Courses Spring 2008
I. COURSES WITH SIGNIFICANT LATINO/A STUDIES COMPONENT:
AAAS 199S - SPECIAL TOPICS Topic: America in Black and Brown
Crosslisted: HISTORY 106S, LIT 162ZS
Instructor: Reyes, Alvaro Andres W F 8:30 AM-9:45 AM (Sci Bldg 240)
This class will attempt to deepen our understanding of the 1960’s by showing the centrality of actions taken by people of Color on and off college campuses across the United States- actions that began in the late 1950’s and continued into the Early 1970’s.
We will begin with an examination of the global context of the revolts that occurred during this epoch (African Decolonization, Viet Nam etc). We will then concentrate on the content of the expression of this era within Black and Latino radical movements-mostly specifically, the Black Panther Party, The Young Lords Organization, and the Chicano Movement.
DOCST 162S - FARMWORKERS IN NC: POVERTY
Crosslisted as: CulAnth 162S and AAAS 195S
Instructor: Thompson, C. M W 10:05 AM-11:20 AM
Focus upon those who bring food to our tables, particularly those (primarly Latino/as) who labor in the fields of North Carolina and the Southeast. Farm work from the plantation system and slavery to sharecropping, and to the migrant and seasonal farmworker population today. Documentary work and its contributions to farmworker advocacy. This course is approximately 80% Latino/a specific
ENGLISH 169CS - Cultures of US Imperialism: War of 1898
Crosslisted: Lit 161S, SPAN 122S
Instructor: Saldívar, José D Tu Th 2:50 PM- 4:05 PM (240 Science)
This special topics course explores the narratives--memoirs, essays, novels, testimonies, letters--and history of the Cultures of United States Imperialism. We will start by considering the multiple meanings of US imperialism and anti-imperialism, and the frontiers of US Empire. We will then examine the meaning of the war of 1898. Was 1898 a date and space of historical beginning and/or a date of historical rupture? Why was the War of 1898 termed a “splendid little war?” But we will move beyond the reification of 1898 by considering other transnational configurations such as Jose Marti's Latinamericanism, W.E. B. Du Bois’s Pan-Africanism, and Subcomandante Marcos Zapatismo. Additionally, we will explore how US imperialism maps the relations of the domestic and the foreign in gendered and ethno-racial terms. Briefly, this course has a double focus. One looks at the representations of US empire in a variety of literary and non-literary texts within a broad timeframe. The second examines recent theoretical work about culture and US imperialism and sets them in dialogue with the current efforts to remap the post-colonial dimensions of US culture and society.
Course content is over 50% Latino/a Studies-specific.
Required Texts:
Louis Perez, Jr., The War of 1898
Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders
Miguel Barnet, Biography of a Runaway Slave
David Harvey, The New Imperialism
Jose Marti: Selected Writings ed. Esther Allen
Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A History of the Puerto Rican Community in New York ed. Cesar Iglesias
Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Caliban and other Essays
Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tangere
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
The Oxford W.E. B. Du Bois Reader ed. Eric Sundquist
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire
Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of US Culture
Our Word is our Weapon: Selected Writings: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, ed.
De Leon
Course Requirements
Students will be required to produce 1 page discussion papers for each of the seminar readings; do one in-class presentation; and write one longer 8-10 page analytical paper.
ENGLISH 169CS SP TOP AMERICAN LIT: ISSUES OF IDENTITY
Instructor: Carlson, Lori Tu Th 1:15 PM-2:30 PM (Allen 304I)
Young adult novels (novels aimed at 15 to 21 year olds) written by the children of Latino immigrants are currently in great demand. With immigration from Mexico and Central and South America being such a hot topic in the discourse of American society today, publishers are paying unprecedented attention to Latino voices. Students will read YA novels that explore what it means to “be American” and the notion of “home” by writers such as Gary Soto, Pam Munoz Ryan, Sandra Cisneros, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Benjamin Alire Saenz among others. The authors studied in this course describe many kinds of dialogues between home and homeland, finally creating a new kind of home on paper.
