Latin Amer-Caribbean Studies (LATC-GA)

This course is both a history of the peoples, cultures, and nations of Iberia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and a history and wide-ranging survey of the various disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the area, including the Area Studies paradigm itself. Some of the readings are included as a means to explore the boundaries of the established disciplines. The purpose is not only to introduce Latin This course is both a history of the peoples, cultures, and nations of Iberia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and a history and wide-ranging survey of the various disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the area, including the Area Studies paradigm itself. Some of the readings are included as a means to explore the boundaries of the established disciplines. The purpose is not only to introduce Latin American and Caribbean realities but to review the scholarly, intellectual, and political frameworks according to which these realities are discerned. Latinamericanist and Caribbeanist faculty from throughout the university will be invited to speak about the history of the disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks for the study of the region, as well as the prevailing methods in the present moment. Some sessions will be led by guest faculty; discussion in all sessions will be facilitated by student study group presentations.Part I of the course covers the pre-invasion Americas, Iberia, and the production of the Imperial/Colonial world and the ?first modernity? through the early republican era, the mid-19th century. It also introduces the background to the genesis of plantation societies in Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil, and the contesting colonial projects in the Caribbean region, also involving slave plantation labor, of Britain, France, and the Dutch.

In Argentina in 1977, a group of mothers whose children had been "disappeared" by the military dictatorship began to march in front of the presidential palace, holding large pictures of their missing children; those marches continue to this day. In 2003, the Guatemalan artist Regina Galindo created a piece meant to remind the public of the genocidal killings in Guatemala’s internal civil war; in Who Can Erase the Traces? (Quién puede borrar las huellas?), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. In 2019, the Chilean collective #lastesis performed a short dance condemning sexual violence against women, a dance then shared online and performed by thousands of women across the globe. What do holding a picture, walking, and dancing in these examples have in common? Each functions as a political gesture — a codified way of using the body to interrupt everyday life and pose a public challenge, demand, or critique in relation to abuses of power. In a world where many people participate in political protest by signing online petitions, we consider the enduring and unique role played by physical actions in public space, whether these happen under the aegis of activism or art. Like dance scholar Susan Leigh Foster, we approach the body as “articulate matter” and ask how political gestures signify. How do they establish relationships with the public (at times an unwitting or unwilling public), and how do such gestures directly impact the social and physical context? We read the work of artists and activists, and consider cases drawn across Latin America, from the 1960s to the present, allowing a broad comparative approach.

In this graduate seminar, students will study international human rights standards, topical case studies in Latin America, the role of international and local NGOs in the human rights movement, popular resistance and social movements in the Latin American human rights movement, the role of media and representation in reporting and promoting human rights, educational initiatives for human rights, and the many choices society has after collective violence.

Part II of the required Introductory course sequence begins with the independence era, and treats the emergence of a Hemispheric axis for LatiPart II of the required Introductory course sequence begins with the independence era, and treats the emergence of a Hemispheric axis for Latin America and the Caribbean, in which the emergence of a multiplicity of nation states, and relations with the United States, loom large, supplanted somewhat in the 21st century by renewed connections (foreign aid, investment, and a heavy flow of migrants) between Spain, France, and Holland, and their former colonies. Students learn about contending paradigms of sovereignty, patrimony, liberalism, citizenship, and development. The course examines the development of democratic national government and periodic authoritarian rule, as well as social violence, foreign military intervention, and civil war. The course also treats continuing problems of inequality, and the impact of pressure by other countries and international organizations on political and economic arrangements in the region. Alongside of such issues, students are introduced to expressive culture and the arts, to competing paradigms of formal and commemorative memory and history, and to the emergence of tourism and the UNESCO-associated ?culture industry?. The course ends with in-depth analysis of the impact of globalization, neoliberal policies, emerging social movements, increased political participation and decentralization of governance, and the rise of populist governments. Throughout the course, students work closely with instructors to develop a scholarly genealogy of key concepts and processes within which they will be able to frame the themes and methods of their Master?s Projects.