Program in Latino Studies

Books studied in recent Latino studies courses

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Spring 2025 Courses

Advanced Seminar in American Studies: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration Across the American Landscape (CD or SA)

This is an advanced Seminar meant to deepen understanding of central themes in American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Latino/a Studies.The Seminar concentrates on historical trajectories, social and economic evolution, and cultural contributions to nation making on the part of Asian Americans and Latino/as. We will investigate colonial antecedents and processes of exclusion/stigmatization but also acts of resistance and claims on citizenship that have consistently identified the trajectory of immigrants and their descendants throughout American history.

Instructors
Patricia Fernández-Kelly
Becoming Latino in the U.S. (CD or HA)

History 306 studies all Latinos in the US, from those who have (im)migrated from across Latin America to those who lived in what became US lands. The course covers the historical origins of debates over land ownership, the border, assimilation expectations, discrimination, immigration regulation, intergroup differences, civil rights activism, and labor disputes. History 306 looks transnationally at Latin America's history by exploring shifts in US public opinion and domestic policies. By the end of the course, students will have a greater understanding and appreciation of how Latinos became an identifiable group in the US.

Instructors
Rosina A. Lozano
Introduction to Latin American Cultures (CD or LA)

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.

Instructors
Gabriela Nouzeilles
Introduction to Latino/a/x Studies (CD or SA)

This introductory course examines what it means to be Latinx in the United States. We explore Latinx identity through an analysis of history, social processes, and gender. We analyze how processes of racialization are connected to class, gender, and sexuality, as well as other identity markers. 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.

Instructors
Aracely Garcia Gonzalez
Latiné Cinema: Stories of Dreaming and Defiance (CD or LA)

This seminar examines contemporary Latiné cinema, focusing on films produced in the U.S. by the Latiné diaspora who represent a significant and growing portion of the US population. Through an analysis of cinematic techniques, narrative styles, and thematic elements, the course will investigate how Latiné filmmakers address issues such as identity, gender, race, family, migration, colonialism, the Dreamers, and politics. Students will explore how Latiné cinema serves as a medium for both cultural heritage and resistance, offering visions of defiance against socio-political restraint and aspirations for a transformed future.

Instructors
Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt
Latinx Photography (CD or LA)

This course looks closely at how contemporary Latinx artists are reimagining photographic encounters and arrangements. The longer history of photography is traditionally told in terms of documentation, truth claims, the democratization of art, and colonial surveillance regimes. This course gives pride of place to Latinx artists who use the medium and its iterations (e.g. video installations, cyanotypes, photo collage, repurposing archival prints) to figure unconventional notions of intimacy, diaspora, identity, archives, revolution, futures, and immediacy.

Instructors
Monica Huerta
Modern Latin America since 1810 (HA)

This course explores Latin America's history from independence to the present. We examine the contentious process of building national polities and economies in a world of expansionist foreign powers. The region's move towards greater legal equality in the 19th century coexisted with social hierarchies related to class, race, gender, and place of origin. We explore how this tension generated stronger, even revolutionary demands for change in the 20th century, while considering how growing U.S. power shaped possibilities for regional transformation. Primary sources foreground the perspectives of elites, subalterns, artists and intellectuals.

Instructors
Corinna Zeltsman
Spanish in the Community (CD or SA)

This course explores the issues and controversies surrounding the linguistic subordination and maintenance of Spanish within Latino communities, situating them within the broader social and historical context of the United States. Students will gain critical insights into bilingualism, the interplay between language and identity, language policy, and the racialization of linguistic minorities. Additionally, the course introduces fundamental concepts of second language teaching, preparing students for the community-engaged component in which they will volunteer as ESL instructors with El Centro.

Instructors
Alberto Bruzos Moro
Topics in Dramaturgical and Performance Analysis: The Fornésian Tradition (LA)

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to the principles and practices of dramaturgical and performance analysis of stage plays as written works, as blueprints for theatrical performance, and as exercises in worldmaking. This seminar also rehearses how the techniques of dramaturgical and performance analysis might be applied to modes of embodied enactment - whether historical or contemporary, whether in art or everyday life - beyond the theatrical frame. In Spring 2025, the course will focus on the life, work, and legacy of the pathbreaking Cuban-American playwright, director, designer, and teacher María Irene Fornés (1930-2018).

