Latin American Studies Courses
Spring 2022
NOTE: Courses listed here or in the Undergraduate Record will count towards a Latin American Studies major or minor. Prior approval for other course work must be granted before the course is taken. For approval, please contact the Director of the Latin American Studies program, Eli Carter at elc6b@virginia.edu. Please be sure to include a copy of the syllabus.
AAS 4570: Advanced Research Seminar in African-American & African Studies: Race Nation Popular Culture in Lat Amer&Caribbean Nicole Ramsey
Department: African-American and African Studies
Day/Time: T/TH 3:30 – 4:45PM
This course draws on interdisciplinary approaches to introduce students to a range of topics, methodologies and experiences that lay the foundation of Black study in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will closely examine the extensive and diverse histories, cultures, social and political movements of Black people in Latin America, the Caribbean and the U.S through popular culture. By offering a multitudinous approach to understanding the relationship between race, national identity and the state, students will critically engage with and reconsider how blackness is articulated, performed and lived within Black Latin American and Caribbean national imaginaries.
AMST 3359: New Course in American Studies: Afro-Caribbean-Latinx Histories in the Americas Staff
Department: American Studies
Day/Time: T/TH 12:30 – 1:45PM
HILA 1501: Introductory Seminar in Latin American History: Gender-Based Violence in Latin America: International Collaborations Lean Sweeney
Department: History
Day/Time: T 3:30 – 6:00 PM
Violence targeting people because of their gender, based on their perceived violation of gendered norms, or enacted through power inequalities based on gender differentiations is rampant throughout the world, affecting people of all ages, races, abilities, classes, nationalities, sexual orientations and gender identities. Yet its visibility often remains subsumed by other layers of inequality, contexts of violence, and histories of family-making, nation-formation, and cultural and political processes. The present seminar aims to use a focus on modern Latin America to highlight the stories of both gender-based violence and the fight against its continued presence within the broader history of the region, culminating in a collective report produced through individual student projects and the mentorship of Dr. Laura Aragon, Director of the Pan-American Development Foundation. Students will receive a broad-based understanding of the overlapping relationships between gender, race and class in Latin American history, as well as an introduction to intersectional and decolonial approaches to research. With Dr. Aragon, they will engage in hands-on analyses of databases, court cases, and laws, as well as presidential speeches and popular culture that incorporate forms of violence as well as discursive strategies of defense against this violence. Class assessments will include two short presentations, a journal, bibliographical entries to Zotero, and a final project incorporating quantitative and qualitative analysis, primary sources, and graphs. The class’s collective report will be uploaded to UVA’s LibraOpen, for consultation across the university.
HILA 2002: Modern Latin America, 1824 to Present Thomas Klubock
Department: History
Day/Time: M/W 11:00 – 11:50 PM - Please see SIS for Discussion Days and Times
This course examines modern Latin American history from independence to the present. It focuses on socioeconomic, cultural, and political changes, and on how different social groups -peasants, indigenous people, workers, and women- have experienced these changes. We will consider a number of key questions about the causes of underdevelopment, the roots of authoritarianism, the nature and causes of revolutionary movements, the question of human rights, the problem of social inequality, United States imperialism, and the role of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Requirements for the course are two in-class midterm exams (20% of final grade each) and a final exam (35% of final grade). The three exams will be closed-book and students will write five paragraph-long analyses of key terms, names, or phrases for the midterms and ten for the final exam. Students will be graded on their mastery of material from the assigned readings, lectures, and discussion sections. In addition, attendance and active participation in section discussions are required and will be factored into the final grade (25% of final grade). Students will read on average 100-125 pages per week. Reading assignments must be completed before discussion sections.
HILA 3021: Human Rights in Latin America Lean Sweeney
Department: History
Day/Time: M/W 2:00 – 3:15PM
Beyond simply discussing a variety of cases of rights violations in Latin America, this course
challenges students to confront some of the grey areas that still vex the search for human rights in Latin America and the worlds of its diaspora. For the past fifty years, the issue of human rights has defined Latin American societies and political cultures. Today, Latin American countries attempting to consolidate their democratic systems and the rule of law continue to confront the legacies of human rights violations committed during decades of civil war and military dictatorship, as well as in the cradle of neoliberalism and in the face of environmental disaster. Yet these are global issues in which we are implicated. Further, they demand that we return to confounding questions like, what is the truth, who decides, and why does it matter? Should human rights violations be treated differently during war than in peace time? Should the obligation to rectify rights abuses fall more on some than others, more on states than on individuals, more on judges than mothers, more on parents than children? What can be done about lasting traumas from centuries of exploitation and repression, or future dystopias of climatic upheaval and environmental destruction?
