Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

(Offered as LLAS 200 and AMST 206) In this course students will become familiar with the major debates that have animated Latinx and Latin American Studies, addressing a wide range of issues from the Conquest to the present. Each week students will focus on specific questions such as: Does Latin America have a common culture? Is Latin America part of the Western world? Is Latinx a race or an ethnicity? Is U.S. Latinx identity rooted in Latin America or the United States? Are Latin American nations post-colonial? Was the modern concept of race invented in the Caribbean at the time of the Conquest? The opposing viewpoints around such questions will provide the main focus of the reading assignments, which will average two or three articles per week. In the first four weeks, students will learn a methodology for analyzing, contextualizing, and making arguments that they will apply in developing their own positions in the specific controversies that will make up the rest of the course.

Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Schroeder Rodriguez. 

(Offered as ARCH 204, ARHA 204, and LLAS 204) This course studies the theory, policy, and practice of low-income housing in marginalized communities worldwide. We study central concepts in housing theory, key issues regarding low-income housing, different approaches to address these issues, and political debates around housing the poor. We use a comparative focus, going back and forth between the cases of the United States and the so-called developing world. By doing this, we engage in a “theory from without” exercise: We attempt to understand the housing problem in the United States from the perspective of the developing world, and vice versa. We study our subject through illustrated lectures, seminar discussions, documentary films, visual analysis exercises, and a field trip.

Limited to 20 students. Spring Semester. Professor Arboleda.

(Offered as ARCH 204, ARHA 204, and LLAS 204) This course studies the theory, policy, and practice of low-income housing in marginalized communities worldwide. We study central concepts in housing theory, key issues regarding low-income housing, different approaches to address these issues, and political debates around housing the poor. We use a comparative focus, going back and forth between the cases of the United States and the so-called developing world. By doing this, we engage in a “theory from without” exercise: We attempt to understand the housing problem in the United States from the perspective of the developing world, and vice versa. We study our subject through illustrated lectures, seminar discussions, documentary films, visual analysis exercises, and a field trip.

Limited to 20 students. Spring Semester. Professor Arboleda.

(Offered as BLST 226[D], LLAS 226 and SWAG 226) This course focuses on Black Queer and Trans life and struggle as well as the cultural and intellectual contributions Black Queer and Trans have made to in numerous fields throughout the Americas (North and South). While for many years narratives of the lives of Black LGBTQ people have been silenced and erased due to stigma and intersectional oppression on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality, scholars and artists in the past four decades have worked to recover the stories of Black Queer and Trans communities throughout the diaspora. The Black Queer/Trans Americas will dive into works that highlight these cultural contributions, while also understanding the compounded systemic violence that Black LGBTQ communities have faced and continue to face. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities. In addition to course materials, the class will also make use of presentations from local artists, activists, and community members in the local area to add to the course experience. Every week will focus on a different theme or field of study related to Black LGBTQ+ life. 

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Poe.

(Offered as BLST 363 [CLA], HIST 463 [AF/TC/TE/TS/TR/P] and LLAS 463) In this course students will consult, analyze, and employ a variety of sources, including the accounts of missionaries, journals of slave traders, the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, and the few available slave narratives written by Africans. Students will be presented with the tools to write original research on topics including the involvement of Western African societies in the slave trade, the logistics of the Middle Passage, characteristics of the captives transported from Africa to the Americas, and the Africans' own experiences of the Middle Passage and adaptation to the slave régimes of the Americas. Students will write a series of short assignments leading up to a major research paper of 20-25 pages.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Lohse.

(Offered as COLQ 461 and SPAN 461) In this particular research tutorial we will ask how specific film practices help normalize racist vs. anti-racist structures of feeling. We will begin with a few key historical and theoretical texts on the long-term construction of racist and anti-racist structures of feeling in Latin America and in U.S. Latinx cultures, to then explore how these are reproduced or contested in a handful of films where racism and anti-racism are at the center of the filmic text, narratively and/or audiovisually. The selection of films will be made collaboratively, as will the subsequent research and the chosen end-product, for example an academic essay, a scholarly review essay, a digital resource for teachers, and/or media activism. The course will be conducted in Spanish.

This course is a research tutorial, listed in the catalog as colloquia for juniors and seniors, and is part of a tutorial series that engages Amherst students in substantive research with faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. By exploring how different scholars approach a topic, students learn to frame a research question, develop research strategies, and identify and use sources. Students enrolled in these courses are guaranteed funding for at least six weeks of work during the summer following the academic year in which they take the course.

