Courses

Latina/o Studies courses are interdisciplinary, comparative, and transnational, and include collective research and community-based learning opportunities. We have courses in popular culture, performance studies, visual arts, literature, urban studies, ethnography, history and more! Each semester, faculty invite speakers, performers and artists to visit and contribute to our courses. These guests also give public presentations and meet informally with students, enriching our curriculum and students’ educational experiences.

Latina/o Studies Courses

LATS 105 (F) SEM Latina/o/x Identities: Constructions, Contestations, and Expressions

What, or who, is a Hispanic or Latina/o/x? How have these shifting terms tried to encompass the identities and experiences of such large and diverse groups of peoples? In this course, we focus on the complex nature of “identity,” as we delve into the interdisciplinary field that has emerged to give voice to groups that were too often excluded from or misrepresented in academic disciplines and discourses. Viewing identities as historically and socially constructed, we assess how racial, ethnic, class, and gendered identities take shape within specific contexts in the Hispanic Caribbean and Latin America, as well as in the United States. We examine the impact of (im)migration and the rearticulation of identities in the United States, as we consider that each group has a unique history, settlement pattern, community formation, and transnational activities. Identity is also a contested terrain. As immigrants and migrants arrive, the United States’ policymakers, the media, and others seek to define the “newcomers” along with long-term Latina/o citizens. At the same time, Latinas/os rearticulate, live, assert, and express their own sense of identity. We examine these diverse expressions as they relate to questions of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and national origins.

Taught by: Aurelis Troncoso, Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 205 (S) LEC Latinx Visual Arts

This course introduces students to Latinx visual arts and the histories of the communities from where this artistic production emerges. Latinx art and artists have gained significant attention and inclusion in the art world. For example, the opening of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture reignited interest in Chicana/o art and revamped pressure on peer institutions to diversify their collections, exhibitions, and programming. While this renewed interest is positive, this context runs the risk of framing Latinx art as a new and an emergent category, thus dismissing a longer history of visual arts within Latinx communities across the U.S. This course offers an historically grounded introduction to Latinx visual art by placing the artistic production for the groups included under the label “Latinx” in their social, political and historical contexts. The course provides students with the visual arts vocabulary and theoretical skills to analyze visual art forms including sculptures, murals, posters, performances, and altares, while exploring their relevance to Latinx communities and American art. In debunking the notion of Latinx art as a new phenomenon, students will understand the conditions, struggles, and modes of resistance that inspire Latinx visual arts production in the U.S. since the 19th century and into our contemporary moment. Students will deepen their visual art literacy, enrich their understanding of the histories encapsulated by the term “Latinx,” and develop their appreciation for the visual arts.

Taught by: Kevin Cruz Amaya | Catalog details

LATS 209 (F) SEM Spanish for Heritage Speakers

This course is intended for students of Latino/a heritage. It will address the unique needs of students whose knowledge of Spanish comes primarily from informal and family situations rather than a conventional classroom experience. The goal of the course is to build on and expand students’ existing knowledge of Spanish while developing skills for using the language in more formal/academic contexts. Conducted in Spanish.

Taught by: Carlos Macías Prieto | Catalog details

LATS 210 SEM Introduction to Critical Latinx Indigeneities

Last offered Spring 2026

This seminar course engages Critical Latinx Indigeneity (CLI), a new methodology inspired by Asian American studies and that engages Latinx, Native, and Indigenous studies. CLI considers the presence of Indigenous Latin American immigrants and their descendants in the U.S., with special attention to transnationality and belonging beyond the U.S.-Mexico border. We trace key terms and concepts that address the overlapping colonial structures faced by Latinx Indigenous communities throughout the U.S. Discussion topics include borders and migration, “illegality,” settler colonialism and coloniality, tribal federal state recognition, identity formation, Indigenous futures, and activism through art. Students will critically analyze works from a range of genres and cultural expressions, including fiction, memoirs, zines, and film, along with recent literary and cultural theory works. The course will explore some of the major themes and issues that inform these cultural productions, from the poetry of Afro-Oaxacan poet Alan Pelaez López and a documentary made by Triqui Mexican Americans in California to a novel about Guatemalan Indigenous refugees in Los Angeles by Héctor Tobar and a film about Salvadoran-Americans in New York since the Salvadoran Civil War. This course aims to deepen students’ understanding of the diversity and complexity of Indigenous experiences, highlighting that Indigenous peoples not only reside on ancestral lands but also navigate urban spaces. Students will learn to apply close reading and literary analysis across cultural texts and scholarship foundational to thinking about Indigeneity and Latinidad as two concepts that converge in the US.

Taught by: Itzél Delgado-Gonzalez | Catalog details

LATS 211 (S) SEM Migrant Surveillance

This seminar explores the history of surveillance in the Americas in relation to Latinx migrants in the U.S. and U.S. settler colonialism, spanning the colonial period to the early twenty-first century, with a particular focus on Indigenous populations. How do the histories of barbed wire, fingerprinting, X-rays, immigration documentation, and biometric technologies inform our understanding of U.S. power and management? And how have these technologies produced, racialized, and illegalized the “Latinx body”? Native American, Black, Latinx, and Science and Technology Studies scholars have addressed these questions in their critiques of technology as objective and bias-free. We will explore these questions and topics at the scale of the individual (i.e., from how the body came to be visualized in cameras to the development of X-ray and biometric machines) and of a population (i.e., the reservation system, nation-state borders, and migrant detention centers) to think about how surveillance technologies have impacted Indigenous and migrant peoples and mobilities. Literary and artistic texts may include: Undocuments by John-Michael Rivera; Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain; Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno; X-Ray Visions vs. Invisibility by Noelle Mason; Missing in Brooks Country by Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss; and Cinthya Santos-Briones’ Spaces of Detention. Students will also engage with excerpts by Michael Foucault, Simone Browne, Daniel Nemser, Ana Muñiz, and Felicity Amaya Schaefer.