LIT 143S SP TOP: Exile and Migration
Instructor: Dorfman, Ariel Tu 6:00 PM-10:30 PM (Franklin C 130/132)
We live in an age of dislocations, with enhanced border security and a paradoxical acceleration of border crossings, legal and illegal. This course will explore a profusion of literary and filmic responses to this situation and the dilemmas arising from it, placing particular emphasis on the elite experience of exiles and the contrasting ways in which migrants and immigrants live this massive phenomenon and express it. Attention will be brought to the history, background and etymology of these concepts. Works and authors from Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa will be examined, with a major focus on the United States today. Students will be encouraged to find out how these questions affect their own lives, at home as well as at the University and in the North Carolina environment. The first part of the class will be for lectures and discussion. On many occasions, these sessions will be followed by the screening of a film.
POLSCI 199C: POLITICAL THEORY: Immigration: Ethics and Politics
Instructor: Grattan,Laura Kathleen W F 11:40AM - 12:55PM (Trent 039A)
Why has immigration become a divisive, hot-button issue in recent years, during a decade when America has faced a crisis of confidence about its identity -- in terms of both its political system at home and its preeminence in the world? How is it possible for the debate over immigration to so unsettle a nation that imagines itself primarily as a “nation of immigrants”? How, ethically and politically, should a nation of immigrants define and control its borders? How and why has immigration historically been central to the way America imagines itself? Will it always be?
The struggle over borders is in many ways the struggle to define central political-theoretical terms, such as political community, citizenship, and identity. Territorial, legal, and cultural borders tie citizens to a common set of principles and practices, which take deep root in individual and national imaginations. Immigration, the movement across borders, thus proves a particularly fertile area for thinking about the ways in which political communities define, contest, and transform the central terms of their existence.
This course is structured around the border: The first part examines individual experiences and identities as they relate to the formation of political communities.The second part focuses on the border itself and probes its relevance to the study of ethics and politics.The final part addresses the relationship between immigration and the imperatives of political community, debating both normative prescriptions and the usefulness of key political-theoretical terms and constructs. This course contains a service-learning component of 20 hours of civic engagement around some aspect of contemporary immigration issues. See ACES for more information.
ROMST 200S: "Visual Studies: A View from America and the Caribbean"
Crosslisted as: ARTHIST 288S
Instructor: Gabara, Esther W 4:25 PM-6:55 PM (Languages 109)
This seminar presents interdisciplinary approaches to visual culture formulated across the American continent (north and south), and the Caribbean. We will examine how the visual itself is composed in sites surviving both the history of colonialism and recent forms of globalization. By this, I mean we will consider American and Caribbean formulations of: the idea of the image; space, place, and site; media and circulation; books, design, and the word as image; and the (raced and gendered) body. As much as this seminar shifts the geography of theories of Visual Studies, it also suggests that an important component of this interdiscipline is the undoing of the division of labor between critic and artist, theorist and producer. We therefore take seriously critical voices outside the academy, including artists’ writings. Readings include: Luis Camnitzer, Jesus Martin Barbero, Nelly Richard, Franz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Marta Hellion, Helio Oiticica, Mirko Lauer, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Monica Mayer, and Decio Pignatari. Texts will be available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
CL: ART Hist 288S.01
SPANISH 106A - SPANISH FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONS
Crosslisted as Linguist 106
Instructor: Vidal, G. Tu Th 10:15-11:20 (Allen 103)
It is well documented that poor quality of care and satisfaction are a frequent result of communication problems between Spanish-speaking patients and health-care providers. However, many Latino immigrants have limited access to health resources. "Spanish for Health Professions: Interaction with the Latino Community" is a course that improves students' linguistic abilities in Spanish, keeping in mind the socio-cultural context of the Latino community in Durham. This course increases the linguistic and cultural competence of students associated with the health profession. In this course, students develop an understanding of how socio-cultural elements, such as level of education, country of origin, and gender shape the linguistic interaction between the health professionals and the patients. The research service-learning component of this course enhances the academic experience through structured reflection opportunities and analysis of students’ experience in the community. Students are expected to work within the Latino community at least 15 hours during the semester.
The linguistic component of the course includes development of a lexical repertoire in the health field, and development of discourse strategies to successfully interact with members of the Latino community in Durham.
For more information visit the Spanish Language Program website: http://spanish.aas.duke.edu. By Permission Only.