Open to sophomores and juniors. Limited to 6 students. Spring Semester. Professor Schroeder Rodriguez.

This panoramic, interdisciplinary course will explore the concept of love as it changes epoch to epoch and culture to culture. Poetry, novels, paintings, sculptures, movies, TV, and music will be featured. Starting with the Song of Songs, it will include discussions of Plato, Aristotle, Catullus, and other Greek classics, move on to Dante and Petrarch, contemplate Chinese, Arabic, African, and Mesoamerican literatures, devote a central unit to Shakespeare, continue with the Metaphysical poets, and move on to American literature. Special attention will be paid to the difference between love, eroticism, and pornography. Multilingual students will be encouraged to delve into various linguistic traditions, in tongues like French, Russian, German, Yiddish, and Spanish. Conducted in English.

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Stavans.

(Offered as HIST 263 [LA/TE/TR/TS] and LLAS 263) Latin Americans began their struggle for democracy during the independence wars at the start of the nineteenth century. Their struggle continues today. This course considers the historical meanings of democracy in various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the relationship between liberalism and democracy in the nineteenth century; the broadening of democracy at the start of the twentieth century; the rise and fall of military dictatorships in the 1960s–1980s and their impact upon civil society; and the current clashes between neo-liberal economic programs and the neo-populist resurgence of the left. Readings and discussions will focus on the ways broad economic and political shifts impacted individuals' lives; how each economic class experienced these shifts differently; the way race and gender have shaped peoples' experience with democratization and repression; and the personal processes of radicalization by which individuals became inspired to take risks in their struggle for inclusion and against repression. Because the approach is thematic and chronological, some countries and regions will receive more attention than others. Meetings and readings will draw on secondary studies, historical documents, testimonials, music, images, and film. Two meetings per week.

Spring Semester. Professor López.

(Offered as BLST 363 [CLA], HIST 463 [AF/TC/TE/TS/TR/P] and LLAS 463) In this course students will consult, analyze, and employ a variety of sources, including the accounts of missionaries, journals of slave traders, the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, and the few available slave narratives written by Africans. Students will be presented with the tools to write original research on topics including the involvement of Western African societies in the slave trade, the logistics of the Middle Passage, characteristics of the captives transported from Africa to the Americas, and the Africans' own experiences of the Middle Passage and adaptation to the slave régimes of the Americas. Students will write a series of short assignments leading up to a major research paper of 20-25 pages.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Lohse.

(Offered as RELI 130and LLAS 130) On the dawn of the quincentenary of the Protestant Reformation, the April 2013 cover story of Time Magazine heralded the “Latino Reformation.” After 500 years of religious contact, conflict, and conversions throughout the Americas, “Latino USA” is undergoing unprecedented religious transformations. Latinxs, now comprising the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, are largely responsible for the new expressions of Abrahamic religious traditions in the country. This course is a historical survey of the growing and diverse U.S. Latinx religious experiences. The chronology of the course will begin with pre-contact Indian religions and cultures, then follow with an examination of Iberian Catholic and Indian contact cultures, Catholic and Protestant migrations into the U.S., and the negotiation and representation of Latinx religious identities today.

Spring semester. Assistant Professor Barba.

(Offered as LLAS 200 and AMST 206) In this course students will become familiar with the major debates that have animated Latinx and Latin American Studies, addressing a wide range of issues from the Conquest to the present. Each week students will focus on specific questions such as: Does Latin America have a common culture? Is Latin America part of the Western world? Is Latinx a race or an ethnicity? Is U.S. Latinx identity rooted in Latin America or the United States? Are Latin American nations post-colonial? Was the modern concept of race invented in the Caribbean at the time of the Conquest? The opposing viewpoints around such questions will provide the main focus of the reading assignments, which will average two or three articles per week. In the first four weeks, students will learn a methodology for analyzing, contextualizing, and making arguments that they will apply in developing their own positions in the specific controversies that will make up the rest of the course.

Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Schroeder Rodriguez. 