Taught by: Itzél Delgado-Gonzalez | Catalog details

LATS 222 (F) SEM Ficciones: A Course on Fiction

This seminar is focused on the study of published fiction by Latinx, Latin American, Afro-Diasporic, and other writers of the Global South, paying close attention to how each author employs narrative elements–characterization, plotting, structure, dialogue mechanics, setting, tone, theme–as well as the values and visions expressed.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 225 (F) SEM Latinidades & The Sacred

What defines religion? What constitutes the sacred? How do Latinx communities inform ideas about the sacred? This seminar introduces students to the study of Latinx creolized religious and spiritual practices, with a focus on Afro-Latinx religions and their evolution from the period of transatlantic slavery to the present. Students will explore the linkages between Africa and its diaspora, particularly the transnational spiritual relationships between the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. Through an interdisciplinary approach and Black feminist lens focused on the historical, ethnographical, and philosophical, the course will traverse selected religions and regions, such as Santería in Cuba and Puerto Rico and its respective diaspora in the U.S.; Vodou in Haiti, Dominican Republic, and the U.S.; Candomblé in Brazil; Muslim faith in U.S. Latinx communities; and folk Catholicism and Espiritismo across Latinx geographies. Collectively, we will examine questions of colonization, migration, religion, liberatory practices and formation, queerness, transness, spiritual possession, resistance, and ancestral veneration. Through a combination of lectures, readings, films, and audio recordings, we will explore the historical development, contemporary manifestations, and contentions of these spiritual traditions–their connections and dissimilarities; their impact on visual artists and writers; their relationship to Christianity by way of colonization; and their meaning in the context of the ongoing struggle. This course invites students to imagine and embody sane, inclusive, healthy alternatives to a pervasive model of white supremacy by centering the sacred as a liberatory tool.

Taught by: Aurelis Troncoso | Catalog details

LATS 229 SEM Latinx Solidarities

Last offered Spring 2026

The Latinx community comprises people who trace their ancestry to Latin America, an expansive territory that spans from Mexico to South America, including the islands and archipelagos of the Caribbean. As a result, the Latinx community includes a multiplicity of socio-cultural, historical, and linguistic characteristics. How does one foster solidarity across differences within and beyond this political community? What does it mean to approach Latinx studies as a coalitional space? This class examines how Latinx people have built networks of solidarity and spaces meaningful to them across the United States. We contextualize the challenges faced by Latinx communities in the United States, using geographic frameworks to understand how differences are marked on bodies and spaces, making them feel out of place. We also explore case studies of Latinx placemaking across time and space, illuminating their determination to create culturally relevant spaces for inclusion and well-being. As we move through these case studies, we will consider how different Latin American ethnic groups have transcended national origins to forge collective identity and political power through social movements and cultural expression, highlighting transformative moments of cross-cultural organizing that have shaped the urban fabric of U.S. cities.

Taught by: Laura Rivas | Catalog details

LATS 232 SEM We the People in the Stacks: Democracy and Literatures of Archives

Last offered Spring 2023

“Archives have never been neutral they are the creation of human beings, who have politics in their nature. Centering the goals of liberation is at the heart of the issue” (Jarrett Drake, former digital archivist at Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University). In this generative writing and critical-practice course, students examine the concept of archives through the lens of democratic ideals. A primary focus is on how Latinidades and works of Global South literatures engage archives–their creation and deletions, their contents and omissions, their revelations and concealments. Drawing from the values explored in class, students have opportunities to contribute to existing archival collections and/or to curate their own.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 238 (S) SEM Explorations in Afro-Latinx Studies

This seminar focuses on the knowledge production and central issues surrounding Afro-Latinx Studies. Using the anthology Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, students will come to a deeper understanding of migration, identity, race-making, nationality, place, language, and culture that shape Black Latinx communities within the United States. We begin by asking, “What is Afro-Latinidad?” by examining the colonial legacies of transatlantic slavery; the Haitian Revolution and its hemispheric impact; transnational migrations of Central Americans, Caribbeans, and South Americans to the U.S. and their cultural production. The course provides a rubric for understanding not only the interconnections between diverse Latinx communities in the US but also the racial, socio-political, geographical, and economic differences that complicate the country’s black-white identity politics. This course will expose students to core knowledge about Black Latina/o histories and communities, their internal struggles of visibility and invisibility, as well as the various disciplinary tools through which Afro-Latinx Studies has and continues to evolve.

Taught by: Aurelis Troncoso | Catalog details

LATS 240 SEM Latinx Language Politics: Hybrid Voices

Last offered Spring 2025

In this interdisciplinary course we focus on questions of language and identity in the contemporary cultural production and lived experience of various Latinx communities. We consider the following questions and more: In what ways does Spanish shift as it crosses over to the US from Latin America and the Caribbean? How does Latinx identity challenge traditional notions of the relationship between language, culture, and nation? How does careful attention to language elucidate the dynamics of gender and sexuality in the Latinx community? How are cultural values and material conditions expressed through Latinx linguistic practices? In what ways might Latinx literary and linguistic practices serve as tools for social change? Departing from an overview of common linguistic ideologies, we will examine code-switching or Spanglish, bilingual education, linguistic public policy, the English Only movement, and Latinx linguistic attitudes and creative responses to linguistic colonialism. In addition to a consideration of language and identity grounded in sociolinguistics, anthropolitical linguistics, Latinx studies, and cultural studies, we will survey a variety of literary genres including memoir, novel, and poetry. Both directly and/or indirectly, these texts address Latinx language politics, as well as the broader themes of power, difference, and hybridity.

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 254 (F) SEM Embodied Knowledges: Latinx, Asian American, and Black American Writing on Invisible Disability

This interdisciplinary course assumes an expansive approach towards disability, defining it not exclusively as a legible identity that one can lay claim to, but rather as an identity grounded in one’s relationship to power (Kim and Schalk, 2020). This course centers on the critical role of lived experience as a key site of everyday theorization for the multiply marginalized, and specifically on the ways in which invisibly disabled Latinx, Asian American, and Black American individuals write the self. As scholars in disability studies argue, self-representations of disabled individuals carry the potential for us as a society to move beyond the binary narratives of “tragedy or inspiration” so often associated with disability. Rather, the self-produced narratives of US disabled writers of color offer a much more nuanced portrayal of everyday life with disability/ies for the multiply marginalized. Much like invisible disability itself, these self-representations ultimately refute traditional depictions of disability, and underscore the ways in which the bodymind serves as a rich, albeit often overlooked, site of knowledge. Embodied Knowledges draws on the insights of disability studies, crip studies, anthropology, literary studies, medicine, psychology, education, cultural studies, ethnic studies, American studies, gender and sexuality studies, sociology, and trauma studies. We will examine the works of Latinx, Asian American, and Black American writers and scholars others in relationship to one another, and as points of departure for examining issues such as the relationship between immigration and disability; intergenerational trauma; the impacts of paradigms such as the Model Minority Myth and notions of cultural deficit; passing; the politics of disability disclosure, the paradoxes of invisible disability; invisible disability in academic spaces; the role of culture and categories of difference such as race, gender, class and immigration status in societal approaches to and understandings of invisible disability; and future visions in the realm of disability justice and care work.

