oral history by participating in “Somos Vecinos,” a project that creates space for Latin American people in Poughkeepsie to share experiences, memories, and ideas by recounting life stories. It explores how vital they are to the city and its neighboring communities. The intensive invites students as well as others to engage with the beauty, depth, and complexity of Poughkeepsie’s Latin American community by preserving and listening to these stories. Students contribute to the ”Somos Vecinos” project by conducting interviews, editing audio recordings, transcribing, translating, and uploading these products to a digital platform for public access. Given that Spanish is the primary language for interviews, advanced Spanish competency or near native fluency is required. Daniel Mendiola. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
LALS 214Transnational Perspectives on Women and Work1
(Same as SOCI 214 and WFQS 214 ) This class is a theoretical and empirical exploration of women’s paid and unpaid labor. We examine how women’s experiences as workers — across space, place, and time — interact with larger economic structures, historical moments, and narratives about womanhood. We pay particular attention to the ways in which race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship intersect and shape not only women’s relationships to work and family, but to other women workers (at times very differently geopolitically situated). We are attentive to the construction of women workers, the work itself, and the meanings women give to production, reproduction, and the global economy. Light Carruyo. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ANST 216 and ANTH 216 ) This Intensive focuses on language revitalization and documentation efforts of endangered languages, and also of languages that are undervalued or discriminated against by majority populations. Students can develop their own project, or work with the instructor in an ongoing digital humanities project that focuses on Mesoamerican languages. David Tavárez.
Permission of the instructor. One 90-minute period. Course Format: INT
Offered
Spring
LALS 222The Politics of Borders1
(Same as ANST 222 and HIST 222 ) This course interrogates the normative construction of nation-state borders and the meaning of nation-state borders. We do so from the United States/Mexico border, and utilize a comparative approach, relating Latinx Studies to critical Indigenous feminist perspectives. While focused mainly on the United States landmass the course also critically foregrounds Native/Indigenous land and sovereignty to reconceptualize the United States as a settler colonial, imperial state. Utilizing the knowledges of Latinx and Indigenous thinkers, students trace the construction of modern borders and productively reframe assumptions around immigration/migration, citizenship, nationalism and indigenismo/Indigeneity. Raquel Madrigal. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 227 ) Studies in Latin American literary and cultural production from the European invasion to the crisis of the colonial system. The Department.
One course above HISP 206 . Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
LALS 230¿Latinidad=Debt+Hustle?1
(Same as ANST 230 and ENGL 230 ) Students and instructor collaborate to identify and dialogue with the growing but still disputed archive of Latine/Latinx/Latina/o Literature. The categories “Latine,” “Latinx,” and “Latina/o” present us then with our first challenge: exactly what demographic do these categories isolate (or create)? How are these categories different from “Hispanic,” “Chicanx,” “Raza,” “Mestizo,” “Boricua,” or “Brown,” to name only a few? Rather than solidify a universal definition for “Latinidad,” our conversations will seek to unsettle (or reframe) conventional understandings of racial and ethnic identities as immutable. Our destabilization of “Latinidad” is productive; in other words, it treats “Latinidad” as dynamic, complex, robust with possibility. Our approach to the question of “Latinidad,” in turn, serves to re-orient the critical dispositions we bring to the category “literature.” How have notions of literariness, canon, belles-lettres, and disciplinarity obscured or marginalized the polyvocal richness of Latine/Latinx cultural production? How do forms like corrido, choteo, spoken word, and testimonio disrupt and enrich our study of “literature.” Miguel Algarín, founder of the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, once proposed that debt and hustle constitute prototypical experiences of survival for the Nuyorican. Algarín concluded that “newness” presented the only viable alternative to “eternal debt” and “living by hustle”: “The poet has to invent a new language, a new tradition of communication.” “Nuyorican” exceeds state taxonomies and cannot be reduced to data recorded by the census or on “papers.” Algarín offers “hustle” and “debt” as metaphysical conceits that imbue Nuyorican “ethnicity” (if we can call it that still) with mutability, aliveness. In similar spirit, this class invites students to seek aliveness in “Latinidad.” How might the metaphor of “eternal debt” help us identify legacies of colonialism that live and breathe in the present, manifested in ways both collective and brutally uneven? How does that same metaphor qualify experiences of independence, freedom, sovereignty, and fugitivity that more conventional understandings of ethnicity flatten or obscure? What does it mean to think of identity as a form of indebtedness or a hustle? Algarín helps initiate our inquiry but does not limit its course. The breadth of the materials and representations covered demands that we also situate “Latinidad” within contexts of hot and cold wars; US foreign and economic policies; seasonal migrant labor; shadow