SPAN 106C:ISSUES EDUCATION/INMMIGRATION
Instructor: Munne,Joan Tu Th 2:50 PM-4:05 PM (Languages 08)
“Issues of Education and Immigration” will explore issues of cultural assimilation, literacy, and access to educational opportunities for the growing Latino community in the US. Students are required to participate in service-learning with a local community partner and design, implement, and evaluate an original community-based research project. Permission by instructor only
SPAN 106E: Latino/a Voices in Duke, Durham and Beyond
Instructor: Clifford, Joan Tu Th 1:15 PM-2:30 PM (Allen 103)
Current cultural, political, and social issues related to the construction and representation of Latino/a identity and community formation within a local and global context. Gateway Research Service-Learning course with twenty hours of service within the Latino community. Recommended that students take a 100-level Spanish course prior to enrolling in this course. Permission of instructor required.
SPAN 122S: Literary Translation: Identity in the Contemporary Latino Young Adult Novel
Crosslisted as: English 179ES
Instructor: Carlson,Lori Tu Th 2:50 PM-4:05 PM (TBA)
Issues of Identity in the Contemporary Latino YA novel. CL: English 179ES.02. Young adult novels (novels aimed at 15 to 21 year olds) written by children of Latino immigrants are currently in great demand. With immigration from Mexico and Central and South America being such a hot topic in the discourse of American society today, publishers are paying unprecedented attention to Latino voices. Students will read YA novels that explore what it means to “be American” and the notion of “home” by writers such as Gary Soto, Pam Munoz Ryan, Sandra Cisneros, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Benjamin Alire Saenz among others. The authors studied in this course describe many kinds of dialogue between home and homeland, finally creating a new kind of home on paper.
SPAN 142S: "Mexicana Thought from North and South: Writing, Art, Film"
Instructor: Gabara, E. M W 1:15 PM-2:30 PM (Languages 207)
While a lot of ink has been spilled in recent years about globalization and the disappearance of the nation as we know it, women (and feminists in particular) have long cast a suspicious eye at images of national belonging. The solidity of national identity as such crumbles even more when we consider the relationship between Mexico and the United States, a relationship always fraught and yet always intimate. People and borders cross one another, forming complex affective and political relationships, writing new narratives of belonging, exclusion, and history, and offering other ways to think about gender, race, and nation. Neither side—north and south—has remained unchanged by the process.
In this course we look at fiction, art, and theory by mexicanas from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border from the second half of the 20th century to the first years of the 21st. Our intellectual trajectory follows them from Mexico City to Los Angeles and back to Tehuantepec, from Chicago to the Borderlands to San Cristóbal, Chiapas. These works will help us pose questions about the powerful remnants of nation and nationalism, how we perceive and perform the bodies that live in and between nations, and the social and political promise of expressive culture. There is a strong emphasis on visual culture in this course: including photography, performance, posters, new media, video and film.
Requirements include: one short analytical paper (5-6 pp), one oral presentation, a research paper (12 pp), a willingness to look anew at the things we see every day, and a dedication to challenging discussions about “este lado” and “el otro lado” of the border.
SPANISH 142S-03 SPANISH LITERATURE: "Latina/o and Latin American Popular Culture" ALP, CCI, FL
Instructor: Milian, Claudia M W 2:50 PM-4:05 PM (TBA)
Drawing on contemporary popular culture, this course explores what?Latinness? and the ?national? constitute in the creation and consumption of Latino identities as deployed both in the United States and Latin America. Exploring how Latina, Latino, and Latin American bodies inhabit particular cultural and geographic contexts, the course addresses the ways that popular cultural forms are developed, contested, or resolved vis-à-vis issues of difference, multicultural inclusiveness, domestic history, and narratives of exile and migration. The deployment of popular aesthetic forms in both Latino and Latin American contexts orients us to think about the ways that popular culture operates as a structurally active agent countering exoticized or ?tropicalized? referents for peoples, nations, and cultural practices. Of particular concern are such questions as: What are the pressing sociocultural and political issues confronted by U.S. national culture and how are these accounted for, if not represented, through the different perspectives and terrains that shape Latino popular culture? How does the seeming contemporary development of U.S. Latino cultures dialogue not only with Americanness but with Latin Americanness as well? We will unravel these questions by analyzing multiple forms of cultural production, including novels, films, television shows, advertising, comic strips, and music.
