This course takes a community cultural wealth approach to the diversity of Mexican American and Latina/x/o experiences. Considering broad themes, such as “Home: Educación del Corazón,” “Borders: Musical Migrations,” “Solidarity: African American and Latinx Shared Histories,” and, finally, “Design: Educating for Restorative Justice,” this course introduces foundational concepts in Mexican American & Latina/x/o Studies while inviting students to draw the connections and nurture the curiosities that most interest them and relate to their own lives and experiences.
mas 301
Intro to mexican American & latina/o studies
TTH 11am-12:30pm #40350 RLP 1.102 Andie Flores
In this course, students will dissect performances of MexicanAmerican and Latinx machismo across a range of artistic mediums, from mainstream television and music to contemporary visual and performance art. Together, we will create and test theories about how hyper-masculine performances and stories of Mexicanidad and Latinidad shape the formation of a racial identity in the US. Subjects of study include, but are not limited to, George Lopez, Carlos Mencia, Sabado Gigante Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Oscar de la Hoya, the work of artists like José Villalobos, as well as portrayals of Latinx masculinity across drag, tattooing, theatre, and other popular culture. Students will use this lens of gendered performance of race to trace the history of Latinx inclusion and exclusion to guide an intersectional approach to unraveling how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, language, migration, indigeneity, and citizenship are integral to the multiplicity identities forming Latinidad.
Credit: Artist José Villalobos, photo by Marc Arevalo
mas 319
Latinx Material Cultures
TTH 3:30pm-5pm #40395 PMA 7.112 Wanda Hernández
An altar to La Virgen de Guadalupe, a gold nameplate necklace, a griddle for pupusas, and an all-black Puerto Rican flag are all objects that can be used to interrogate the history and culture of U.S. Latinxs. What do these objects, and others like them, reveal about Latinidad? In this course, students will learn how to use material culture as a method of analysis that can highlight Latinx histories of oppression, struggles towards liberation, and the politics of everyday life.
mas 337j
mas 378 Capstone seminar
This seminar focuses on creative and original approaches to writing about place. How do you do justice to the uniqueness of a specific region and the people who live there, or once did? How do you write about places you have never visited or where you have spent very little time? What is the relationship between humans and the natural world? How do you build the skills of paying attention, keeping a field journal, and reading widely to develop the craft of writing? These are the topics we will explore in an intensely interactive workshop environment.
mas 392
Afrolatinx and caribbean Diasporas
T 11am-2 pm
#40485 UTC 1.142
Nicole Ramsey
This course traces the histories and legacies of Afro-Latinx and Caribbean communities shaped by the transatlantic slave trade, during which 95% of the 12 million enslaved Africans were brought to Latin America and the Caribbean. Special attention is given to the intersections of Afro-Latin American identities, including the experiences of Afro-Latin American women and LGBTQ communities. We will also examine how racialization, national identity formation, U.S. imperialism, displacement, and immigration have shaped the spatial, economic, and environmental (in)justices that impact AfroLatinx communities across the Americas. Using a projectdriven approach this graduate course will integrate research, writing, and creative work through scholarly, multimedia, film, journalistic, and artistic resources to explore how interconnected systems of oppression have shaped the experiences of Afro-Latinx communities and their broader influence across the Americas.
mas 392
Latinx Ethnography
TH 2pm-5pm #40495 UTC 4.114
Rachel González-Martin
This course takes up ethnographic field methods in Latine/x communities through a lens of witnessing, documentation, refusal, and re-imagination of community stories and storytelling. We will consider settler colonial legacies in crafting anthropological ethnographic methodologies as we examine innovations in ethnographic texts emerging from interdisciplinary scholars who root themselves in post-colonial and anticolonial practices.
mas 392
Methods in Race and ethnicity
M 1pm-4pm #40500 CMA 3.134
This course will give students an introduction to both qualitative and quantitative research methods used in social science to study race and ethnicity. We will discuss how to design a survey, interview methods, focus groups, ethnography, how to sample populations of interest, and how to employ public opinion data in your research. We will also cover how to use research data such as the Census and geographic markers to answer research questions. Students will be also introduced to quantitative and qualitative software. We will analyze how to employ these methods in racial and ethnic communities, how to interview our own communities, and how our own positionalities affect and can be an asset to our research.
Danielle Clealand & Angie Gutierrez
mas 395c
Theories of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies
W 3pm-6pm #40505 MEZ 1.104
Laura Gutiérrez
This course introduces graduate students to different critical theories that have been or can be used in Latinx Studies, as well as theoretical approaches that have stemmed from the field. The course will begin with and insist on the premise that there is no one consistent theory within the field of Latinx Studies, nor will we strive to arrive at one. Instead, we will work with texts in a way that allows for discussions regarding the vexed relations within Latinx identities, and the larger social and cultural contexts. One of the goals of the seminar is for students to be able to advance their (interdisciplinary) research projects in Latinx Studies. More general outcomes include having basic knowledge of several of the major theoretical contributions to the field, but also to situate the contributions of these thinkers to the larger field of critical theory and intellectual histories in the hemisphere.