economies; the global feminization of labor; and the commercialization of land and natural resources. These factors contribute to massive displacements of people rarely acknowledged by politicians or corporate media. Much of the literature and cultural production we review contests prevailing narratives about “immigration” (an inadequate catchall that obscures more complex stories). Major frameworks and themes helping us to complicate the story of “Latinidad” include: borderlands; criminalization, carcerality, and deportation; legal vs. cultural citizenships; code-switching; Indigeneity; Afro-Latinidad; contested or shifting racial formations; anxious hybridities; diaspora; queerness; gender politics; intergenerational conflict and silences; and an ambivalent sense of loss (differently articulated as trauma, nostalgia, forgetting, mourning, nationalism, or assimilation). Assigned texts may include work by Elizabeth Acevedo, Gloria Anzaldúa, Bad Bunny, Sandra Cisneros, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Jenine Capó Crucet, Jaime Cortez, Jacquira Díaz, Junot Díaz, Denice Frohman, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roy G. Guzmán, Daisy Hernández, Victor Hernández Cruz, John Leguizamo, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Nicholasa Mohr, Miguel Muñoz, Achy Obejas, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Miguel Piñero, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Gary Soto, Piri Thomas, Justin Torres, and Helena Maria Viramontes. Hiram Perez. This course fulfills the REGS requirement for the English major. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
LALS 235Picturing Transnational Indigenous Sovereignty in the Americas1
(Same as ANST 235 ) This course examines identities, memories, and social movements of and by Indigenous peoples depicted through film and video in Turtle Island and Abya Yala (North and Latin America). Students learn about visual representations, Indigenous sovereignty, and Indigenous futures by juxtaposing Indigenous communities past and present struggles. They also critically analyze the different actors, such as nation-states, non-profit organizations, individuals, and collectives, that produce dramas, independent films, and documentaries. This course addresses several questions: How has the discourse around Indigeneity transformed from the 20 th century to the 21 st century? How does the nation-state inform certain Indigenous representations? How can we think about Indigeneity in terms of self-performativity, autonomy, and solidarity instead of authenticity? How do Indigenous communities challenge authenticity and self-represent themselves through visual mediums, which they often seek to decolonize? Candy Martinez. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as FILM 236 ) This course investigates the history and theory of several filmic traditions in Latin America, from the silent era until the present. The films are discussed within specific cultural, social, infrastructural, and political contexts, with special attention to how these contexts overlap and diverge in relation to each other, and to the films. We study important artistic developments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay using both features and shorts, theatrically exhibited and non-theatrical films. The readings pair scholarly works with artists’ manifestos to investigate the recurrence of specific genres (political cinema; magical realism; melodrama) and situate the socio-cultural roles played by artistic schools including Brazilian Cinema Novo, the Cuban school of revolutionary documentary, the Colombian Tropical Gothic, the Nuevo Cine Argentino, and the recent infiltration of Hollywood by Latin American filmmakers, such as Pablo Larraín and Mexico’s “three amigos.” Assignments for this class include a written or video essay comparing two different filmic traditions, a contextual research group presentation, and a research paper that features a close reading of the aesthetics of one or more films. Fabio Andrade.
FILM 175 , FILM 209 , or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods accompanied by film screenings. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
LALS 240Cultural Localities1
Detailed study of the cultures of people living in a particular area of the world, including their politics, economy, worldview, religion, expressive practices, and historical transformations. Included is a critical assessment of different approaches to the study of culture. Areas covered vary from year to year and may include Europe, Africa, North America, India and the Pacific. May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed. Colleen Cohen.
Subject
LALS
Credits (min)
1
Credits (max)
1
Credit unit
unit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
(Same as AFRS 242 , GEOG 242 and INTL 242 ) The vast Amazon Basin lies mainly in Brazil, the giant of Latin America. Along with the bordering Andean countries, Brazil’s regional development programs have aggressively expanded transportation, in-migration, agribusiness, and resource extraction into Amazonia. Related deforestation has increasingly transformed the Amazon into soy plantations and savanna grasslands. Besides putting local environments and populations at risk, including native and migrant residents, the regional transformation has changed climates near and far. This course investigates the interrelated political ecologies of Amazonia, Brazil, South America, and world systems. Specific topics for study include the legacies of colonial Brazil; race relations, Afro-Brazilian cultures, and Indigenous peoples; urban-industrial growth and national integration; environmental devastation and sustainability; and long-run prospects for more equitable development in Brazil. Brian Godfrey.