SPANISH 181S - US LAT LIT/CUL ST: Do You Speak Spanglish?
Crosslisted: LIT 162ZS
Instructor: Viego, Antonio Tu Th 4:25PM- 5:40 PM (Carr 114)
Contemporary Latino/a Cultural Production and Theory. "Do You Speak Spanglish? Latino/a Futurity or How to Hail a Latino/a (and How to Respond to the Hailing) in the 21st Century.” CL: LIT 162ZS.03. Pundits, critics and fortune tellers have announced that by the year 2050 U.S. Latino/as will number close to 100 million, constituting the third largest Latin American nation, behind Brazil and Mexico. The interpretative contortions necessary to think that Latino/as in the U.S. can constitute a “nation” in the first place are a testament to the more general interpretative contortions that mark the contemporary discourse on Latinidad when it is that theorists of all stripes think it in relation to the future, which is the tense that appears to naturally elect itself for these discussions. Does it matter that we don’t precisely know what we mean or whom we mean to include or exclude when we invoke Latinidad? In Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. Big City, Mike Davis’s writes, “Yet, if there is no reducible essence to latinidad—even in language or religion—it does not necessarily follow that there is no substance. …To be Latino in the United States is rather to participate in a unique process of cultural syncretism that may become a transformative template for the whole society.” In other words, it is not so much a question of what “Latino/a” is but rather what “Latino/a” does. Given the capaciousness of the term right now, can we expect it to continue to swell and lengthen its sticky tendrils’ reach or will it shrink, become miserly in its old age and begin to hold stubbornly to a ruthless, discerning door policy? The ubiquitous announcement in Latino/a cultural and political critique that the future will be Latino/a and will be broadcast, by the way, in Spanglish shares time and space with a similarly enthusiastic claim made on the past. To wit, the now 15-year-old mammoth national historical project, “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Tradition” traces the “Hispanic” literary heritage back to the 1500s. This interdisciplinary course is designed to serve as a general introduction to the field of Latino/a studies. I will provide coverage of some contemporary theoretical and critical drifts in Latino/a studies, trying to stay alive to the moments where Latino/a and Chicano/a studies cross and overlap and where they may be said to separate due to their historically different institutional trajectories and by virtue of their differently elected points of focus and objects of study. In the process I will explore the assumed critical and political potentialities announced by some theorists regarding the post-raciological subject that inheres in the nominatory term, “Latino/a”—a subject construction supposedly outside and beyond the prison houses of race and ethnicity. Finally I ask after the tasks at hand for the Latino/a studies educator and the Latino/a student in the context of globalization, contemporary U.S. universities’ preferred brand of diversity discourses, critical multiculturalism, and “coercive mimeticism,” a term recently coined by Rey Chow (2003) that names the process whereby ethnic-racialized subjects are bullied into resembling what is “recognizably ethnic” in order to claim some modicum of social and cultural intelligibility.
WRITING 20 - Topic: Framing the Immigration Debate: American Identity & Border Ethics
Instructor: Drogin, Elizabeth Tu Th 10:05AM – 11:20 AM (Carr 242);
Tu Th 11:40AM- 12:55 PM (Carr 241); Tu Th 2:50 PM- 4:05PM (Art Bldg 116)
Sections: 74, 75, and 77
What does it mean to be American, and who can rightfully claim this identity? Is America a “nation of immigrants,” a nation with an “immigration problem,” or perhaps both? What, if anything, should be done to manage the flow of immigrants into the United States? Throughout the semester we will explore the diverse ways scholars, journalists, politicians, filmmakers, immigrants, vigilantes, and “ordinary citizens,” respond to these questions. We will pay particular attention to the kinds of rhetoric, argumentation, metaphor, and visual imagery that are mobilized to endorse and defend various perspectives on American identity and border policy.
The course is divided into three sections: (1) American identity, (2) border ethics, and (3) investigating immigration. In the first part of the course we will read and respond to immigrant narratives, scholarly texts, political cartoons, and photographs that explore what it means to be and/or become American. In the second part of the course, we will use various ethical frameworks to examine the experiences of groups living at the U.S/Mexico border. During the final six weeks of the course, you will have the opportunity to develop and pursue your own line of inquiry related to immigration.