Instructors
Brian E. Herrera

Fall 2024 Courses

Comparative Perspectives on Power, Resistance and Change (CD or EC)
Subject associations
AMS 101 / ASA 101 / LAO 101

This course introduces students to methods of American Studies, Asian American Studies and Latino Studies through discussion of some of the signature ideas, events, and debates in and about America's past and present. It presents students various scholarly approaches to historical and mythic manifestations of America from local, national, and global perspectives and considers the historical and cognitive processes associated with the delineation of America. The course examines a wide range of material and media from the point of view of multiple fields of study.

Instructors
Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús
Allison Carruth
Shamus R. Khan
Advanced Seminar: The 1970s in 10 Objects (HA)
Subject associations
AMS 406 / ASA 406 / LAO 406

The 1970s are one of the most fascinating periods in recent American history, marking a turn from the countercultural turmoil of the 1960s to the rising conservatism of the 1980s. Often overlooked, these years nonetheless encompass tremendous social, political, and cultural change. In this seminar, we'll examine the 1970s through 10 intriguing objects--some famous, some obscure---that shaped and reflected the decade's art, politics, economics, technology, and culture. We'll use each object as an occasion for looking deeper at the issues it encapsulates or represents, how those issues reverberate across the decade, and their legacy for today.

Instructors
William A. Gleason
Thinking with Bad Bunny: the Cultural Politics of Race, Language, and Empire (CD or SA)
Subject associations
LAO 354 / MUS 355 / ANT 254

This interdisciplinary course examines the cultural and political significance of Puerto Rican mega star Bad Bunny who has transcended musical genres to become a global phenomenon. Through an interdisciplinary lens, students will engage in a critical analysis of his music, lyrics, aesthetics, activism, gender non-conforming performances, and savvy business strategies. We will examine how Bad Bunny/Benito uses his platform and artistry to negotiate the complexities of being both a global Latinx icon and a child of Puerto Rico's colonial context.

Instructors
Yarimar Bonilla
Latinx Popular Culture (CD or SA)
Subject associations
LAO 356 / GSS 425

This course explores the construction, imaging, and experience of the racialized Latinx body while considering modern regimes of power. It examines legacies of White supremacy and Coloniality in relation to cultural production and the Latinx body. This course's pedagogical approach is rooted in Chicana/o Studies and will examine power in relation to Latinx and other communities of color--it does not focus on Mexican/Latinx communities exclusively. When analyzing power, it recognizes the importance of contextualizing visual, audio, and embodied performative representations of culture to understand how the body constantly speaks back to power.

Instructors
Aracely Garcia Gonzalez
Post Disaster Futures (CD or SA)
Subject associations
LAO 383 / ANT 283 / AMS 393

This course examines Hurricane Maria's impact on Puerto Rico and the push for a resilient, equitable future. We will explore the disaster's effects on infrastructure, economy, and communities, and the role of colonialism and environmental injustice in setting the stage. Through research projects, students will have the opportunity to investigate specific aspects of Puerto Rico's post-Maria recovery and to propose innovative solutions that prioritize equity, sustainability, and community empowerment.

Instructors
Yarimar Bonilla
Urban Sociology: The City and Social Change in the Americas (SA)
Subject associations
SOC 210 / LAS 210 / URB 210 / LAO 210

By taking a comparative approach, this course examines the role of social, economic, and political factors in the emergence and transformation of modern cities in the United States and selected areas of Latin America. We consider the city in its dual image: both as a center of progress and as a redoubt of social problems, especially poverty. Attention is given to spatial processes that have resulted in the aggregation and desegregation of populations differentiated by social class and race.

Instructors
Patricia Fernández-Kelly
Introduction to Latin American Cultures (CD or LA)
Subject associations
SPA 222 / LAS 222 / LAO 222

This course offers an introduction to modern Latin American literature and culture. It focuses on the complex ways in which cultural and intellectual production anticipates, participates in, and responds to political, social, and economic transformations in the 20th and 21st centuries. Through a wide spectrum of sources (essays, fiction, poetry, film, and art), students will study and discuss some of the most relevant issues in Latin American modern history, such as modernity, democracy, identity, gender, memory, and social justice.

