Spring 2025 Course Flyers

mals courses

Spring 2025 registration begins

November 4, 2024 registration ends

November 15, 2024

mas 301 Intro to mexican American & latina/o studies MWF 10am-11am #40345 BUR 112 Lydia CdeBaca-Cruz 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 301 Intro to mexican American & latina/o studies MWF 2pm-3pm

#40355

CMA 5.190

Krissia Plascencia

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the historical, cultural, and social experiences of Mexican Americans and Latina/os in the United States. Students will engage with research and literary works that explore central topics in the field, including colonialism/coloniality, (im)migration, language, health, identity, and activism. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the course will consider the shared and distinct experiences of Mexican and Latina/o Americans in the U.S. across time and geographical settings. We will also discuss race/racialization, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as the study of these issues within Mexican American, Chicanx, and Latina/o Studies. The course will incorporate research articles, fiction writing, films, art, music, podcasts, and community engagement activities as course assignments.

mas 314 Mexican American Literature and Culture MWF 10-11am #40360

PAR 302

Lilia Rosas

The first Festival de Flor y Canto in University of Southern California in 1973 marks an overt shift in the literary production of Chican@/xs. A celebration of the expressions and creations, which inform Mexican American, Chicana@/x literature and culture, this gathering, was one of numerous key outlets to showcase this profound vastness and diversity. In this course, we will consider the range of stories, narratives, and texts critical to understanding the daily lives, resistance, exploitation, and rebellions within Mexican Americans and Chican@/xs in the United States. Through a careful reading of the novel, short story, and poetry, memoir, and film we will uncover the relevant themes, which are central to (me)Xican@/xs, xicanindi@/x, mestiz@/xs, indigenous, and brown communities across Greater Mexico. By the end of the course, students will achieve a growing comprehension into subjects such as curanderismo, rasquachismo, segregation, incarceration, migrations, familia, feminism, womanhood, queerness, and la frontera, to name but a few.

WR Credit: Tomás Ybarra-Frausto Collection

mas 318E Latinx Digital Worlds MW 1pm-2:30pm #40375 PMA 5.114 Maria Cotera Over the last decade, new social media platforms and digital tools have enabled a resurgence of identitarian, anti-racist, feminist, and queer mobilizations online that have transformed digital space into deeply contested public square. This course explores how Latinx communities—traditionally figured as on the wrong side of the “digital divide”—have embraced, mobilized, and sometimes usurped these digital tools and spaces to forge community and create new forms of culture, memory, and activism. Over the course of the semester, we will examine a wide array of digital modalities from social media to digital art, memory, and activism, with an aim to better understand how Latinx publics are forged online. We will pay particular attention to the different ways in which the Latinx diaspora (across and within the U.S. Mexico and Latin America) have used digital tools to build community across transnational borders, claim belonging, and decolonize digital culture.

mas 319 police/Prisons/Inequality MWF 11am-12pm

#40390 ECJ 1.222

Mike Hames García

This course is organized around existing problems in the U.S. criminal legal system and asks students to imagine solutions.

There are no right answers to the questions this course raises.

There are many possible answers and the goal is to understand the tradeoffs involved with each: what are the new challenges brought about by the solutions we offer for problems as complex as those facing policing, criminal courts, and correctional policy in the United States? We will consider mass incarceration, the war on drugs, judicial discretion, mandatory sentencing, defendant rights, police profiling, sexual assault, gender-based violence, victims’ rights, felon disenfranchisement, the criminalization of immigration, prisoner reentry, school discipline, restorative justice, prison abolition, solitary confinement, and the death penalty. The class centers the experiences of the poor, people of color, women, and LGBTQ people.

E

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 337c Chicana feminisms

MW 11:30am-1pm #40410 ETC 2.102

Maria Cotera

This course tracks the rise and development of Chicana feminist consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on both contemporary scholarship and primary source material from the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective (CPMR), students will learn about the individuals, organizations, theories, and aesthetic practices that shaped Chicana feminism in its early years and contributed to the development of an intersectional analytic that was later elaborated and expanded on by writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherrie Moraga. A central theme of this course is how Chicanas shared their ideas and built a community through alternative newspapers and journals, film, and the arts. We will look at some of these materials in the archive, and even create our own examples of print culture and art! Students will emerge from this course with a strong foundation in the history of Chicana feminist thought in the 1970s, an understanding of how Chicana feminism has contributed to contemporary theories of intersectionality, and an appreciation for how Chicanas raised consciousness and developed their ideas through the newspapers and other types of publications.

mas 337j latinx sexualities

MW 11:30am-1pm #40415 CAL 21 Lilia Rosas The publishing of Compañeras: Latina Lesbians in 1987 represents a pathbreaking disruption, which works to humanize, demystify, and complicate the narratives of Latina sexualities at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Told from multiple perspectives by intermingling the voices of scholars, writers, poets, and truth-tellers, this text is still a testament to the stories we must continue to research and analyze to underscore the nuances of Latin@/x racialized sexual formations.