Our written work will include regular response papers, which we will make use of in our class discussions, as well as two major writing projects. The first major writing project will ask you to respond to questions posed by course readings and to practice specific critical analysis and writing skills, such as engaging the work of others and generating an original claim. In the second major writing project you will conduct independent research on a topic of your choosing related to immigration. This project will give you the opportunity to explore, in depth, an aspect of immigration that you feel is important. At the end of the term we will share and celebrate our work through panel presentations.
WRITING 20 - Topic: Children from Latin America (with Service Learning in Durham)
Instructor: Marko, Tamera W F 8:30 AM-9:45 AM (Keohane 4B 402SEM)
Section:59
Children from Latin America: from motorcycles to hip-hop
We will explore what children and youth from Latin America have been doing and saying throughout the Americas to pursue their dreams of a more just world. Through our writing, we will explore representations of the childhoods of famous individuals, including Che Guevara and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. We will also explore the actual writing, music, and art that children and youth create, including the work of the Brazilian National Movement for Street Girls and Boys. Our writing will place this in the context of how and why children have been fundamental to the reproduction and the destruction of power systems in Latin America from the 16th through the 21st centuries. Our texts will include primary documents, historiography, music, film and your personal experience with research service learning.
You will compose academic reviews of course texts. You will learn how to navigate library resources and the art of crafting notes and bibliographies. These processes will move you toward your main writing project in three phases. The first phase will be a research proposal that springboards from your writing about our course materials and your tutoring. The second phase will be a research project based on this proposal and written for an audience of your academic peers. For the third phase, you will revise the same research project into a lesson for a different audience: your tutee’s classroom. All assignments are designed to foster your skills as academic writers, as you engage in multiple drafts, negotiating multiple audiences, revisions and peer-critique workshops of your writing.
This section of Writing 20 has a Service Learning (SL) component (http://rslduke.mc.duke.edu/contact.htm) and includes approximately 20 hours of service outside of class when you will tutor students at an elementary school in Durham. Many of these elementary school children are from Latin America.
II. ADDITIONAL COURSES OF INTEREST (courses with some Latino/a content):
AAAS 129: Culture/Politics in Caribbean
Crosslisted as WOMENST 114 and CULANTH 129
Instructor: Crichlow, M Tu Th 1:15 PM-2:30 PM (Sci Bldg 107)
Perspectives on the Caribbean as a geo-political and socio-cultural region, and on contemporary Caribbean diaspora cultures. How the region's long and diverse colonial history has structured relationships among race, ethnicity, class, gender and power, as well as how people have challenged these structures. The processes by which the meeting and mixing of peoples and cultures has occurred in this region in which there have been massive transplantations of peoples and their cultures from Africa, Asia, and Europe, and upon which the United States has exerted considerable influence.
CULANTH 161S - HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM
Crosslisted as: POLSCI 124S
Instructor: Kirk, Robin Tu Th 1:15 PM- 2:30 PM (Sci Bldg 204)
Introduction to the foundations and development of the human rights movement. Explore themes related to mass violence and social conflict, U.S. foreign policy and international humanitarian law, and the challenges of justice and reconciliation around the world. Emphasis on the changing nature of human rights work and the expanding, contested boundaries of the struggle to protect basic human dignity both at home and abroad.
English 109S.02: AUTOBIOGRAPHY/FICTION
Instructor: Hijuelos, Oscar M 2:50 PM-5:20 PM (Allen 317)
In this course I will be helping students to develop sketches about their own lives and family history; along the way, fictional techniques used by other writers to tell their own stories will be discussed.
English 170: THE SHORT NOVEL
Instructor: Hijuelos, Oscar M W 1:15 PM-2:30 PM
This course will examine a number of short works of fiction with an eye to closely examining and appreciating the aesthetics and techniques of briefer fictional forms. Our goal will be to read these works as both critics and writers. Assigned texts may include: "Sula" and the "Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison; "In dreams Begin Responsibilities" by Delmore Schwartz , "Barabas" by Pars Lagersvist, "The Man who Died" by D.H. Lawrence, "Pedro Paramo," by Juan Rulfo, "The Aleph" by Borges, and "The Monkey's Paw," as well as several short works of holocaust fiction, "Welcome to the Gas Chamber" and "Blenheim, 1912." Students will be asked to keep a journal recording their responses to these works and occasionally to write a few pages in the style of a particular narrative.