A previous course in social sciences. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
LALS 243Mesoamerican Worlds1
(Same as ANTH 243 ) A survey of the ethnography, history, and politics of indigenous societies with deep historical roots in regions now located in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This course explores the emergence of Mesoamerican states with a vivid cosmology tied to warfare and human sacrifice, the reconfiguration of these societies under the twin burdens of Christianity and colonial rule, and the strategies that some of these communities adopted in order to preserve local notions of identity and to cope with (or resist) incorporation into nation-states. After a consideration of urbanization, socio-religious hierarchies, and writing and calendrical systems in pre-contact Mesoamerica, we will focus on the adaptations within Mesoamerican communities resulting from their interaction with an evolving colonial order. The course also investigates the relations between native communities and the Mexican and Guatemalan nation-states, and examines current issues—such as indigenous identities in the national and global spheres, the rapport among environmental policies, globalization, and local agricultural practices, and indigenous autonomy in the wake of the EZLN rebellion. Work on Vassar’s Mesoamerican collection, and a final research paper and presentation is required; the use of primary sources (in Spanish or in translation) is encouraged. David Tavárez. Two 75-minute periods.
LALS 244Topics in Feminist and Queer Politics and Activism1
This course introduces students to various methodologies of gender studies and feminist analysis, with an emphasis on feminist and queer histories of knowledge formation, social activism, and cultural engagement. What kind of movements, societal transformations, kinship relations, cultural spaces, or political structures have feminist and queer actors pursued and brought into being? Differences within and around feminist and queer movements will be explored, as we consider the complicated paths from theory to praxis in global and postcolonial settings.
One prior course in WFQS or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
LALS 246The U.S.-Mexico Border: Capital, State, and Nation1
(Same as GEOG 246 ) Born in large part of violence, conquest and dispossession, the United States-Mexico border region has evolved over almost two centuries into a site of intense economic growth and trade, demographic expansion, ethno-cultural interaction, and political geographic conflict. The course focuses on these processes over space and time as they relate to capitalist production, state-making, and nation-building on both sides of the international divide. In doing so, the course considers the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a region, one characterized by dynamic transboundary ties and myriad forms of socio-spatial difference. Joseph Nevins. Joseph Nevins Two 75-minute periods.
(Same as EDUC 251 ) This class examines the role that community organizations and community organizers play and can play in affecting school change. The class focuses on learning about past and current partnerships between various educational agencies and community organizations and community organizers. The class puts us in touch with community organizations and community organizers that launched campaigns for educational change in their communities to learn from their challenges and successes. A special emphasis is placed on Chicano community organizing in education. Jaime Del Razo. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as SOCI 253 ) Immigration to the U.S. since the 1970s has been characterized by a marked and unprecedented increase in the diversity of new immigrants. Unlike the great migrations from Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s, most of the immigrants who have arrived in the U.S. in the last four decades have come from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean. New immigration patterns have had a significant impact on the racial and ethnic composition and stratification of the American population, as well as the meaning of American identity itself. Immigrants and their families are also being transformed in the process, as they come into contact with various institutional contexts that can facilitate, block, and challenge the process of incorporation into the U.S. This course examines the impact of these new immigration patterns by focusing on the 16.4 million children in the U.S. who have at least one immigrant parent. Since 1990, children of immigrants - those born in the U.S. as well as those who are immigrants themselves - have doubled and have come to represent 23% of the population of minors in the U.S. In this course we study how children of immigrants are reshaping America, and how America is reshaping them, by examining key topics such as the impact of immigration on family structures, gender roles, language maintenance, academic achievement, and identity, as well as the impact that immigration reforms have had on access to higher education, employment, and political participation. This course provides an overview of the experiences of a population that is now a significant proportion of the U.S. population, yet one that is filled with contradictions, tensions and fissures and defies simple generalizations. Eréndira Rueda. Not offered in 2026/27.
