Undergraduate Certificate
An interdisciplinary curriculum that traverses the arts, humanities and social sciences, the program is designed to provide a broad understanding of the emergence, transformation and consolidation of Latino/a/x as a pan-ethnic group central to the development of the United States as a nation. The course of study also highlights transnational connections and contexts of Latino/a/x peoples across the Americas, including dynamics of globalization, migration, colonialism, imperialism, citizenship and diaspora.

![Program in Latino studies [logo]](/sites/g/files/toruqf596/files/styles/freeform_1440w/public/2021-08/lao-pad.png?itok=8Oe3orF5)
Join the Program
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Students from all departments are welcome to the program. Students may enroll in the Latino studies certificate program at any time, including the first year. There are no prerequisites, and courses taken prior to enrollment may count towards the certificate requirements. Students may take the gateway course AMS 101 at any time during their studies, including after enrollment in the certificate program. To enroll in the program, students should complete the online enrollment form. New students should plan to meet with the associate director or program coordinator before the end of their first year of enrollment, to review their plans for fulfilling the certificate requirements.
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Students may earn a certificate in Latino studies by successfully completing the following requirements, consisting of five courses:
- AMS 101: America Then and Now
- Three courses in Latino studies, either originating in the program or cross-listed and preferably representing disciplinary breadth in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. No more than one course taken in fulfillment of the student’s concentration may be counted toward the certificate. With the approval of the associate director, a student may substitute a comparative race and ethnicity course that contains substantial Latino studies content for one of these courses.
- An advanced seminar in American studies, preferably taken in the senior year.
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Students who fulfill all program requirements will receive a certificate of proficiency in Latino studies upon graduation.
Fall 2023 Courses
This introductory course examines what it means to be Latinx in the United States. We explore how processes of racialization are connected to class, gender, and sexuality, as well as other identity markers. We discuss themes of labor, cultural production, policing, and sexuality. In this course, students will learn how the legacies of white supremacy and Coloniality impact Latinx communities. This course studies experiences and events through cultural texts comprising verbal and non-verbal communication and representation and analyzes how Latinx communities negotiate empire, identity, language, and notions of home.
This course investigates how people of African descent in the Americas have forged social, political, and cultural ties across geopolitical and linguistic boundaries. We will interrogate the transnational dialogue between African Americans and Afro-Latin Americans using case studies from Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. We will explore how Black activists have partnered to challenge racism and economic inequality, while also considering why efforts to mobilize Afro-descendants across the Americas have often been undermined by mutual misunderstandings.
This course examines the transnational intersection of law and natural resources in the Spanish Borderlands of North America. We will study how the Spanish empire (and later an independent Mexico and the emerging United States) defined natural resources as property rights and allocated such resources to Europeans and Indigenous peoples who lived in the arid landscapes of the far northern frontier (what became present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, & California). The course also explores the conflict that developed in the U.S. over natural resources after 1848 between the Hispanic civil law and Anglo-American common law.
An introduction to modern Latin American cultures and artistic and literary traditions through a wide spectrum of materials. We will discuss relevant issues in Latin American cultural, political, and social history, including the legacies of colonialism, the African diaspora, national fictions, gender and racial politics. Materials include short stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Samanta Schweblin; poems by Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén and Mexican poet Sara Uribe; paintings by Mexican muralists; films by Santiago Mitre and Claudia Llosa; writings by Indigenous activist Ailton Krenak.
How are ideas of belonging to the body politic defined in Spain, Latin America, and in Spanish-speaking communities in the United States? Who is "Latin American," "Latinx," "Boricua," "Chino," "Moor," "Indian," etc.? Who constructs these terms and why? Who do they include/exclude? Why do we need these identity markers in the first place? Our course will engage these questions by surveying and analyzing literary, historical, and visual productions from the time of the foundation of the Spanish empire to the present time in the Spanish-speaking world.
This course examines the paradoxical position of Spanish in the United States. The course aims to place the issues and controversies related to linguistic subordination and the maintenance of Spanish in the broader context of Latino communities and their social and historical position in the United States. In addition, it tries to equip students with critical resources to address topics such as the relationship between language and identity, political debates around Spanish and English, and bilingualism and the processes of racialization of linguistic minorities.
Community and Conversations




Carolina Espinoza Cartes (left), an anthropologist, journalist and editor from Chile, leads a class in the course “Rapping in Spanish,” where students created their own books that were compilations of rap songs that they selected and edited themselves. Photo by Julie Clack, Office of Communications