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 286 (S) SEM Making Latina/o Communities: U.S. Imperialism and Latinx Resistance, 1848 to the Present

This course explores the long histories of Latina/o/x communities in the United States, asking how and why such diverse groups of Latinxs have become part of the U.S. over such a long period of time. Attentive to U.S. conquest and imperialism, we also consider the underlying tensions in U.S. policies that often recruit Latinas/os/xs as low-wage workers while nativist sentiments call for their exclusion. U.S. immigration, refugee, and deportation policies have long defined who can enter and who is deemed eligible for citizenship and belonging, often creating marginalization and undocumented people in their wake. We begin in 1848, when the U.S. conquered half of Mexico’s territory, creating Mexican American communities by moving the border. In 1898, the U.S. became an empire, turning Puerto Rico into its colony, and in 1917, Congress declared all Puerto Ricans to be U.S. citizens, cementing that colonial relationship and fostering Puerto Rican communities throughout the continental U.S. As U.S. military, political, and economic interventions continued, so did the migrations and the making of communities by peoples from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, as well as Central and South American countries. At the same time, from 1848 to the present, each Latinx group has developed survival, family reunification, and community-building strategies. These efforts have been shaped by the time of arrival, geographic location, internal group dynamics, and the political, social, and economic contexts in which each group settles. Given these long histories and complexities, we ask how and why Latinxs are still too often cast as perpetual foreigners despite having generations of communities in the US, and how and why these histories are too often erased or denigrated.

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 312 SEM Transnational Cartographies

Last offered Fall 2025

Latinx geographies extend beyond national borders, as Latinx people in the U.S. retain connections with the Latin American communities to which they trace their roots. These ties sustain important flows that are both material (such as goods, people, resources) and immaterial (such as ideas, longing, nostalgia, identity). This course maps how transnational migrations affect political imaginaries and landscapes “back home.” We also consider how the experience of migration shapes political imaginaries and landscapes in the context of Latinx communities in the US. Maps are more than technical representations of specific locations; they also reflect social and cultural forces that have been instrumental for the construction of imperial and state projects. The study of transnational cartographies illustrates how dynamics of in-betweenness challenge conventional mappings and the ideologies they uphold. Focusing on U.S.-Caribbean migration, we will explore three key themes shaping the region’s geography: (1) the spread of political ideas centered on emancipatory politics and radical nationalisms; (2) imperial actions and state power that go beyond national borders; and (3) how transnational Latinx scholars rethink the relationship between people and place, particularly in relation to national discourse.

Taught by: Laura Rivas | Catalog details

LATS 313 (F) SEM Gender, Race, and the Power of Personal Aesthetics

This media/cultural studies course focuses on the politics of personal style amongst women of color in the US and around the globe in the digital era. We undertake a comparative, transnational exploration of the ways in which categories of difference such as gender, disability, sexuality, class, and ethno-racial identity inform normative beauty standards and ideas about the body. The class pays particular attention to the ways in which neoliberal capitalism shapes contemporary understandings of gendered bodies and the self. We examine an array of materials from across the disciplines including commercial websites, music videos, photography, histories, film, television, personal narratives, ethnographies, and sociological case studies. Departing from the assumption that personal aesthetics are intimately tied to issues of power and privilege, we engage the following questions, among others: What are some of the everyday functions of personal style among women of color in the US and globally? How do Latina/x, Black, Arab American, and Asian American personal aesthetics reflect the specific circumstances of their creation, and the unique histories of these racialized communities? What role do transnational media and popular culture play in the development and circulation of gendered, raced, and sexualized aesthetic forms? How might the belief in personal style as an activist strategy complicate traditional understandings of feminist political activity? And what do the combined insights of ethnic studies, feminist studies, cultural studies, media studies, queer studies and disability studies contribute to our comprehension of gendered Asian American, Arab American, Black, and Latina/x bodies?

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 315 SEM Research Design in Geography: Social Science Perspectives

Last offered Spring 2024

How do you design a research project? Which methods of data collection and analysis are appropriate for research questions in Latinx Studies? This course provides an introduction to the process of designing and carrying out a research project, including related to Latinidades, or a plurality of Latinx identities. It introduces students to how social science knowledge is produced to understand the research process, how research emerges, and how we affect research. Course objectives for students are: 1) to design social science research effectively; 2) to critically evaluate the research design of others; 3) to strengthen their academic research and writing skills; and 4) to develop an appreciation for how knowledge is acquired, organized, and communicated. Students will iteratively develop an original research proposal involving several pieces of synthesis. Through applying different research methods to case studies in Latinx Studies, students will understand that the complexity of the issues affecting Latinx communities requires thoughtful research. Students will receive practical training in research protocols, organization methods, project management, and analytical approaches.

Taught by: TBA | Catalog details

LATS 316 SEM The Graphic Narrative: A “Global South” Perspective

Last offered Fall 2019

“[I]n a media-saturated world in which a huge preponderance of the world’s news images are controlled and diffused by a handful of men’ a stream of comic book images and words, assertively etched’ can provide a remarkable antidote.” –Edward Said, Introduction to Palestine by Joe Sacco. This course examines graphic narratives (and related texts and film) rooted in the “Global South,” with particular emphasis on Latina/o and Latin American experiences. We will focus on how each author/artist deploys visual and narrative elements to express social, political, economic, and cultural realities. Regular assignments will offer students opportunities to create their own graphic narratives.