LALS 254Memory and Justice in Latin America and North America1
(Same as ANST 254 ) This course seeks to understand the social and political movements of feminist Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities through frameworks of cultural memory, collective trauma, and collective healing. Students compare, contrast, and link the inequalities in countries in North America (United States and Canada) and Latin America. Students in the class consider the discourse of memory and the various actors who influence and defy accounts of nation-state led narratives. This course validates individual and collective forms of witnessing atrocities but also seeks to complicate notions of witnessing. Besides privileging testimonies of events, it also considers what it means for generations not directly impacted by catastrophic events to remember, reflect, and be affected by the past. Students contextualize histories and memories through a lens that questions the role of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age. Candy Martinez. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as INTL 255 ) This course explores competing visions of economic globalization, and uses these distinct frameworks to analyze the meaning, causes, extent, and consequences of globalization, with a particular focus on the relationships among global, national and local economic phenomena. What do we mean by globalization? What are the effects of globalization on growth, inequality, and the environment? How might international economic policy and the particular form(s) of globalization that it promotes help to explain the pace and form of urbanization? Who benefits from globalization, and who might be hurt? Why do economists and others disagree about the answers to these and related questions? This course explores some of the ways that interdisciplinary analysis might enrich our understanding of economic globalization. Timothy Koechlin. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27.
LALS 256Bilingualism and/in K-12 Public Education1
(Same as EDUC 256 and URBS 256 ) Learning in schools where the language of instruction is new presents a challenge familiar to young immigrants and refugees across the globe. This affects their educational achievement, as well as their sense of inclusion and belonging in their new communities. This course examines the issue of education for English Language Learners through a field based experience. The hands-on component of the course is paired with readings that draw from bilingual education, critical theories of pedagogy, education policy, migration,, and education for social change. A group research and writing project is intended to highlight the academic needs of local ELLs, to examine the current instructional models for bilingual students. The course is open to all Vassar students interested in (a) community-based learning as a tool for social change; (b) learning about the experiences of bilingual students in Poughkeepsie schools; and (c) gaining practical experience researching bilingual education policy. Tracey Holland. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ANTH 257 and INTL 257 ) How have early global (colonial) and late global (post- or neo-colonial) states formulated language policies, and to what degree have their subjects conformed to or resisted these attempts? How does language use relate to the notion of belonging to colonial, national, local and/or globalized domains? This course offers a survey of anthropological, historical, and linguistic approaches to these questions through a consideration of language contact in colonial and neo-colonial situations, a comparison of linguistic policies upheld by empires, nation-states and transnational processes, and the conflict between language policy and local linguistic ideologies. The course addresses case studies from the Americas, Europe, and Asia that cover the range between institutional language reform and individual strategies of accommodation and resistance as they relate to early and contemporary forms of global expansion from the sixteenth century onwards. David Tavárez. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as POLI 258 ) Drawing from political processes across several Latin American countries, this course focuses on conceptual debates regarding political representation and participation, political institutions, political culture, and political economy in the region. A major theme is inequality. The course examines historical-structural patterns, relationships among social, economic, and political conditions at the national, sub-national and regional levels, and important social and political actors and institutions. The course also examines the evolution of US roles in Latin America. Katherine Hite. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as PHIL 262 ) In 1942, Leopoldo Zea wrote that, “What belongs to us, what is properly Latin American, is not to be found in pre-Columbian culture […] our way of thinking, our worldview, is similar to the European. […] Still, we do not feel it to be our own”. The purpose of this course is to examine the root of this claim and its status, as well as the anxiety it provokes. We begin by studying available pre-colonial sources from the Americas, including a peek into Aztec and Mayan philosophy, with a goal both toward adequate interpretation and toward seeking echoes of this early thinking in later Latin American writing. We then move into colonial-era philosophy, where the issues of emancipation and the rights of indigenous groups and women were playing out on a global scale. This unit includes readings on Bartolomé de las Casas, Sor Juana, Toussaint Louverture, and Simón Bolívar. We then do a unit on the identity movement in the 19th and 20th century, where various minds were grappling with the existentialist problem and (im)possibility of forging a national, racial, or ethnic identity. Readings might include José Martí, Samuel Ramos, Leopoldo Zea, Franz Fanon, Ofelia Schutte, and Gloria Anzaldúa. We end with a discussion of whether there is a distinctive Latinx philosophy, and what philosophy in Latin America looks like today. Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa.