Instructors
Javier E. Guerrero
Identity in the Spanish-Speaking World (CD or LA)
Subject associations
SPA 250 / LAS 250 / HUM 251 / LAO 250

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.

Instructors
Christina H. Lee
Doing Oral History in Spanish: The 'Voces de la Diáspora' Oral History Project (CD)
Subject associations
SPA 364 / LAO 364 / AMS 434

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of oral history. Students will learn the principles and applications of oral history. The class will collaborate with the Historical Society of Princeton and the Princeton Public Library to continue developing the "Voces de la Diáspora" Oral History project, a project partner of "Voices of Princeton". Discussion on readings will be combined with hands-on activities to prepare students for conducting oral history interviews in Spanish.

Instructors
Alberto Bruzos Moro

Spring 2024 Courses

Black Latinidad: from Frederick Douglass to Cardi B
Subject associations
AAS 354 / LAS 362 / LAO 362

This seminar examines Black Latinidad as an epistemology; as a way of knowing that allows us to better understand the historical relationship between race, colonialism and diaspora. Through the analysis of cultural texts: including novels, music, film, and visual art, we will engage in a genealogical examination of Black Latinidad beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century and through the present. Expanding the conceptual, geographical and temporal limitations that continue to produce Latinx Studies as a contemporary, U.S. based field of knowledge, our course will engage a historical approach to Latinx thought that centers blackness.

Instructors
Lorgia García Peña
Latina/o Literature and Film
Subject associations
LAO 347 / ENG 247

In this course students will be reading works from the Latinx literary canon as a survey of diverse Latinx voices. Through the course theme, students will examine how select Latinx authors write about community, identity, race, gender, resistance, and culture in a manner that captures The Latinx Experience. Selected texts will showcase how home is contested as their characters navigate their lives 'here' and 'there' via notions of diaspora, migration, and belonging, languages, and borders. This course analyzes Latinx literary works, including the course novels, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, Sabrina & Corina, and The House on Mango Street.

Instructors
Keishla Rivera-Lopez
Tropical Fantasies: The Hispanic Caribbean and Haiti in the Global Imaginary
Subject associations
LAO 359 / LAS 340 / SPA 361 / AAS 374

This course proposes a counter-narrative of the myths and fantasies that have been created about the Caribbean and of the historical and cultural realities surrounding them. Through a close reading of literary, artistic, critical, and historical texts we will examine race, ethnic, and gender identity constructions; the rise of the plantation economy; and the emergence of modern nations. The relationship between coloniality and the emergence of diasporic Caribbean voices of dissidence will be a guiding tone for our conversations throughout the semester as we unpack the links between colonialism and diaspora in the Caribbean.

Instructors
Lorgia García Peña
Latina Sexualities
Subject associations
LAO 368 / GSS 435 / LAS 398 / AAS 349

This course explores how Latina sexualities and sexual economies are integrated with U.S. development and expansion of capital in Latin American countries. We trace the history of capitalism and its reliance on the construction of racialized, gendered, and sexualized subjects. We will explore how, similar to Asian and Black women, Latina's sexualities are integral to the accumulation of wealth in the United States. We focus on the sex trades, such as sex tourism in Cuba, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic, the booming online sex work industries in Colombia, and independent pornography industries like OnlyFans in the U.S.

Instructors
Aracely Garcia Gonzalez
Spanish in the Community
Subject associations
SPA 304 / LAO 304

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.

Instructors
Mariana Bono
Doing Oral History in Spanish: The 'Voces de la Diáspora' Oral History Project
Subject associations
SPA 364 / LAO 364 / AMS 434

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of oral history. Students will learn the principles and applications of oral history. The class will collaborate with the Historical Society of Princeton and the Princeton Public Library to develop the first stage of the "Voces de la Diáspora" Oral History project, a project partner of "Voices of Princeton". Discussion on readings will be combined with hands-on activities to prepare students for conducting oral history interviews in Spanish.

Instructors
Alberto Bruzos Moro