Taught by: TBA | Catalog details

LATS 322 (S) SEM Tertulia: A Fiction Writing Workshop

This workshop is focused on the art and practice of writing fiction and geared towards students interested in working on creative honors theses. Readings include published fiction by primarily Latine and other writers who center Global South experiences, with attention paid to how each author employs narrative elements–characterization, plotting, structure, dialogue mechanics, setting, tone, theme–as well as the values and visions expressed. Students will present short fiction or novel excerpts for peer critique and the editorial advice of the instructor. Regular in-class exercises and take-home assignments will help students expand their narrative skills.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 323 (S) SEM Impressions: The Power of Latinx Printmaking

This hybrid course combines seminar and art studio formats to explore the power of printmaking within Latina/o/x communities in the U.S. We will investigate how the form of the print–works of art produced using printmaking methods like serigraphy, woodcut, and linoleum-cut–not only provides Latina/o/x communities with an artistic form in their critiques of power structures, but also a form that enables empowerment. We take the 1960s and 1970s as a starting point for the art historical inquiry of Latina/o/x printmaking traditions and contextualize the emergence of this tradition in a longer legacy in the Western hemisphere. This longer tradition includes the printmaking traditions in early twentieth century Mexico, the Caribbean, and mid-twentieth century American art movements. As such, we will engage with literature in the fields of Latina/o/x studies and art history. Students will gain an understanding about the key figures, collectives, and studies in Latinx printmaking across the U.S. For the studio component of the course, students will produce a print edition that explores one of the themes or topics explored in the course. Through the process of making, students will deepen their understanding of the formal art elements involved in the delivery of a message, the tension between individual artistic vision and collective goals, and the relationship between art and society. No art experience required!

Taught by: Kevin Cruz Amaya | Catalog details

LATS 329 (S) SEM Queer Religious Ethnographies

Critical ethnography is an anthropological qualitative research method that challenges the colonial legacy of knowledge production by extraction and domination. Researchers center critical self-awareness and reflection of their own intersectional privileges. This course invites students to be critical ethnographers who ask, “What can we gain from combining Black feminist praxis with critical ethnography? How do the fields of Black, queer and trans studies challenge or shift antiquated ways of studying religion?” In this upper-level methodology course, students examine queer, trans, and religious embodied ethnographies, interrogating colonial legacies of race, gender, sexuality, religion, spiritual possession, archive, and migration as decolonial methodologies in Afro-Latinx Studies.

Taught by: Aurelis Troncoso | Catalog details

LATS 330 (S) SEM DNA + Latinx: Decoding the “Cosmic Race”

Scientists working to assemble maps of the human genome found a goldmine in the DNA of Latinx, Latin American, and other populations that derive ancestry from multiple continents. This interdisciplinary course explores Latinidades through a genealogical lens: What culture-specific issues emerge around history, identity, ethics, forensics, immigration, commerce, surveillance, art, science, and medicine? Through discussion, materials, and activities that engage personal, historical, and scientific perspectives, this course offers students the opportunity to explore the many codes embedded in “the double helix.” Readings include The Cosmic Race by José Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina by Raquel Cepeda, and The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome by Alondra Nelson, as well as research by Carlos Bustamante’s Galatea Bio and other knowledge production in the fields of biotechnology, art, literature, and other fields.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 335 (S) SEM Immigrant Voices: Cultural Production in the Age of Mass Deportation

In the United States, some immigrants–like those without legal authorization–have little recourse in the political arena to improve their life conditions. Many seek to shape their lives by adopting a “hardworking immigrant” identity, whereas others become politically involved despite their inability to vote. Some have delved into cultural production (art, music, television, film, clothing, theater) to share their perspective on life before they migrated to the U.S., their journey to a new country, and surviving with diminishing legal protections. This course introduces immigrant narratives within a context of mass deportation. Considering reports of deported U.S. citizens, how does a growing immigration enforcement system affect not only immigrants but all those within and outside the nation-state? How does the immigration system shape people’s ability to relate to a place, and how does people’s relationship to place enable them to navigate and resist the exercise of federal immigration powers? Drawing on critical race theory, queer theory, Latina/o Studies, human geography, and migration studies, this course examines how the state structures the lives of immigrants and how immigrants–especially youth, women, and LGBTQ people–imagine alternative futures, complicating how we think about legal status, “illegals,” and the role of detention in immigration enforcement. Through an interdisciplinary exploration of ‘migration,’ we will examine the depth and range of migrants’ experiences (such as through Javier Zamora’s Solito: A Memoir as well as other narratives of immigrants from all over the world) in shaping Latinx and American life. This course invites students to deepen their appreciation for knowledge production from the perspective of the Latinx migrant community.

Taught by: Edgar Sandoval | Catalog details

LATS 338 (S) SEM Rock, Reggaetón, Cumbia: Listening to the Sounds of Latinx Musical Cultures

What do the various reactions to Bad Bunny’s upcoming Super Bowl half-time show say about the current place of Latinx popular music? How does investigating the broader historical, cultural, and political context of Latinx popular music enhance our understanding of everyday Latinx lives? What does examining Latinx music in context reveal about the relationship between race, gender, sexuality, disability, and sound in the US more broadly? In this course, students are introduced to the interdisciplinary fields of Latinx Sound Studies and Latinx Media Studies, with particular attention to the sonic and the visual as they relate to gender, sexuality, ethno-racial identity, and disability in Latinx communities. Grounded in the analysis of Latinx popular music ranging from salsa to reggaetón to vallenato to rock and pop, we engage the following questions, among others: What unique roles does musical sound play in our everyday understanding of Latinx identities? How are gender, sexuality, disability, and ethno-racial identity articulated via sound? What are the most effective tools for assessing Latinx sound in context? What alternatives to dominant understandings of Latinx identities might the sonic contributions of Latinx musical performers offer? If Latinx sound may sometimes become a site of oppression, then how might it also serve as a vehicle for joy? Students in this course are expected to achieve proficiency in the sonic analysis of Latinx music, They will improve their musical listening skills via a regular semi-structured listening journal. Studies will also gain experience in media production. The final project for this course is a podcast, prepared over the course of the semester, that focuses on some element of the class material. Proficiency in Spanish, experience in podcast/media production, or formal musical education are welcome, but not required. (All course materials are bilingual, and students will be taught how to produce the podcast as well as how write about music).

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 341 SEM Performing Masculinity in Global Popular Culture

Last offered Spring 2026

This course examines popular cultural contexts, asking what it means to be a man in contemporary societies. We focus on the manufacture and marketing of masculinity in advertising, fashion, TV/film, theater, popular music, and the shifting contours of masculinity in everyday life, asking: how does political economy change the ideal shape, appearance, and performance of men? How have products – ranging from beer to deodorant to cigarettes — had their use value articulated in gendered ways? Why must masculinity be the purview of “males” at all; how can we change discourses to better include performances of female masculinities, butch-identified women, and trans men? We will pay particular attention to racialized, queer, and subaltern masculinities. Some of our case studies include: the short half-life of the boy band in the US, hip hop masculinities, and the curious blend of chastity and homoeroticism that constitutes masculinity in the contemporary vampire genre. Through these and other examples, we learn to recognize masculinity as a performance shaped by the political economy of a given culture.