At least one course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
LALS 263Conquest and Borderlands in Colonial Latin America1
(Same as HIST 263 ) This course explores the history of colonial Latin America by centering conquests and borderlands. Beginning with examples in the ancient Americas and continuing through the end of the 18th century, this course explores the ideas, practices, and experiences that shaped the long-term processes of conquering territory, as well as the parallel processes of creating “borderlands” in the places that conquering powers failed to reach. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions cover topics such as: the Aztec Empire and its war with the Spanish; the Canary Islands and early precedents of Spanish conquests; the Philippines and Latin America’s Asian borderlands; the indigenous Comanche Empire and North American borderlands; the afro-indigenous Mosquito Confederation and Caribbean borderlands; and the indigenous Mapuche Nation and South American borderlands. Accordingly, this class addresses the questions: what is a conquest? What are borderlands? How have conquests shaped the history of Latin America? How do borderlands call into question traditional narratives of conquest? And what is at stake in questioning conquest narratives today? Daniel Mendiola. Two 2-hour periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
LALS 268Religion, Repression, and Resistance in Latin America1
(Same as ANTH 268 and HIST 268 ) What was it like to live in a society where crimes of thought and religious transgressions were prosecuted and punished? How did various populations confront and resist inquisitorial activities? What is the legacy of the Inquisition in the Americas? This course addresses these and other questions through a focus on the Latin American Inquisition and Extirpation (ecclesiastic attempts to reform or destroy Precolumbian indigenous religions). The course tracks the emergence of Inquisition tribunals in Mexico City, Lima, and Cartagena after 1571, and the Catholic Church’s prosecution of indigenous idolatry and sorcery. It focuses both on trends in prosecution, torture, and punishment, and on the dynamic responses of those who were either targets or collaborators: indigenous peoples, Jews, Africans, female healers, people of mixed descent, and Protestants. Towards the end of the course, based on students’ interests, we also review other select case studies of religious control and resistance in Latin America. Students proficient in Spanish or Portuguese are encouraged to work with primary sources. David Tavárez. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as EDUC 270 ) This introductory immigration course is about undocumented people in the U.S. and will be situated within a historical, academic, legal, political, social, cultural, and economic context. The course will take a historical look at immigration law and legal enforcement, with a particular focus on the (mis)construction and criminalization of undocumented immigrants. By examining how the concept of undocumented/unauthorized immigration has been created, we will seek to understand the ways that this immigration status works to unjustly exclude and exploit undocumented people. Course content will consider the array of social institutions that are complicit in this work (e.g. schools, governments, agencies, industries, media, public opinion) and how undocumented people resist these forms of oppression and dominance that are exerted by these institutions and entities. An emphasis will be given to undocumented immigration from Latin America especially Mexico given the large percentage (~79% & 51%, respectively) of undocumented immigration that comes from that region however, it’s important to note that being undocumented is not relegated to just one race/ethnicity/nation of people. Also, a special focus of this course will examine how undocumented students navigate K-12 schooling experiences and pathways to college. Key topics will include but not limited to current legislation like DACA & DREAM Act; current campaigns like Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Undocumented, Unapologetic, and Unafraid campaigns; immigration industrial complex; the theoretical intersectionality of racism and nativism with other forms of oppression; and the global, capitalist, economic forces that create both the need to migrate and the need for immigrant labor. Jaime Del Razo. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
LALS 271Hello, Dear Enemy: Mounting an Exhibition on Children’s Experiences of War and Displacement1
(Same as EDUC 271 , INTL 271 , MEDS 271 and WFQS 271 ) At a time when the world is witnessing the largest displacement of people since WWII, due in significant measure to armed conflict, this course examines select case studies (both past and present) of armed conflict and their consequences for children. Journalists, photographers, and writers of children’s literature have done much to raise awareness about children and armed conflict, and to treat them in such a way that audiences develop understanding, empathy, and solidarity with children affected by armed conflict. A principal aim of the course is to study the topics of armed conflict and displacement through photography, photojournalism, and children’s literature, and then to mount exhibitions both on campus and a traveling exhibition in the Vassar Collaboratory. Our work is enriched by the study of human rights and humanitarian laws and policies concerning children affected by armed conflict, as well as by interaction with visiting artists, educators, and children’s rights experts from the United Nations and other international organizations. The course focuses on the impact of armed conflict on girls, and includes such topics as displacement, education, child soldiers, child labor, birth registration, and sexual violence. Tracey Holland. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 274 ) It admits of three modes, according to each student’s preference. The course includes periodic meetings where the texts are collectively discussed. A) Chronicle: the course hinges around an ongoing event (political, historical, etc.) chosen by each student. Such event is researched as it develops during the semester, in depth and thoroughly. The end result is an annotated dossier of primary and secondary sources and the writing of a chronicle based upon some of the models studied (García Márquez, Rodolfo Walsh, Germán Castro Caycedo, Alma Guillermo Prieto, etc.) B) Fiction: the course is geared toward completion of a piece of writing previously agreed upon between each student and me (collection of poems or short stories, novelistic fragment, journal, short film and so on). Writing models and problematics are discussed and serve as a springboard for each student’s project. C) Testimonial Writing: the course allows for crafting a piece of testimonial writing (of one’s own or someone else’s experience). Writing strategies are derived from an understanding of the genre’s logic and its problematization. In all modalities, the final text can take the form of an audiovisual product (the student’s technical knowledge for carrying on such a project is presupposed). Mario Cesareo.