In this course, students will chart and examine Latinx Sexualities from a historical perspective to comprehend the social, cultural, political, and economic factors, which have shaped these experiences. We also will challenge the simplistic and monolithic notions of sexualities that have plagued dominant discourses about Latinx sexuality. Finally, we will evaluate and reflect upon how Latin@/x communities (across sexualities, queerness, and heteronormativity) have defined themselves, resisted repression(s), and participated in their own emancipation of identities, expressions, and desires from their perspectives as indigenous, Afrolatin@/x, and (me)Xican@/x peoples.

mas 374 Land in America

MWF 1pm-2pm #40435 WAG 308 CJ Alvarez If you are like most people living in the United States, you have probably spent very little time contemplating the land beneath your feet. But other important topics that may have captured your interest — from economic growth to struggles over identity to environmentalism — are rooted in land history. This course is designed to help you articulate more clearly where you are, understand how the history of land helps explain the society we live in today, and expand your ideas about the human-nature relationship. Discussion topics include fieldwork methods, border making, land management, economic land use, the variety of people’s ideas about land, and the history of the more-than-human world.

mas 374 Latinx Kinship and Familias MWF 12pm-1pm #40445 WAG 208 Sergio G. Barrera

Familismo, which is said to involve a “dedication, commitment, and loyalty to family” has been identified as a central cultural value among Chicanx/Latinx families. However, is familismo tied to the immediate home? In this course, we will explore the tensions behind the genesis of the Mexican American family through 20th century sociological and anthropological discourse. While the Mexican American family has been depicted in harmful ways, we will focus on the ways that Chicanx/Latinx scholars have provided nuanced understandings of family politics, gender dynamics, and the sociocultural disparities that affect the fabric of the familia throughout history. And how Chicanx/Latinx families have created chosen family models, such as fraternities/sororities, gangs, and drag families, as a means of surviving through systems that act against their livelihood.

Credit: “La Familia”, David Botello

mas 374 Politics of latino identity

MWF 12pm-1pm #40455 BIO 301 Angie Gutierrez In this course, we will focus on the politics of Latino identity and understanding who counts as Latino and what it means politically to belong to this pan-ethnic group. We will explore the political mechanisms of how Latinos became a group in the United States and investigate the political similarities and differences of group members that still exist today. Should we expect Latinos to maintain this unique identity for generations to come, and what can Latino identity tell us about political attitudes and participation? By the end of this course, students should be able to understand the differences and similarities between national origin groups and explain how these differences affect political participation. Students will better understand what it means to belong to a pan-ethnic group and be able to discuss the benefits and costs of pan-ethnicity. In addition to knowing current trends in political participation, students will learn about the history behind these trends in order to contextualize and fully understand why these patterns exist.

mas 375 INternship

W 2pm-4pm #40460 CAL 21 Lilia Rosas This course is an opportunity for students to gain practical and hands-on experience in the workplace through the lens of Mexican American and Latina/o/x Studies. You will participate in a nonpartisan, direct-service capacity internship where you will work with a Mexican American, Chicana/o/x, Latina/o/x, Indigenous-centered community, civic, or government organization/program/entity that is frontline-led and addresses questions of economic, political, social, and/or cultural inequalities, justice, and/or empowerment. You are required to successfully secure a 10-12 hour per week internship by Week 4 of the semester. The purpose of the internship is to apply theories and understanding gained from courses in your area of specialization in a professional setting and to provide you with supplementary training in professional development and workplace expectations. You will use the internship as an opportunity to determine the type of goal-setting you will engage in for the semester.

mas 378 Capstone seminar M 2pm-5pm

#40470

GWB 1.138

CJ Alvarez

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 Danielle Clealand & Angie Gutierrez

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.

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.

Credit: “Fire 2”, Teresita Fernández, 2019