Taught by: TBA | Catalog details

LATS 344 (S) SEM Marking Presence: Reading (Dis)ability in/to Latinx Media

This course explores the intersection of (dis)ability and Latinx identity in the contemporary US context. Employing Angharad Valdivia’s (2020) notion of “marking presence” to describe the intentional ways in which Latinx subjects gain and hold on to mainstream media space, the class places the fields of Disability Studies, Latinx Studies, Gender Studies and Media Studies into conversation. We address the following questions and others: What does media reveal to us about the place of (dis)ability and Latinidad in contemporary US life, particularly as these categories intersect with questions of gender, sexuality, national identity and citizenship? How might we read Latinidad and (dis)ability into media texts in which they are not otherwise centered? What are the advantages of deploying mainstream media presence as a claim to power for disabled Latinx individuals, particularly those who are multiply marginalized? What are the limitations of such an approach? We will focus on these questions, as well as deploy various media examples (podcasts, social media, film, television and music) alongside scholarly texts to explore topics impacting the Latinx communities such as the relationship between the relationship between immigration and (dis)ability, intergenerational trauma and migration, the gendered archetype of the Latina “Loca,” (dis)ability in academia, the politics of self-care amongst Latinxs in the neoliberal context, and the very legal, cultural, and social category of “(dis)abled” itself within dominant society as well as in Latinx communities.

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 345 SEM Borders, Solidarities, and Diaspora: Contested Representations of U.S. Central Americans

Last offered Spring 2026

This course explores who U.S.-Central Americans are through their visual cultural production, as well as how US-Central Americans have been portrayed by others. Recently, Central Americans have gained visibility in the U.S. public sphere as mainstream media coverage of the “crisis at the border” has sensationalized the arrival of migrant caravans. The images and visuals resulting from mainstream coverage has led to monolithic representations of Central Americans framing them as “illegal aliens,” violent gang members, or agentless victims. By engaging with visual culture ranging from social media, films, and zines, we challenge these monolithic perceptions and representations of Central Americans by pursuing the following set of questions: How have others visualized Central Americans and what has been the effect on lived experiences of U.S. Central Americans? How do U.S.-Central American communities visualize their identity formation in the U.S.? What is the role of visual culture in their resistance to racism, classism, sexism, and other structures of marginalization in the U.S.? As part of this course, we explore the range of social, political, economic, and historical forces that have pushed migration from each of the countries in the isthmus and the formation of their respective diasporas in the U.S.

Taught by: Kevin Cruz Amaya | Catalog details

LATS 346 SEM Latinas/os and the Media: From Production to Consumption

Last offered Fall 2020

This interdisciplinary course focuses on the areas of Latina/o media production, policy, content, and consumption in an attempt to answer the following questions, among others: How do Latinas/os construct identity (and have their identities constructed for them) through the media? How can we best understand the complex relationship between consumer, producer, and media text? How are Latina/o stereotypes constructed and circulated in mass media? Where do issues of Latina/o consumer agency come into play? In what ways does popular media impact our understanding of ethno-racial identities, gender, sexuality, class, language, and nation?

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 348 SEM Drawing Democracy: Graphic Narratives as Democratic Ideals

Last offered Spring 2022

This course examines the graphic narrative in terms of how each author/illustrator employs narrative elements (plotting, structure, characterization, text, and visuals) to express social realities within the context of democratic ideals. Regular assignments and in-class exercises throughout the course offer students the opportunity to create their own graphic narratives.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 354 (F) SEM Overlapping Diasporas and Proximities: African Americans and Latinas/os in the United States

Developing comparative and relational approaches, this course explores the overlapping diasporas of African Americans and Latina/o/xs in the United States, in the past and the present. Rooted in the legacies of the African diaspora and slavery in the U.S. and Latin America, both diasporas are also shaped by continuing migrations to and within the U.S. When the U.S. conquered Mexico in 1848, claiming half its territory, Mexicans’ lived experiences were shaped by the continuing migrations of Anglos and African Americans to the region. In the post-World War II era, African Americans’ and Puerto Ricans’ parallel migrations created proximities as these two groups of citizens shared destinations and sometimes neighborhoods, particularly in the Northeast and the Midwest. In the South, Cuban migration following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 built on the earlier communities of Cuban exiles and cigarmakers, who lived and labored alongside African Americans. The creation of overlapping diasporas continued with increasing migrations from Central and South American countries during the 1970s and 1980s, and with more dispersed geographical settlement, including in the South. We focus on how these overlapping diasporas and proximities shaped lived experiences and political activism during the long civil rights movement and the political movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, as well as on the experiences of Afro-Latina/o/xs. Stemming from the myriad of issues confronting African Americans and Latina/o/xs in various regions, political activism reflected each group’s particular histories while also revealing overlapping issues and responses. As overlapping diasporas and political activism have continued, we consider where the scholarship is emerging and the work that remains to be done, with students selecting and sharing their contributions through final papers and presentations.

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 355 SEM From Globalization to Fast Fashion: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Issues

Last offered Spring 2026

This course examines the historical origins of globalization and fast fashion in the US garment industry, asking how we got here and what the implications are of fast fashion as a contemporary issue. Historically, New York City was the center of the US garment industry, home to the designing, merchandising, and the making of clothing. Yet as US garment manufacturers sought to increase profits by lowering their labor costs, they separated “fashion” from “production,” with New York City remaining a fashion center and with sewing relocated to other locations via globalization. Having long relied on women and immigrant workers, the US garment industry turned extensively and repeatedly to Latinas as workers in the U.S. and in their countries of origin, with lasting impacts on Latina workers and their communities. The course begins with a foundation in the history and structure of the garment industry, focusing on New York City and early globalization to Puerto Rico, as well as other Caribbean countries. Continuing to consider both “clothing capitalists” and Latina workers, we then turn to Los Angeles and to maquiladoras along the US-Mexico border, as well as in Central American countries. The emergence of “fast fashion” built on the historical structure and trends in the garment industry, arguably accelerating and intensifying the impacts on workers and their communities, as well as on the environment and wages globally. These are some of the contemporary issues we will explore, along with the various local and transnational responses to globalization and fast fashion, historically and in the contemporary era.

