Latinx Studies Initiative
The Latinx Studies Initiative at Emory is an effort to create, support, and encourage a multidisciplinary community of scholars who study issues relevant to Hispanic and Latina/o/x people living in the United States. Supported by the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, the Initiative takes as a proximate goal the creation of an undergraduate Minor in Latinx Studies. To advance this goal, Prof. Bernard L. Fraga (Political Science) was named faculty coordinator of the Latinx Studies Initiative in 2023. In 2024, Emory University Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda approved the addition of Latinx Studies into the expanded Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies (LALCS) program.
Latinx Studies may be viewed as an expansion of earlier Chicano (Mexican-American) and Puerto Rican Studies programs to include other U.S. Latinx populations. At Emory, we take a broad definition of Latinx Studies to include scholarship on “long-established communities in the U.S. of Latin American origin as well as more recent arrivals.”1 Efforts towards the building of the Latinx Studies Initiative have been fostered by Emory students, staff, and faculty over multiple generations. Notable faculty making such efforts include Prof. Maria Carrión (Religion and Comparative Literature) and Prof. José Quiroga (Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature). In the spring of 2018, Emory students in the “Latinx Civil Rights Movements” wrote a letter to then Emory President Sterk demanding a Department of Latinx Studies and a Ph.D. program in African American Studies. This is termed the “Consciousness is Power” movement. The outgrowth of this movement was the 2020 cluster hire of three Latinx faculty, funding for academic programming, and new undergraduate courses that, together, serve as foundational components of the Latinx Studies Initiative.
Undergraduate courses with a focus in Latinx studies-related content span a variety of disciplines and subjects. Past offerings include topics such as U.S, Mexico Border Spaces, the Politics of Spanish and Immigration in the U.S., and Stories of Latinx Resistance, to name a few. With a variety of courses in American Studies, English, History, Linguistics, Philosophy, Political Science, and Spanish, course offerings vary from semester to semester. For students seeking to explore Latinx studies, the following courses are offered with frequency:
LACS 102: Introduction to Latinx Studies: As an introduction to the field of Latinx Studies, this course explores the diversity of Latinx experiences and lifeways in the US through an interdisciplinary lens. The course will focus on the historical and political contexts that impact Latinx racialization, class formation, and ideologies of gender and sexuality. Beginning with an interrogation of the term Latinx and the history of Latinx Studies as a discipline, topics to be explored include, race, indigeneity, racism and colorism, colonialism and imperialism, Latinx feminisms, queer Latinidades, migration, diaspora, language, citizenship and social movements. The course will be attentive to regional differences (Latinidad in LA, NYC, Atlanta, or rural Arkansas) and differences in communities of origin (Latinidad as experienced by Hondureños, Puerto Ricans, Tejanos, Cubans, Mexicans, Dominicans, etc.) Offered Spring 2025
LACS 200: Mapping Latine Inequalities: This course explores relationship between race, gender and sexuality. How do communities come together to live dignified lives? What strategies of placemaking and world making do communities use to create home? Central to our exploration of spatial inequalities we will focus on understanding the colonial role of private property and anti-colonial movements fighting for alternative futures. We will dive into topics like gentrification, housing justice, and other histories of dispossession. We will also turn to different cities throughout the U.S. including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco to understand how communities work towards resisting violent neighborhood changes. Other topics we will touch on include racially biased practices in housing access, crime and police brutality, activism, gayborhoods, queer nightlife, and pleasure politics. Collectively, our “mapping” will trace the way communities of color create spaces to live, party, and play. Offered Spring 2025
AMST 285/HIST 285: Historical Analysis: The Migrant South
Since the late twentieth century, scholars have noted how migrations from Latin America, Asia, and Africa have diversified the demographic make-up of urban, suburban, and rural places in the US South. Local, regional, national, and transnational migrations, however, have long played a role in shaping the region. This seminar centers on the histories and experiences of migrants' people who engage in diverse practices of mobility as they move to/through the South. Following a chronological timeline between the mid nineteenth through early twenty-first centuries, we will consider how forced, coerced, and voluntary migrations have (re)shaped the region at various historical moments. Course materials will cover issues of migration, race, ethnicity, labor, class, and legal status. Throughout the semester we will pay particular attention to the lived experiences of marginalized/minoritized southerners as they have intersected with themes of migration, (im)mobility, and place-making.