HISP 216 or HISP 219 or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2026/27 Course Format: INT
LALS 275Transnational Childhoods1
(Same as SOCI 275 ) This course explores children’s presence and participation in processes of international migration. A particular focus of the course is on the factors that shape chain and circulating migration and the complex decision-making processes within families when children are left behind, sent back to a home country, or take the lead in chain migration. We examine how factors such as globalization, displacement, family separation, and transnational care networks shape contemporary childhoods among immigrant families. Students analyze how children navigate complex identities, help sustain familial and cultural ties across distances, and respond to the challenges and opportunities of living in more than one cultural or national context. Eréndira Rueda. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HIST 278 and WFQS 278 ) This course explores the history of Latin America by centering women. Beginning with examples in the ancient Americas and continuing through the colonial and national periods, this course explores how the ideas, representations, experiences, and actions of women have shaped Latin American history. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions cover topics such as: women in Aztec and other ancient societies; “La Malinche” and women of the Conquest; witchcraft and women in colonial religion; Sor Juana, Gabriela Mistral, and women of Latin American literature; women and 20th-c. activism; and indigenous women in Latin America today. Accordingly, this course addresses the questions: what cultural, economic, and political conditions have shaped how women in Latin America experienced the world? How have women had agency in shaping the meaning of Latin America? And what is at stake for Latin American women today in debates over issues such as economic development, migration, and human rights? Daniel Mendiola. Two 2-hour periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 279 ) The current climate crisis urges us to review how we interact with the environment. From an Indigenous perspective, the environment is nothing less than the land and all the diverse life forms, including humans, that sprout from them (the land as “they” and not a lifeless “it”). In this intensive, we critically reflect on our relationship to the land by engaging with land-based pedagogies practiced by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) scholars, farmers, and educators. This intensive includes discussion sessions and hands-on activities co-created, co-facilitated, and in collaboration with the education team of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project. Written and oral assignments are conducted in Spanish. Interested students should contact Prof. Montserrat Madariaga-Caro.
0.5 to 1 unit(s) Individual or group field projects or internships. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. Open to all students. The Department. By special permission. Course Format: INT
Individual or group reading and writing project, based on substantial reading lists supervised by the instructor in consultation with students. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. Offered pass/fail option as well. Open to all students. The Department. By special permission. Course Format: INT
0.5 to 1 unit(s) Individual or group research project. May be elected during the college year. Open to all students. The Department. By special permission. Course Format: INT
A 1-unit thesis written in the fall or spring semester. Students may elect this option only in exceptional circumstances and by special permission of the program director. The Department. Course Format: INT
US Latino/a studies programs have their origins in the joining of university students with grassroots organizers to create multidisciplinary curricula and initiatives recognizing the contributions of Latino communities. A senior project reflects that spirit. In conjunction with two faculty members, one of whom must come from the LALS steering committee, students formulate a project topic based on continuing community-based work they have done during their Vassar years. The project might be rooted in the local Latino/a community, or from sustained work in Latin America. Students submit a proposal and bibliography, develop a work plan, and follow the same schedule as thesis writers. The senior project must go beyond a fieldwork experience, and requires a well-defined written analytical component. The Department. Yearlong course 303- LALS 304 . Course Format: INT
US Latino/a studies programs have their origins in the joining of university students with grassroots organizers to create multidisciplinary curricula and initiatives recognizing the contributions of Latino communities. A senior project reflects that spirit. In conjunction with two faculty members, one of whom must come from the LALS steering committee, students formulate a project topic based on continuing community-based work they have done during their Vassar years. The project might be rooted in the local Latino/a community, or from sustained work in Latin America. Students submit a proposal and bibliography, develop a work plan, and follow the same schedule as thesis writers. The senior project must go beyond a fieldwork experience, and requires a well-defined written analytical component. This will serve as a 1-unit/1-semester option for a Latin American Studies Project. Special permission. The Department.