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 360 (F) SEM Latinx Sculpture Art: From Altares to Sonic Monuments

What constitutes Latinx sculpture? While the study of Latinx art has revolved around two dimensional art forms, this course tackles the question of three-dimensional art and examines the development of Latinx sculpture, its socio-political impact, and its aesthetic complexity. This interdisciplinary and hybrid course consists of studying Latinx sculpture art and how Latinx artists have engaged and rearticulated popular cultural traditions like altares, lowriders, and santería in their sculptural works by engaging varying disciplines. This course also includes a studio component. We will dissect the ways Latinx communities conceive of their identity, politics, and manifest resistance and belonging in the U.S. differently through the art form of sculpture, as we study artists like Amalia Mesa-Bains, Gilbert “Magu” Luján, Beatriz Cortez, Pepón Osorio, and Guadalupe Maravilla. Sculpture offers a new lens to expand our study of Latinx identity, politics, and aesthetics, via historical and contemporary theoretical frameworks in the disciplines of Latinx Studies, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, art history, museum studies, and urban studies. As a hybrid course with a studio component, students will also complete a term-long sculpture project, which will be accompanied by a research-based artist statement. In their research based artist statements, students will situate and contextualize their sculpture projects in relation to topics and aesthetic frameworks covered in the class.

Taught by: Kevin Cruz Amaya | Catalog details

LATS 370 (S) SEM Latinx Environmentalisms

Latinxs in the U.S. may engage with environmental themes in their life and work, yet many disidentify with the term environmentalist. For example, Latinx landscape workers, or jardineros, are familiar with pesticides’ potential harm in lawncare and advocate for sustainable practices. They do not identify with mainstream environmentalism due to its association with a middle- to upper-class white demographic. This course examines geographies of social relations, focusing on how we imagine nature and our relationship to it. It is designed to use the themes of environment and social justice as an exploration into Latinx environmentalisms, or the plurality of Latinx environmental thought. This course offers a historically grounded introduction to the conditions, struggles, and modes of resistance of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinxs, African Americans, and Native Americans that constitute the environmental justice movement. Through broadening social assumptions about what the environment is and who can be an environmentalist, we then consider how these histories affect contemporary environmental work in the social sciences, politics, and the arts. Students will enrich their understanding of how Latinx cultures are often environmental despite hardly ever identifying as environmentalists.

Taught by: Edgar Sandoval | Catalog details

LATS 385 SEM Latinx Activism: From the Local to the Transnational

Last offered Fall 2022

Latinas/os/x’s have long sought inclusion in the U.S. polity and society, while the meanings of inclusion and the means to achieve it have shifted historically. For Latinxs, activism is often shaped by the specific dynamics of each group’s migration to the United States and by their arrival into a particular context. Home country politics and transnational connections can remain important. Yet local activism to meet immediate needs and to address critical issues becomes important as well. Working within existing structures, Latinx communities have at times questioned and challenged those existing structures, as activists have addressed a wide variety of often intersecting issues. This course roots itself in the historical progression of Puerto Rican and Mexican-American activism, before turning to the social and political movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, as shaped by Puerto Ricans, Chicanos/as, Cubans, and Dominicans. The 1980s witnessed increased immigration from several Central and South American countries, arriving in the context of reactions to those political and social movements, as well as increased U.S. intervention in their countries of origin–a context that again shaped both local and transnational activism. Students’ final projects will be anchored within this historical framing and within the lens of local and transnational activism, while moving forward in time to consider more contemporary dimensions of Latinx activism.

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 386 SEM Latinas in the Global Economy: Work, Migration, and Households

Last offered Spring 2019

An increasingly global economy, from 1945 to the present, has affected Latinas in their home countries and in the United States. The garment industry, one of the first industries to go global, has relied extensively on Latina workers in their home countries and in the United States. Domestic work, a traditional field of women’s work, also crosses borders. Challenging the myth that labor migration is a male phenomenon and that women simply follow the men, this course explores how the global economy makes Latinas labor migrants. What impact has the global economy and economic development had on Latinas’ work and their households in their home countries? How have economic changes and government policies shaped Latinas’ migrations and their incorporation in the changing U.S. economy? How have Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan women confronted the challenges created by a globalizing economy and balanced demands to meet their households’ needs?

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 397 IND Independent Study: Latina/o Studies

Last offered Fall 2024

Latina/o Studies independent study.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 398 IND Independent Study: Latina/o Studies

Last offered Spring 2022

Latina/o Studies independent study.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 403 SEM New Asian American, African American, Native American, and Latina/o Writing

Last offered Spring 2020

The most exciting and forward-thinking writing in the English language today is being done by formally experimental writers of color. Their texts push the boundaries of aesthetic form while simultaneously engaging questions of culture, politics, and history. This course argues not only for the centrality of minority experimental work to English literature but a fundamental rethinking of English literary studies so as to confront the field’s imbedded assumptions about race, a legacy of British colonialism, and to make the idea of the aesthetic more open to ideas generated in critical race studies, diaspora studies, American studies, and those fields that grapple more directly with history and politics. In the critical realms of English, work by minority writers is often relegated to its own segregated spaces, categorized by ethnic identity, or tokenized as “add-ons” to more “central” or “fundamental” categories of literature (such as Modernism, poetics, the avant-garde). Recent work by Asian American, African American, Native American and Latino/a writers challenges our assumptions and preconceptions about ethnic literature, American literature, English literature, formal experimentation, genre categorization, and so on. This writing forces us to examine our received notions about literature, literary methodologies, and race. Close reading need not be opposed to critical analyses of ideologies. Formal experimentation need not be opposed to racial identity nor should it be divorced from history and politics, even, or especially, a radical politics.

Taught by: Dorothy Wang | Catalog details

LATS 409 SEM Transnationalism and Difference: Comparative Perspectives

Last offered Fall 2021

In the age of digital communications and mobile applications such as WhatsApp and Skype, transnational living has rapidly emerged as the norm as opposed to the exception. However, what does it really mean to “be transnational”? How are the lived experiences of transnational individuals and communities shaped by categories of difference such as gender, ethno-racial identity, sexuality, and class? What impacts do the growing number of transnational citizens and residents in the U.S. have on our understanding of “American” identity in the local, national, and global contexts? In this interdisciplinary seminar we will analyze recent theories regarding the origins and impacts of transnationalism. Particular attention will be paid throughout the semester to the intersections of gender, ethno-racial identity, sexuality, and class in connection with everyday transnational dynamics. The broad range of case studies examined includes Central American, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Indonesia, Jamaica, Mexico, the Middle East, and Peru.