MDST 3105: Latina/o Media Studies Keara Goin
Department: Media Studies
Day/Time: M/W 5:00 – 6:15PM
This course is designed to introduce students to critical analyses of media texts, media industries, and media audiences that help explain the social, political, economic, and cultural locations of Latinas/os in America.
LAST 2050: Introduction to Latin American Studies Eli Carter
Department: Latin American Studies
Day/Time: MW 2:00-3:15PM
This course covers the basic principles of diachronic linguistics – the study of how languages change over time -- and discusses the uses of linguistic data in the reconstruction of prehistory. Students will acquire the techniques of linguistic reconstruction, and consider the use of linguistic evidence in tracing prehistoric population movements, in demonstrating contact among prehistoric groups, and in the reconstruction of daily life. Examples and case studies will be drawn from the Mayan languages of Central America, and will include discussion of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems and their ongoing decipherment. Over the semester, students will be responsible for completing several homework assignments based on course content, and a final exam.
PLAN 5500: Solidarity Economy in Urban Latin America Matthew Slaats
Department: Urban Planning/Architecture
Day/Time: Tuesday 9:30-12:00PM
This course covers the basic principles of diachronic linguistics – the study of how languages change over time -- and discusses the uses of linguistic data in the reconstruction of prehistory. Students will acquire the techniques of linguistic reconstruction, and consider the use of linguistic evidence in tracing prehistoric population movements, in demonstrating contact among prehistoric groups, and in the reconstruction of daily life. Examples and case studies will be drawn from the Mayan languages of Central America, and will include discussion of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems and their ongoing decipherment. Over the semester, students will be responsible for completing several homework assignments based on course content, and a final exam.
PORT 3559: New Course in Portuguese: Adv Port: Race & Class Brazil Lilian Feitsoa
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: M/W 3:30 – 4:45PM
TBD
SPAN 3430: Survey of Latin American Literature II (1900 to Present) Cole Rizki
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: M/W 3:30 – 4:45PM
This course provides students with a survey of Latin American literature and the context in which it has developed from 1900 to the present. Students will leave this course with a general understanding of the region’s major literary trends, including their social and political dimensions. “Literature,” in this course, refers to a range of cultural production from literary texts (novels, stories, essays, poems) to visual art, film, and song lyrics. Throughout the course, we will consider the following questions: How has Latin America’s cultural production shaped and been shaped by its cultures, peoples, and historical events? How do the consciousness, memory, and imagination expressed within the region’s literature both reflect and create the region’s realities?And perhaps most importantly, who has (and has not) had access to Latin America’s literature and how has that shaped the way the region has represented itself through both the written word and image?
SPAN 3430: Survey of Latin American Literature II (1900 to Present) Anna Garland Mahler
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: M/W 12:30 – 1:45 PM
This course provides students with a survey of Latin American literature and the context in which it has developed from 1900 to the present. Students will leave this course with a general understanding of the region’s major literary trends, including their social and political dimensions. “Literature,” in this course, refers to a range of cultural production from literary texts (novels, stories, essays, poems) to visual art, film, and song lyrics. Throughout the course, we will consider the following questions: How has Latin America’s cultural production shaped and been shaped by its cultures, peoples, and historical events? How do the consciousness, memory, and imagination expressed within the region’s literature both reflect and create the region’s realities?And perhaps most importantly, who has (and has not) had access to Latin America’s literature and how has that shaped the way the region has represented itself through both the written word and image?
SPAN 4320: Contemporary Latin-American Short Fiction Gustavo Pellón
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: T/TH 12:30 – 1:45PM
Requisitos: Span 3300 y Span 3430 o equivalente.
Exploraremos la gran variedad del cuento en Latinoamérica durante los siglos XX y XXI. Entre los autores que vamos a leer están: Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Angelica Gorodischer, Mempo Giardinelli, Clarice Lispector, Isabel Allende, Rosario Ferré. Hay que leer los cuentos en el original (salvo Lispector). Leer traducciones de los cuentos es una violación de honor.