Special permission This will serve as a 1-unit/1-semester option for a Latin American Studies Project. Special permission. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall or Spring
LALS 335Beyond Survival:Latinx Immigrant and Transnational Latin American Communities’ Healthcare & Wellness1
This seminar course examines how immigration policies, labor conditions, displacement, and inequalities contribute to the mental health and emotional injuries of Latinx immigrants and their family members, including historically vulnerable populations. Students learn about social determinants of health and ethical research methodologies to research migrant health. Students write and prepare a research proposal that explores a health issue that affects a Latinx immigrant community in the United States. Students develop ideas for an accessible community-based resource to understand better and improve health conditions. The course is divided into three parts. In Part I, students review the political histories of countries in Latin America and the U.S. policies that cause people from these places to migrate. Students also spend time focusing on the experiences of diasporic Indigenous communities in the United States and the racial bias they confront in their native communities and the United States.They acknowledge the stereotypes about immigrants and how scholars demystify mistaken and harmful ideas. In Part II, students spend time unpacking immigrants’ health inequalities and structural vulnerabilities. Students learn about the social determinants and the policies that make it difficult for immigrants to access health resources. Situating Latinx immigrants’ lack of political and citizenship rights, they consider how bureaucratic processes contribute to stress and impact medical adherence rates. In Part III, students think about the socio-emotional consequences of immigration and the influence of social structures, including gender and family. They consider social-justice-oriented methodologies for researching immigrant health especially considering adequate sources for Indigenous communities, who possess epistemologies of illness and healing. They also read about the most recent global approaches that are especially useful to understand in times of pandemics, environmental and social changes. Candy Martinez. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ANST 352 and ANTH 352 ) This course addresses a selection of creation narratives, historical accounts, poems, and other genres produced by indigenous authors from Pre-Columbian times to the present, using historical, linguistic and ethnographic approaches. We examine the use of non-alphabetic and alphabetic writing systems, study poetic and rhetorical devices, and examine indigenous historical consciousness and sociopolitical and gender dynamics through the vantage point of these works. Other topics include language revitalization, translation issues, and the rapport between linguistic structure and literary form. The languages and specific works to be examined are selected in consultation with course participants. They may include English or Spanish translations of works in Nahuatl, Zapotec, Yucatec and K’iche’ Maya, Quechua, Tupi, Aymara, and other indigenous languages of Latin America. David Tavárez. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 353 and MEDS 353 ) Digital media are ubiquitous. Through them we communicate, inform ourselves, organize our lives, watch one another, self-soothe and invent ourselves. Digital media are both central to struggles for social justice and at the same time, in the hands of corporate and state agents, weapons against these struggles. This course explores how the history, physical infrastructure, political economy and symbolic and affective meanings in media-scapes across Latin America, the Caribbean, Mexico and Spain are crucial for understanding digital culture and its impact on us. Topics studied include Indigenous digital culture; digital literacy; fake news; social media and social movements; gendered, racialized and classed identities in online communities; (dis)embodiment; the networked self; and border surveillance technologies. We analyze a range of media texts including novels, films, theoretical essays, manifestos, archives and multi-media born-digital content. Taught in Spanish. Eva Woods.
HISP 216 and one course above 216. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
LALS 355Ritual Language1
(Same as ANTH 355 ) Since it extends well beyond religion, cosmology, and politics, ritual language is a multifarious beast. Whether speakers summon ancestors back to Earth, pray to sacred beings, pursue political influence through authoritative oratory, or produce patterned gossip in social/mass media, they all deploy ritual speech. This seminar provides an advanced introduction to anthropological, linguistic, historical, religious, and political approaches to ritual language. David Tavárez. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HIST 363 ) This course examines the creation and proliferation of national bordering regimes throughout the Americas. Beginning in the late colonial period and continuing to the present, the course evaluates how the meanings and practices of borders have changed over time, as well as how the borders have impacted the lives and livelihoods of real people. Class materials draw from a range of academic, literary, and primary sources, and class discussions will cover topics such as: the role of borders and migration in creating nation states; the role of Asian exclusion in changing the meaning of borders throughout the Americas; the evolution of migration enforcement tactics the targeting of asylum seekers; migrant caravans and the history of forced migration in Central America; grass roots efforts at protecting migrants; and alternative approaches to borders based on free migration and universal rights. Accordingly, this course addresses the questions: why has constraining migration come to be one of the most salient meanings of borders today? How has this affected people? How have people in different places and times contested borders? And what is at stake in how we construct borders today? Daniel Mendiola. Two 2-hour periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 374 ) It admits of three modes, according to each student’s preference. The course includes periodic meetings where the texts are collectively discussed (Previous Requisite: one course at the 220 level or special permission by me.). A) Chronicle: the course hinges around an ongoing event (political, historical, etc.) chosen by each student. Such event is researched as it develops during the semester, in depth and thoroughly. The end result is an annotated dossier of primary and secondary sources and the writing of a chronicle based upon some of the models studied (García Márquez, Rodolfo Walsh, Germán Castro Caycedo, Alma Guillermo Prieto, etc.) B) Fiction: the course is geared toward completion of a piece of writing previously agreed upon between each student and me (collection of poems or short stories, novelistic fragment, journal, short film and so on). Writing models and problematics will be discussed and serve as a springboard for each student’s project. C) Testimonial Writing: the course allows for crafting a piece of testimonial writing (of one’s own or someone else’s experience). Writing strategies are derived from an understanding of the genre’s logic and its problematization. In all modalities, the final text can take the form of an audiovisual product (the student’s technical knowledge for carrying on such a project is presupposed). Mario Cesareo.