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 410 SEM Arquivistas: An Archival Storytelling Course

Last offered Spring 2025

Archival storytelling: the “creative practice of resurfacing hidden, untapped, and untold historical treasures and reimagining that content in various storytelling presentations that speak to modern-day audiences” (Arbo Radiko). In this generative writing and critical practice course, students inhabit the roles of writers and storytellers as preservers of history and culture. With a focus on documenting and/or reimagining Latinidades, the course invites students to address the unique narrative forms archives can take beyond collections of artifacts. How can archives inform the creation and definition of literary work? What is the relationship between archives and power? What information might the archivist/storyteller choose to include or omit, reveal or conceal? How might they practice “radical empathy,” taking into account the various affective roles and responsibilities of the archivist, the records creator, the records subject, the records user, and community members? Creative-writing and research assignments help students build toward final archival storytelling projects. Throughout the process, students learn to: research, compile, and analyze materials from various repositories; identify and write emergent stories from collected material; and present these stories to the public using narrative elements and digital tools.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 415 SEM Narrative Medicine: A Latinx Studies Perspective

Last offered Fall 2025

This generative writing and critical practice course explores how storytelling and other narrative forms shape health experiences and medical practice within Latinx communities. Arising as a discipline in 2001 and rooted in the medical humanities, narrative medicine integrates storytelling, literary analysis, and reflective practice into healthcare to improve patient care, provider empathy, and medical communication. This approach emphasizes the importance of listening to and interpreting the stories patients tell of their lived experiences as essential to diagnosis, treatment, and healing. How do issues of culture, language, identity, migration, transnationalism, and systemic inequities influence medical encounters and conceptions of wellness in Latinx communities? What narrative approaches do writers and artists use to tell these stories? How do clinicians use narrative medicine to deliver equitable and effective treatment? Students will engage with literary and medical humanities scholarship as well as film, visual art, and music to critically analyze these questions. Assignments draw from methodologies common to both narrative medicine and Latinx studies, including testimonio, embodiment, and community-based participatory research. In this interdisciplinary senior seminar, students will generate original writing while developing skills to apply narrative medicine across diverse fields.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 420 SEM Latinx Ecologies

Last offered Spring 2020

An August 2015 Latino Decisions poll found that Latinxs, more than other ethnic groups in the U.S.A., are deeply concerned about climate change and the “environment”. How and why might some Latinxs be disproportionately impacted by climate change? How have a few distinct Latinx theorists and activists imagined and constructed ecology? How are struggles for environmental justice related to broader Latinx concerns with and constructions of place? This seminar will examine a few moments in distinct Latinx histories and geographies such as California migrant farmworkers and the struggle over pesticides, urban movements over waste management such as the Young Lords’ garbage offensive, food justice movements and urban gardening, as well as literary and theological representations of affective and sacred ecologies such as Helena María Viramontes’ Their Dogs Came With Them and Ecuadoran-U.S. ecofeminist Jeanette Rodríguez’s theological texts. Evaluation will be based on class participation, presentations, annotated bibliography, short writing assignments, writing workshop participation, and a final 20-page research paper.

Taught by: Jacqueline Hidalgo | Catalog details

LATS 421 SEM Latinx Geographies

Last offered Fall 2024

This research seminar examines the history, framework, and scholarship of the growing field of Latinx Geographies within the context of interdisciplinary Latine Studies. This course explores the perspectives, experiences, spatial politics, and place-making practices of Latines to consider their relationship to the built environment. We will examine recent theories regarding space, place, and race; explore them through various Latinx positionalities, such as gender, sexuality, class, and citizenship status; and apply them to literary and media representations of Latine spaces and places, such as the US-Mexico borderlands, barrios, and rural fields. We will consider how undocumented queer and trans migrants have become prominent political actors in social movements, how migration, race, and the environment interact in pollution and activism, how undocumented women negotiate motherhood, how non-profit organizations market Latinidad for infrastructural development, and more. In this interdisciplinary and comparative course, students will be exposed to the genealogy of Latinx Geography, which finds its genesis embedded in Black Geography, Queer (Women) of Color Critique, Latinx Studies, and Ethnic Studies. Students will learn a geographical vernacular to think and articulate spatially in the social sciences and humanities, as they develop their own research projects. Collectively, we will interrogate case studies of Latines in the built environment to make visible how race and space are fundamental tenets of a Latinx geographical analysis. Students will select a research topic and develop their own research project independently and through coursework. Evaluation will be based on class participation, leading discussion, presentations, research proposal, annotated bibliography, short writing assignments, writing workshop participation, and a final 20-page research paper.

Taught by: Edgar Sandoval | Catalog details

LATS 426 TUT Queer Temporalities

Last offered Spring 2017

Birth, childhood, adolescence, college, adulthood, career, marriage, family, mid-life, old age, death, afterlife. How are all these facets of being human imagined as stages in time, as axes on certain progressive lines that delineate human social relations? How do we experience and represent time, and what factors might account for both our experiences and our representations? What are some of the ways that people experience and mark the passing of time? What are some of the different ways that people have made sense of time and themselves in time? How have our conceptions of time and our demarcations of lifecycles shifted historically? How do people whose experiences do not align with dominant cultural social stages negotiate ideas of lifecycle and timing? Especially for individuals and peoples who have been denied self-representation and narratives of place, how do competing notions of time, history, space, and location get negotiated? In this course, drawing from within the broad corpus of queer theory (including theorists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Elizabeth Freeman, J. Halberstam, and José Esteban Muñoz) we will examine some non-linear, non-normative, and interruptive approaches to making sense of time, space-time, and self within time.

Taught by: Jacqueline Hidalgo | Catalog details

LATS 427 (F) SEM Palabra!: Creative Processes of Getting the Word Out

Palabra, or the “word,” forms the basis for communication and knowledge production. In this course, we take an expansive view of the creative ways that Latina/o/x scholars and artists undertake the production and dissemination of knowledge. Latina/o/x scholars have developed innovative and culturally responsive research approaches that challenge conventions in traditional academic disciplines. Beyond the academic essay, article, and book, scholars expand the ways to “publish” their knowledge production by using alternative forms that range from podcasts and fotonovelas to photo-ethnographic essays. Artists, at the same time conduct rigorous research as they produce their works of visual and literary art. Ken Gonzalez-Day, for example, developed Erased Lynchings, a photographic-based series that calls attention to the history of lynchings in the U.S. Southwest, by conducting archival research. The inherent creativity of interdisciplinary scholarship in Latina/o/x Studies and the research-based practices that artists undertake to create visual art asks us to reconsider what counts as new forms of knowledge. Students will gain a robust exposure to an interdisciplinary repertoire of approaches for gathering and getting “the word” out that draws from disciplines like Art, Art History, Sociology, History, Literature, Music, Urban Planning, and their intersections. This course provides students with an opportunity to lean into their creativity as they get their word out by executing their own research-based interdisciplinary projects.