AMST 385/HIST 385: Special Topics: American Studies: Race/Ethnicity in US South
This course explores how migrants, the construction of borders, and the formation of transnational communities have animated the history and making of the US nation-state. Weekly readings will move us chronologically from the late-nineteenth through early twenty-first century, and will highlight how race, ethnicity, legal status, gender, and class intersect with the class themes. Together we will learn how migrants have been constructed as subjects historically, discuss borders as projects of nation-building, and engage questions about transnational communities as everyday lived realities and responses to a bordered world. Importantly, the course takes a migrant-centered approach to the study of human mobility and the structures that have aimed to limit, control, and place it under surveillance. Scholarly readings will be paired with diverse primary materials - including films, testimonios, music, art - that depict migrant narratives to help us collectively conceptualize migration to the US historically and in our current moment.
PHIL 114: Latin America, Latinx Thought
This course explores key topics in Latin American and Latinx thought. A number of themes will be touched on, including identity, liberation, coloniality and decoloniality, and border feminisms. We will trace the development of the theoretical debates concerning "life" as a concept across Latin America. In this course we will examine theorists and texts that are wildly disparate yet share a concern over the significance of life and its development. As we move out of the 19th and into the 20th century, what will become clear is that questions regarding biology and race are intimately bound to concerns over the direction or goal of "culture", and that all of these concerns have a stake in the question concerning the meaning of "life" and its relation to the human being. Hence, evolutionary theory spills over into discourses concerned with freedom and revolution, and vice versa. The goal of the class is to illuminate the imbrication of the mechanistic/determinist perspectives, and those that are more concerned with "spiritual" values like creativity and freedom. The central meeting point shared by these two approaches is a radical rethinking of life itself: in a word, "revolution". Ending in the 21st century, we will examine some contemporary thinkers who were motivated by radical theory of various persuasions, for example Marxism, decolonial theory and Chicana feminism, and psychoanalysis.
POLS 347: Latino Politics in the US
This course examines the past, present, and future of Hispanic and Latino politics in the United States. Topics include the history of conquest, colonization, and immigration that gave rise to the Latina/o/x population in the United States, cultural and institutional forces that generate and sustain Latina/o/x identities, differences and similarities in the experiences of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central American, and other national origin groups, the historical and contemporary political preferences, behaviors, and representation of Latina/o/x potential voters, and how the growing Latina/o/x population will shape American politics going forward. Throughout the course, special emphasis will be placed on how Latinas/os/xs are incorporated into an American racial hierarchy historically defined by the Black-White binary, the intersection of Latina/o/x identity with gender, sexuality, national origin, citizenship status, and age, and the role Latinas/os/xs play in the politics of the South in general and Georgia in particular.
SPAN 305: Language and Culture for Heritage Speakers
This course is designed specifically for heritage speakers: students who already speak Spanish and come from a Spanish-speaking family (typically their parents or grandparents speak this language); they have however never been schooled in Spanish or have received limited education in Spanish. The course introduces students to the study of the Spanish language and cultures in an academic context, and it is divided in three parts: 1) a sociohistorical background on the presence of the Spanish language in the United States, 2) a study on language variation and language ideologies, with a specific focus on the dialectal characteristics of US Spanish and how they differ and connect to other Spanish dialects, 3) a methodology for the critical analysis of cultural production in Spanish, such as films, literary works, music, etc.
PRE-REQUISITES: Heritage speakers of Spanish who have an official placement for foundational courses, or have completed Span 212, or with permission from instructor.
Fall 2025 Course Offerings:
AMST 190/HIST 190: Freshman Seminar: American Studies: Global Atlanta- Prof. Yami Rodriguez
This first-year seminar introduces students to Metropolitan Atlanta's history from the late-nineteenth century "New South" to the twenty-first century iterations of a "Nuevo South." Course themes include, but are not limited to, race, ethnicity, class, gender and migration. Together we will engage primary and secondary sources that illustrate the region's past and present global connections.
Offered: TH 4:00pm - 6:45pm
AMST 226/HIST 226/LACS 226: Latinx US History- - Prof. Yami Rodriguez and Jessica Alvarez Starr
This course offers a survey of Latinx US History between the mid nineteenth through early twenty-first centuries. Following a chronological timeline, the course introduces students to major themes in Latinx history including, but not limited to, colonialism, migration, gender & sexuality, labor, politics, culture, and social movements. Together we will consider the genealogy and construction of Latinx as an ethnic category, the role of everyday Latinx people in the history and making of the US, and questions about historical and contemporary Latinx communities and identities.