HISP 216 or HISP 219 or permission of the instructor. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
LALS 375Unaccompanied Migrant Children1
(Same as SOCI 375 ) Child and youth migration has become an increasingly visible and recognized part of 21st century global migration flows. This course explores the complex and evolving phenomenon of child and youth migration, with a particular focus on unaccompanied minors. Adult perspectives across platforms - e.g., news media, academic research, and policy debates - often assume that unaccompanied child and youth migrants are passive recipients of adult decisions and routinely represent them as passive victims of exploitation, trafficking, and coercion. This course questions such assumptions by examining the multidimensional nature of unaccompanied child migration, highlighting children’s agency in making migration-related decisions, including those involving work, education, and family strategies. Students engage critically with an array of texts (e.g., memoir, fiction, social science research, and policy frameworks) to analyze the varying experiences of unaccompanied migrant children—both positive and negative—and to understand the broader socio-political contexts shaping their journeys. Eréndira Rueda. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 379 ) The current climate crisis urges us to review how we interact with the environment. From an Indigenous perspective, the environment is nothing less than the land and all the diverse life forms, including humans, that sprout from them (the land as “they” and not a lifeless “it”). In this intensive, we critically reflect on our relationship to the land by engaging with land-based pedagogies practiced by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) scholars, farmers, and educators. This intensive includes discussion sessions and hands-on activities co-created, co-facilitated, and in collaboration with the education team of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project. Written and oral assignments are conducted in Spanish. Montserrat Madariaga-Caro.
HISP 216 or HISP 219 permission of the instructor. Interested students should contact Prof. Montserrat Madariaga-Caro. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: INT
Permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
LALS 386Ghetto Schooling1
(Same as EDUC 386 and SOCI 386 ) In twenty-first century America, the majority of students attend segregated schools. Most white students attend schools where 75% of their peers are white, while 80% of Latino students and 74% of black students attend majority non-white schools. In this course we will examine the events that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and the 60-year struggle to make good on the promises of that ruling. The course will be divided into three parts. In part one, we will study the Brown decision as an integral element in the fight against Jim Crow laws and trace the legal history of desegregation efforts. In part two, we will focus on desegregation policies and programs that enabled the slow move toward desegregation between 1954 and the 1980s. At this point in time, integration efforts reached their peak and 44% of black students in the south attended majority-white schools. Part three of the course will focus on the dismantling of desegregation efforts that were facilitated by U.S. Supreme Court decisions beginning in the 1990s. Throughout the course we will consider the consequences of the racial isolation and concentrated poverty that characterizes segregated schooling and consider the implications of this for today’s K-12 student population, which is demographically very different than it was in the 1960s, in part due to new migration streams from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean. Over the last 40 years, public schools have experienced a 28% decline in white enrollments, with increases in the number of black and Asian students, and a noteworthy 495% increase in Latino enrollments. Eréndira Rueda. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HISP 387 ) A seminar offering in-depth study of topics related to the literary and cultural history of Latin America. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic changes.
Subject
LALS
Credits (min)
1
Credits (max)
1
Credit unit
unit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
may be repeated for credit when the topic changes.
HISP 216 and one course above 216. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall and Spring
LALS 388Latin American Economic Development1
(Same as ECON 388 ) This course examines why many Latin American countries started with levels of development similar to those of the U.S. and Canada but were not able to keep up. The course begins with discussions of various ways of thinking about and measuring economic development and examines the record of Latin American countries on various measures, including volatile growth rates, high income and wealth inequality, and high crime rates. We then turn to an analysis of the colonial and post-Independence period to examine the roots of the weak institutional development than could explain a low growth trajectory. Next, we examine the post WWII period, exploring the import substitution of 1970s, the debt crises of the 1980s, and the structural adjustment of the 1990s. Finally, we look at events in the past decade, comparing and contrasting the experience of different countries with respect to growth, poverty and inequality. Sarah Pearlman.