Taught by: Kevin Cruz Amaya | Catalog details

LATS 469 SEM Comparative Histories: From Latin American to Latina/o/x Experiences

Last offered Spring 2026

This course explores comparative histories as a tool for thinking comparatively and thematically, as well as for uncovering a wide range of sources, methodologies, and approaches. More specifically, how do scholars use comparative approaches to grapple with the complex variety of national origins and historical experiences that constitute Latina/o/x communities in the United States? “Hispanic” and “Latino” are umbrella terms that can mask national histories and widely varying histories and experiences of coming to and living within the United States, especially when dominant discourses tend towards homogenizing and stereotyping all Latinos as recent immigrants, as “illegals,” and as “criminals.” In contrast, Latina/o/x history and the interdisciplinary field of Latinx Studies have emerged as comparative fields of study, exploring rather than erasing differences that include: countries of origin; ways of becoming part of the U.S. through conquest, labor recruitment, and migration seeking survival or a better life; regions of settlement; reception and experiences in the US; among many others. At the same time, comparative approaches and analyses can highlight major themes and questions that unearth underlying dynamics that shape what might appear as disparate experiences. In this writing intensive seminar, we explore comparative histories and approaches, as students define topics that are informed by the comparative approaches and major themes identified throughout the course, even as their own research papers may or may not be comparative, considering the shortness of a semester!

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 470 (S) SEM Telling Histories: Personal Narratives, Historical Contexts, and Critical Issues

This course focuses on Latinx oral histories, autobiographies, memoirs, testimonios, and other first-person narratives to explore how people are impacted by and experience historical contexts, as well as how the decisions they make and the actions they take shape those historical contexts. Latinx migration histories are often told with sweeping data and in broad historical strokes. While these approaches are important, the voices of the people leaving their home countries and coming to the United States can be lost or buried or dismissed. During the 1970s, the emerging subfield of social history asserted the need to craft histories that took into consideration the everyday lives of ordinary people. Oral history emerged as a key tool in capturing the personal stories too often missed in historical archives. At the same time, Puerto Rican Studies, Chicano Studies, and later, Latinx Studies emerged to tell the histories of groups too often omitted from or misrepresented in the scholarship. These fields relied on traditions of testimonios or storytelling, as well as varied and creative forms of personal narratives. Examining personal narratives in the context of specific Latinx groups in particular historical, geographical, and social contexts, we interrogate the methodological and interpretive challenges and the opportunities of working with first-person primary sources. As Latinx Studies is a field that has been at the forefront of exploring intersectionality, we also analyze how attention to first-person narratives reveals the complexities of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, as well as other visible and invisible markers of difference. Course topics include the gendered dimensions of migration and work, geopolitics and stories of exile, and the connections between lived experiences and political activism, among others, all while providing a scaffolding for students to shape and share their own topics and research papers.

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 471 SEM Comparative Latina/o Migrations

Last offered Spring 2019

Since the 1970s, policymakers, scholars, the media, and popular discourses have used the umbrella terms “Hispanic” and “Latina/o” to refer to Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans and more recent immigrants from Central and South American countries. As a form of racial/ethnic categorization, however, these umbrella terms can mask widely divergent migration histories and experiences in the United States. In this course, we develop theoretical perspectives and comparative analyses to untangle a complicated web of similarities and differences among Latino groups. How important were their time of arrival and region of settlement? How do we explain differences in socioeconomic status? How fruitful and appropriate are comparative analyses with other racial/ethnic groups, such as African Americans or European immigrants? Along the way, we explore the emergence of Latina/o Studies as an interdisciplinary and comparative field of study, as well as methods used in Latino and Latina history, specifically oral histories, government documents, newspapers, and interdisciplinary approaches.

Taught by: Carmen Whalen | Catalog details

LATS 475 SEM Dreaming Latina/x Feminist Disability Studies

Last offered Spring 2026

In this course we defy the notion that disabled and queer people of color have no right to future dreams, as we collectively imagine how the emergent and contestatory field of Latina/x Feminist Disability Studies is taking shape. Feminist, queer, and crip-of-color scholars have recently called for a more meaningful engagement with race in feminist disability studies. Simultaneously, we have also witnessed steady growth in the amount of Latinx Studies scholarship that thoughtfully integrates questions of disability not solely as an identity category, but rather more expansively, and ultimately as more reflective of societal power relations. This interdisciplinary course responds to these important shifts in its focus on a series of topics bridging Latinx Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Crip studies, and Critical Disability Studies. Via themes such as the body, the environment, temporality, labor, citizenship, dependency, visibility/invisibility and others, we explore the ways in which the different approaches to these specific issues across Latinx, Critical Disability, Crip, Ethnic, Queer and Gender Studies are in fruitful conversation with one another — and sometimes even at odds — as we actively interrogate the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability within the everyday. What are the sites of focus, methods, and political commitments of Latina/x Feminist Disability Studies? Where is the power in meaningfully uniting an analysis of disability to one of sexuality and gendered Latinidad? How does a Latina/x-centric approach productively inform our understanding of disability? What is the political potential of Latina/x Feminist Disability Studies — not exclusively as a set of theories, but also as a mindset and an everyday call to action? If we were to collectively compose a manifesto for Latina/x Feminist Disability Studies, what might it contain? How might we cultivate a community of care in institutional spaces, even in the face of the ongoing pressure to produce? Previous experience with Disability Studies is welcome, but not at all required.

Taught by: Maria Elena Cepeda | Catalog details

LATS 493 (F) HON Senior Honors Thesis: Latina/o Studies

Students beginning their thesis work in the fall must register for this course and subsequentially for LATS 31 during Winter Study.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 494 (S) HON Senior Honors Thesis: Latina/o Studies

Students beginning their thesis work in Winter Study must register for this course.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 497 (F, S) IND Independent Study: Latina/o Studies

Latina/o Studies independent study.

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details

LATS 498 IND Independent Study: Latina/o Studies

Last offered Spring 2026

Independent Study:Latina/o Studies

Taught by: Nelly Rosario | Catalog details