Lit 162ZS SPECIAL TOPICS: Man/Hu-man Rights/Hu-man-ities
Crosslisted: AAAS 199S, CULANTH 180S, ROMST 150S, WOMENST 150S
Instructor: Mingolo, Walter Tu 4:25 PM- 6:55 PM (See instructor)
At the age of genomics and bio-technology it is worth to examine current ideas about Man (as in Hu-man), Being, Human Rights and the Humanities as a sphere of knowledge in higher education. Runa, in Quechua, cannot be translated into the Renaissance concept of Man. Inca and Roman Civilizations had different principles and structure of knowledge. The idea of Rights of Man and of the Citizen and Human Rights, had its antecedent in the concept of Rights of the Nations (Ius Gentium). Paradoxically, Rights of the Nations, Bills of Rights, Rights of Man originated in Western discourses that had eclipsed concepts such as Runa in Quechua, and similar concepts in non-European languages derived from Latin.
This seminar takes its lead and its organization from Afro-Caribbean intellectual, scholar and activist, Sylvia Wynter and her ground-breaking works on “after Man, toward the Human”. We will complement Wynter’s work with European philosophers such as Husserl, Sartre-and Merleau Ponty on concepts of experience and humanism; political philosophers as German Jews Hannah Arendt and Italian Giorgio Agamben; and Afro-Caribbean thinkers such as CLR James, Padget Henry and Lewis Gordon. Core concepts in the seminar will be coloniality and decoloniality of Being and coloniality and decolonialty of knowledge. We will also address the rhetoric of reports such as the Council on Bioethics, and their conception of biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
The seminar fulfills the requirement of cross-cultural understanding in its questioning of the uni-versality of the idea of Man, Human, Human Being and Humanity. It fulfills the requirement of ethical inquiries in its questioning of the very act of generating knowledge, the institutional and bio-graphic politics of knowledge (e.g., who is a position to generate knowledge, what are the rationals and what are the consequences)? What are the interconnections between racism (and therefore, the concept of Human) and epistemology (and therefore the concept of Humanities? And what are the interconnections between development (developed and underdeveloped countries), and epistemology (institutions of higher education, language of the country and language of scholarship in developed countries; laboratories and technology?, etc). The seminar focuses on the interconnections between racism, knowledge and economy and explores the ethical dimension of education.
LIT 290: Topics Psychoanaly Crit: The Politics and Ethics of Psy
Instructor: Viego, Antonio W 1:30 PM-4:00 PM
POLSCI 199A:
Race, Redistricting, and Representation in U.S. Politics
Instructor: Casellas, Jason
W F 11:40 AM-12:55 PM (Perkins 307)
Issues regarding race, redistricting, and representation have dominated the headlines in recent years. The creation of majority-minority districts has created controversy and criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. This seminar will equip students with the legal and political background necessary to be effective consumers and participants in debates regarding these critical issues. The course will begin with a theoretical examination of the concept of representation. What does it mean to be represented? Must blacks represent blacks? Must women represent women? Are members of minority groups better represented by members of their same group? The course will proceed with an in-depth analysis of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and its major provisions dealing with preclearance of changes in voting statutes. We will then discuss the hotly contested debate regarding descriptive and substantive representation. Some scholars argue that what really matters is substantive representation (i.e., having your interests represented by someone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender). Others, however, argue that it is necessary for African Americans, Latinos, and women to have some degree of descriptive representation in order to produce substantive policy outcomes. Then, we will examine the major social scientific evidence regarding the threshold needed to elect minority legislators, and the question of whether the presence of minorities in legislative institutions really matters in terms of substantive policy outcomes. Finally, we will examine case law dealing with redistricting and majority-minority districts, with particular emphasis on three major court cases: Thornburg v. Gingles, Shaw v. Reno, and Georgia v. Ashcroft.