(Offered as ARCH 204, ARHA 204, and LLAS 204) This course studies the theory, policy, and practice of low-income housing in marginalized communities worldwide. We study central concepts in housing theory, key issues regarding low-income housing, different approaches to address these issues, and political debates around housing the poor. We use a comparative focus, going back and forth between the cases of the United States and the so-called developing world. By doing this, we engage in a “theory from without” exercise: We attempt to understand the housing problem in the United States from the perspective of the developing world, and vice versa. We study our subject through illustrated lectures, seminar discussions, documentary films, visual analysis exercises, and a field trip.

Limited to 20 students. Spring Semester. Professor Arboleda.

(Offered as SPAN 205 and LLAS 205) Heritage learners of Spanish are students who have grown up speaking, listening, reading and/or writing Spanish with family or in their community. Because of their unique backgrounds, Spanish heritage language learners (SHLLs) are bilingual and bicultural. They function between a Hispanic and an American identity. This fluid and multiple identity can bring challenges, as SHLLs try to fit into both groups. With this in mind, through meaningful activities that focus on students’ experiences and emotions, this Spanish language course will center on bilingualism, specifically through writing, as a necessary means for identity formation. Because in narrating our stories with others, we enact our identities, this course will connect students with the bilingual community in Amherst or Holyoke. Through this course, students will incorporate their personal experience as SHLLs into their coursework. Activities will foster critical thinking, and students will learn to analyze, read, discuss, write, and reflect on issues of language, culture, and identity. Using a student-centered approach, the course will include collaborative brainstorming, free-writing, developing topics of personal importance, and peer and group editing in order to develop students’ writing proficiency and to build community.

This course prepares Spanish heritage language students for advanced-level courses offered by the Spanish Department. Limited to 18 students per section. This course may be counted toward the Spanish Major. The class will be conducted entirely in Spanish, though some assignments can be submitted in English. Prerequisite: SPAN 201, SPAN 202 or placement exam.

Consent Required (students must identify as Spanish heritage language students). Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Granda.

(Offered as BLST 226[D], LLAS 226 and SWAG 226) This course focuses on Black Queer and Trans life and struggle as well as the cultural and intellectual contributions Black Queer and Trans have made to in numerous fields throughout the Americas (North and South). While for many years narratives of the lives of Black LGBTQ people have been silenced and erased due to stigma and intersectional oppression on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality, scholars and artists in the past four decades have worked to recover the stories of Black Queer and Trans communities throughout the diaspora. The Black Queer/Trans Americas will dive into works that highlight these cultural contributions, while also understanding the compounded systemic violence that Black LGBTQ communities have faced and continue to face. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities. In addition to course materials, the class will also make use of presentations from local artists, activists, and community members in the local area to add to the course experience. Every week will focus on a different theme or field of study related to Black LGBTQ+ life. 

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Poe.

(Offered as HIST 263 [LA/TE/TR/TS] and LLAS 263) Latin Americans began their struggle for democracy during the independence wars at the start of the nineteenth century. Their struggle continues today. This course considers the historical meanings of democracy in various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the relationship between liberalism and democracy in the nineteenth century; the broadening of democracy at the start of the twentieth century; the rise and fall of military dictatorships in the 1960s–1980s and their impact upon civil society; and the current clashes between neo-liberal economic programs and the neo-populist resurgence of the left. Readings and discussions will focus on the ways broad economic and political shifts impacted individuals' lives; how each economic class experienced these shifts differently; the way race and gender have shaped peoples' experience with democratization and repression; and the personal processes of radicalization by which individuals became inspired to take risks in their struggle for inclusion and against repression. Because the approach is thematic and chronological, some countries and regions will receive more attention than others. Meetings and readings will draw on secondary studies, historical documents, testimonials, music, images, and film. Two meetings per week.

Spring Semester. Professor López.

(Offered as SPAN 301 and LLAS 301) This course provides an introduction to the diverse literatures and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world over the course of six centuries, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Students will learn the tools, language, and critical vocabulary for advanced work reading the canon of Hispanic literatures from Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, identifying aesthetic trends, historical periods and diverse genres such as poetry, narrative, theater and film. The syllabus will include a wide variety of authors of different national, political, and artistic persuasions and an array of linguistic styles. This course prepares students for advanced work in Spanish and for study abroad.

Requisite SPAN 202 or Spanish Placement Exam. Proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Spanish are required. Limited to 20 students per section. Fall semester: Visiting Professor Porter.  Spring semester: Professor Brenneis.