1) QUIROGA / CUENTOS-84-376-0959-3
2) BORGES / CUENTOS COMPLETOS-978-0-525-56712-7 9
3) CORTAZAR / LA AUTOPISTA DEL SUR Y OTROS CUENTOS-0-14-025580-X
4) RULFO / EL LLANO EN LLAMAS (CATEDRA)- 84-376-0512-1
5) MARQUEZ / TODOS LOS CUENTOS-978-84-9032-276-5
6) LISPECTOR / COMPLETE STORIES-0-8112-2793-6
7) ALLENDE / CUENTOS DE EVA LUNA-84-9759-252-2
8) FERRE / PAPELES DE PANDORA-0-375-72469-
SPAN 4530: Special Topics Seminar: Literature Afro-Latinidad Across the Americas Anna Garland Mahler
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: M/W 2:00 – 3:15PM
This course is a survey of the history and literature of the African diaspora in Latin America from the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Río de la Plata to the “Latin American” cities of New York and Miami. From the earliest days of Spanish colonization to fighting in the wars of independence to forging global political and cultural networks from the early twentieth century to present-day, African-descended peoples have had an undeniably central role in defining Latin America’s history and its present. Yet Afro-Latin American experiences and literatures are often occluded in mainstream media and scholarship. In this course, we will engage a wide array of texts and films on the experiences of peoples of African descent in Latin America, ranging from narratives about Black conquistadors to testimonies of runaway slaves to Afrolatinx contributions to the origins of hip-hop in the United States. The primary objectives of this course are to expose students to both texts produced by and about Afro-Latin Americans and to the social and historical context in which those texts were produced, as well as to assist students in further developing their critical writing and speaking skills in Spanish.
SPAN 4530: Special Topics Seminar: Literature Afro-Latin American Cultures in the 20th and 21st Mauricio Acuña
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: M/W 5:00 – 6:15PM
Course for advanced undergraduate students in Spanish and Global Studies.
Taught in Spanish.
What are Afro-Latin American cultural creations and how do they express, transgress, and recreate pressing issues like citizenship, civil rights, self-determination, and nationhood in 20th and 21st century Latin America? How are these expressions visible in cultural productions by Afro-Latin American writers and artists? And how do they unfold in African Diasporic cultural expressions by black, brown or white subjects through the creations of novels, poems, music or paintings? This course will examine key moments of aesthetic production authored by or about African descendants in the Americas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From the contradictory post-abolition process to recent debates about affirmative action and public memory conveyed in monuments, we will read, listen to, watch and talk about how Afro-Latin American imaginations shaped the struggles for creative liberties, political transgressions and social contestation in the region and beyond. The course content will include a diverse array of artistic media such as poetry, novels, manifestos, images, testimonies, music, and performances. You will explore the materials through class conversations, oral presentations, and discussions boards, as well as doing oral interviews with Afro-Latin American artists. This course aims to inspire meaningful ways of interaction with and between Latin American and Latino/a/x individuals and cultures, as well as to increase your critical perspectives about race relations in interconnected world regions.
SPAN 4530: Special Topics Seminar: Language Latin American Spanish Omar Velazquez Mendoza
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: T/TH 4:00 – 5:15PM
An in-depth study of the geographical distribution of the Latin American Spanish dialects, whose disposition is analyzed both on synchronic (current) but also on diachronic (historical) terms. Special attention is placed on the colonial period, the most formative phase of Spanish dialect development in the Americas.
SPAN 4712: Travelers in Latin America Fernando Operé
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: M/W 2:00 – 3:15PM
This course covers the basic principles of diachronic linguistics – the study of how languages change over time -- and discusses the uses of linguistic data in the reconstruction of prehistory. Students will acquire the techniques of linguistic reconstruction, and consider the use of linguistic evidence in tracing prehistoric population movements, in demonstrating contact among prehistoric groups, and in the reconstruction of daily life. Examples and case studies will be drawn from the Mayan languages of Central America, and will include discussion of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems and their ongoing decipherment. Over the semester, students will be responsible for completing several homework assignments based on course content, and a final exam.
SPAN 4715: Contemporary Latin-American Short Fiction Gustavo Pellón
Department: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Day/Time: T/TH 3:30 – 4:45PM
The aim of this course is to study Cuban films in the context of Cuba's history and culture. The course will include the viewing of films outside the classroom (roughly one per week), readings about the films, history, and culture. Please note that out-of-class preparation and the reading load will be significant (6-9 hours per week). All films will be available for you to view in our course Collab site. The format of the class will be lecture/discussion with a strong emphasis on class participation.
Prerequisites: SPAN 3010, 3300, and 3 credits of 3400-3430, or departmental placement.