Dr. Casellas is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is visiting Duke this academic year as the Samuel DuBois Cook Postdoctoral Fellow. His research and teaching interests are in Latino politics, state and local politics, and Congress.
SPANISH 116 - INTRO SPANISH-AMER LIT
Instructor: Hernandez-Adrian, Francisco Tu Th 11:40AM – 12:55 PM (Languages 211)
Continuation of Spanish 115. From “modernismo” to the contemporary period.
SPAN 142S.01: CINES DEL CARIBE/CINEMAS OF THE CARIBBEAN. ALP, CCI, FL
Instructor: Hernandez Adrian, F. Tu Th 2:50 PM-4:05 PM (Perkins 101)
What is the Caribbean, and what does it look like... in films? This seminar addresses these and related questions through viewings and readings linking visual culture, film criticism, cultural theory and critical textual analysis. How is the Spanish-speaking Caribbean different from other (Créole-speaking, Francophone, Anglophone... ) Caribbeans? What are the politics, theories of space, historical genealogies, involved in filmic representations of sex and gender, race, and national(ist) Caribbeanness? What does the visual Caribbean teach us about biopolitics? Finally, how do the cinemas of the Caribbean help us think differently about our own cultural archipelagos? The challenge of facing different versions of the Caribbean through a "Hispanic lens" may prove far more perplexing and absorbing than you ever suspected.
Students are expected to have excellent Spanish language skills, as well as previous experience in critical textual analysis. Knowledge of French, although not required, is encouraged. An intense personal interest in visual culture is a prerequisite.
SPAN 392.01: Challenge of the Testimonio
Crosslisted as Lit 302
Dorfman, Ariel M 6-8:30pm
SPAN 392.02: Thinking Decolonially
Crosslisted as Lit 353S
Mignolo, Walter M 2:50 PM-5:20 PM
SPAN 392.03: W. E. B. DUBOIS: COMP PERSPECT
Milian, Claudia Th 4:25 PM-6:55 PM
SXL 49S - FIRST YEAR SEMINAR Topic: Sex and the Global Citizen
Crosslisted: WOMENST 49S
Instructor: Light, Caroline M W F 10:20AM- 11:10AM (White Lec 201)
What differentiates a citizen from an “exile” and how is s/he constituted through dominant understandings of sexuality? How is sexual shame generated on a mass scale, and how does it “rule” people’s lives and choices? This course investigates the role that sexuality - defined both as an anatomical designation that supposedly determines gendered behavior and as an identity related to sexual desire - plays in proscribing citizenship in the Americas, specifically in the U.S. and Latin America. We will investigate some of the multiple and shifting ways in which sex is considered a natural difference that distinguishes citizens from non-citizens, and we will seek to understand how sex influences different groups’ efforts to exercise power, challenge the powerful, or reinforce their own powerlessness. We will also address the ways in which knowledge about citizenship is filtered through assumptions about sex and race. How, for example, do we come to know what we know about sex, gender, race, and citizenship? What does globalization contribute to the distribution of this knowledge? Readings and assignments will help us address the ways in which sexual rights remain a site of contestation and struggle in the global Americas.
WOMENST 164S - RACE, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY
Instructor: Light, Caroline M W 6:00 PM- 7:15 PM (White Lec 201)
How are dominant ideas about racial difference constructed and maintained in relation to ideas about gender and sexuality? How do beliefs about gender and sexuality rely upon assumptions or assertions about race? In this course, we will think through the complex interrelationships of race, gender and sexuality as categories of social identity and difference, investigating how these categories have been constructed through and in relation to one another. In addressing these questions we’ll look to a range of materials and methodologies, including social and cultural history, feminist and queer theory, sociology, ethnography, and film. Over the course of the semester, we’ll consider how cultural representations, social institutions, and individual experiences articulate, enforce, or challenge dominant ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality. In the process we will also interrogate the ways in which epistemologies – how we know what we know – about race, gender, and sexuality get constructed in various cultural and historical contexts. While much of the material we study will focus on social and cultural histories of the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present, we’ll also consider how the global circulation of cultures, communities, and capital continues to shape this history.
*Also visit http://clacs.aas.duke.edu/program/courses.php for courses with Latin American and Caribbean Studies content at Duke.