(Offered as SPAN 357 and LLAS 357) Spanish is the second-most widely spoken language in the world. With more than 400 million native speakers, it has official status in 21 countries. In the United States more than 40 million people use Spanish in their daily lives. What exactly is the Spanish language? What do you actually know when you speak Spanish? These questions are at the heart of this course. By following a bottom-up design—from smallest to largest segments of language—we will understand the basic characteristics of human language and will examine the architecture of the Spanish language: how its sounds are produced and how they combine; how its words are constructed from their component parts; how its sentences are formed; how its meanings are understood; and how its use reflects aspects of our socio-cultural behavior. As an approach to the formal study of the Spanish language, we will explore actual and diverse language data such as texts, speech samples, and songs to grasp complex linguistic phenomena. Conducted in Spanish.

Prerequisite: Spanish 202 or permission of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Fall and spring semesters. Professor Sánchez-Naranjo.

(Offered as BLST 363 [CLA], HIST 463 [AF/TC/TE/TS/TR/P] and LLAS 463) In this course students will consult, analyze, and employ a variety of sources, including the accounts of missionaries, journals of slave traders, the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, and the few available slave narratives written by Africans. Students will be presented with the tools to write original research on topics including the involvement of Western African societies in the slave trade, the logistics of the Middle Passage, characteristics of the captives transported from Africa to the Americas, and the Africans' own experiences of the Middle Passage and adaptation to the slave régimes of the Americas. Students will write a series of short assignments leading up to a major research paper of 20-25 pages.

Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Lohse.

(Offered as RELI 130and LLAS 130) On the dawn of the quincentenary of the Protestant Reformation, the April 2013 cover story of Time Magazine heralded the “Latino Reformation.” After 500 years of religious contact, conflict, and conversions throughout the Americas, “Latino USA” is undergoing unprecedented religious transformations. Latinxs, now comprising the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, are largely responsible for the new expressions of Abrahamic religious traditions in the country. This course is a historical survey of the growing and diverse U.S. Latinx religious experiences. The chronology of the course will begin with pre-contact Indian religions and cultures, then follow with an examination of Iberian Catholic and Indian contact cultures, Catholic and Protestant migrations into the U.S., and the negotiation and representation of Latinx religious identities today.

Spring semester. Assistant Professor Barba.

(Offered as SPAN 205 and LLAS 205) Heritage learners of Spanish are students who have grown up speaking, listening, reading and/or writing Spanish with family or in their community. Because of their unique backgrounds, Spanish heritage language learners (SHLLs) are bilingual and bicultural. They function between a Hispanic and an American identity. This fluid and multiple identity can bring challenges, as SHLLs try to fit into both groups. With this in mind, through meaningful activities that focus on students’ experiences and emotions, this Spanish language course will center on bilingualism, specifically through writing, as a necessary means for identity formation. Because in narrating our stories with others, we enact our identities, this course will connect students with the bilingual community in Amherst or Holyoke. Through this course, students will incorporate their personal experience as SHLLs into their coursework. Activities will foster critical thinking, and students will learn to analyze, read, discuss, write, and reflect on issues of language, culture, and identity. Using a student-centered approach, the course will include collaborative brainstorming, free-writing, developing topics of personal importance, and peer and group editing in order to develop students’ writing proficiency and to build community.

This course prepares Spanish heritage language students for advanced-level courses offered by the Spanish Department. Limited to 18 students per section. This course may be counted toward the Spanish Major. The class will be conducted entirely in Spanish, though some assignments can be submitted in English. Prerequisite: SPAN 201, SPAN 202 or placement exam.

Consent Required (students must identify as Spanish heritage language students). Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Granda.

(Offered as SPAN 301 and LLAS 301) This course provides an introduction to the diverse literatures and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world over the course of six centuries, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Students will learn the tools, language, and critical vocabulary for advanced work reading the canon of Hispanic literatures from Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, identifying aesthetic trends, historical periods and diverse genres such as poetry, narrative, theater and film. The syllabus will include a wide variety of authors of different national, political, and artistic persuasions and an array of linguistic styles. This course prepares students for advanced work in Spanish and for study abroad.

Requisite SPAN 202 or Spanish Placement Exam. Proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Spanish are required. Limited to 20 students per section. Fall semester: Visiting Professor Porter.  Spring semester: Professor Brenneis.

(Offered as SPAN 357 and LLAS 357) Spanish is the second-most widely spoken language in the world. With more than 400 million native speakers, it has official status in 21 countries. In the United States more than 40 million people use Spanish in their daily lives. What exactly is the Spanish language? What do you actually know when you speak Spanish? These questions are at the heart of this course. By following a bottom-up design—from smallest to largest segments of language—we will understand the basic characteristics of human language and will examine the architecture of the Spanish language: how its sounds are produced and how they combine; how its words are constructed from their component parts; how its sentences are formed; how its meanings are understood; and how its use reflects aspects of our socio-cultural behavior. As an approach to the formal study of the Spanish language, we will explore actual and diverse language data such as texts, speech samples, and songs to grasp complex linguistic phenomena. Conducted in Spanish.

Prerequisite: Spanish 202 or permission of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Fall and spring semesters. Professor Sánchez-Naranjo.

A thorough, in-depth exploration of the life and works of Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), the most important Latin American writer and thinker of the colonial period and one of the region’s most influential figures overall. The focus will be on the three choices seventeenth-century colonial women faced: marriage, the convent, and the court. We will study churches, convents, and monasteries from religious, political, social, and dietary perspectives. There will be close readings of Sor Juana’s poetry, theater, philosophical disquisitions, autobiographical writing, and theological debates regarding Athanasius Kircher, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and René Descartes. Sor Juana’s afterlife as a feminist and contemporary pop icon will also be studied, as will similar Iberian and Latin American religious writers such as Santa Teresa de Jesús, Fray San Juan de la Cruz, Fray Luis de León, Juan Ruíz de Alarcón and Carlos de Singüenza y Góngora. Conducted in Spanish.

Prerequisite: SPAN 301 or consent of the instructor.  Limited to 25 students. Spring Semester: Professor Stavans.

(Offered as SPAN-448 and LLAS-448) With a historical and transnational approach, this course will explore bi/multicultural identities and communities in the Spanish-speaking world, primarily of the contemporary period: Mestizos, Korean-Argentineans, Afro-Peruvians, Latin American and Caribbean Chinatowns, Quechua-Castillian speakers, Spanglish-speakers from the United States to Gibraltar, Moroccans and West Africans in Spanish cities, “gallegos” in Buenos Aires, Filipino-Peruvian migrants in Tokyo and so on. Through a wide-variety of empirical, literary, and cultural texts (literature, film, music, graphic novel, photography, etc.), we will put diverse cases of ethnic and linguistic hybridity in dialogue with one another to study how communities and identities are represented, remembered, and demarcated; we will examine how they reclaim autonomy and space, and negotiate their personal and collective subjectivities amongst other communities and identities. Doing so will lead us to examine pressing socio-cultural phenomena that are increasingly global, rapidly-transforming, and interconnected: post/de/colonialism, bi/multiculturalism, transculturation, diaspora, immigration, exile, religion, borders, nationalism, nostalgia, capitalism, and structural in/exclusion. To help us study these issues and think of solutions, we will bring in theorists who have written on local and global hybridity (e.g., Bhabha, Spivek, Anzaldúa, Hall, Appiah). Inevitably, we will also discuss how these issues implicate us and our identities here in Amherst, MA in 2022. Students will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge as well as communicate personally with individuals who identify as bi/multicultural through a one-on-one interview project and invited speakers. Conducted in Spanish. 

Prerequisite: Spanish 301 or permission of instructor. Spring Semester: Visiting Associate Professor Megan Saltzman.

(Offered as COLQ 461 and SPAN 461) In this particular research tutorial we will ask how specific film practices help normalize racist vs. anti-racist structures of feeling. We will begin with a few key historical and theoretical texts on the long-term construction of racist and anti-racist structures of feeling in Latin America and in U.S. Latinx cultures, to then explore how these are reproduced or contested in a handful of films where racism and anti-racism are at the center of the filmic text, narratively and/or audiovisually. The selection of films will be made collaboratively, as will the subsequent research and the chosen end-product, for example an academic essay, a scholarly review essay, a digital resource for teachers, and/or media activism. The course will be conducted in Spanish.

This course is a research tutorial, listed in the catalog as colloquia for juniors and seniors, and is part of a tutorial series that engages Amherst students in substantive research with faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. By exploring how different scholars approach a topic, students learn to frame a research question, develop research strategies, and identify and use sources. Students enrolled in these courses are guaranteed funding for at least six weeks of work during the summer following the academic year in which they take the course.

Open to sophomores and juniors. Limited to 6 students. Spring Semester. Professor Schroeder Rodriguez.