Offered: TTH 1:00pm - 2:15pm
ENG 381W:Topics In Women's Literature: Latina Feminisms- Prof. Geovani Ramírez
This course will offer a theoretical grounding on Latina feminisms and the historical moments and movements that inspired and/or influenced such Latina feminist thought and productions. In this course, we will gain a foundation for how Latina feminists theorize about a range of social categories, culture, history, and aesthetics. We will analyze a variety of literary forms and genres (e.g., poems, essays, novels, plays, testimonios) and mediums (literature, film, documentaries, and visual art). The eclectic readings in this course reflect the intersectional, transdisciplinary, and multifaceted principles that characterize Latina feminisms. In the process of engaging with and learning from Latina epistemologies, we will also explore the intersections between Latina feminist thought and ecofeminism and disability studies. As such, this course asks, what happens to discourses on ecologies, environmental hazards, illness, and medicine when we consider Latina feminism and its theorization of Latinx experiences and epistemologies? What can Latina feminist thought and cultural productions offer to discussions surrounding the future of environments and healthcare?
Offered: MW 2:30pm - 3:45pm
ENG 388W: Topics in Lit. & Environment: Latinx Environmentalism- Prof. Geovani Ramírez
This course offers us an overview of the complex and varied relationships Latinx people from diverse ethno-racial groups have with their environments by inviting us to study various mediums of Latinx cultural expressions on environments such as film, music, and visual art as well as a variety of literary forms including fiction, creative non-fiction, drama, and archival materials. Finding ourselves in, among other spaces-places, chicken houses and factories as well as in suburbs and agricultural fields, this course will carry us throughout the U.S. and the globe to expose the socio-historical and natural processes that shape Latinx people's experiences with their environments. Informed by eco-feminist and intersectional frameworks and attuned to environmental justice concerns, disproportionate impacts, and healing ecologies, this course allows us to explore how Latinx literature and other art forms depict Latinx structural vulnerability alongside place-making in human-made and natural environments. We will consider how Latinxs talk about and relate to nature and how they understand degraded environments. We will also immerse ourselves in Latinx healing ecologies and sustainability practices.
Offered: MW 4:00pm - 5:15pm
HIST 360/LACS 360: History of Mexico- Yanna Yannakakis
This course engages the broad sweep of Mexican history from the twilight of the Aztec Empire through the drug wars of today. We will key in on major themes and turning points in the development of Mexican society, including Spanish conquest and colonialism, independence and modernization, the Mexican Revolution, migration from Mexico to the United States, and
narco-trafficking. Throughout, students will hone analytical and writing skills by interacting with diverse materials, including primary documents (i.e. letters, testimony, and travel accounts), visual sources (i.e. paintings, photographs, and political cartoons), fiction, and journalism. Major questions include: How can we understand the relationship between state and society from a historical perspective? How do certain state forms, such as a "revolutionary state" or a "narco-state" emerge, and why do they endure or fail?
Offered: MW 2:30pm - 3:45pm
IDS 290: Interdisciplinary Sidecar: Where Are You Really From - Yami Rodriguez
If English colonists can become "pure-bred" Americans, can modern immigrants lay claim to this nation as well? How does the genocide of indigenous peoples complicate the narrative of being American? In this interdisciplinary class, students will explore the synonymous and opposing identities of "American" and "Migrant." This sidecar course will use group discussions and activities to reflect on the weekly readings or media. We will explore our own positionalities in the United States and the ways that one's migration story shapes their understanding of patriotism and nationalism. We will also have professors from across the university give guest lectures and share how their research intersects with our themes. Material will include movies, short readings, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and more.
Offered: TTH 4:00pm - 5:15pm
LACS 385:Special Topics: Puerto Rico and Bad Bunny- Prof. Taína Figueroa
In this course, Bad Bunny's recent album Debí Tirar Más Fotos will be our guide as we learn about the history of Puerto Rico. This course is interdisciplinary and will focus on both Bad Bunny's cultural and artistic productions as well as the political and socioeconomic forces from which Bad Bunny emerges. Particular emphasis will be placed on the last 30 years of US colonial rule in Puerto Rico and resistance movements. Hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, the urban/rural and class will ground our explorations of: colonization & racio-colonial capitalism, sovereignty, nationhood, migration & diaspora, debt, disaster, mutual aid, tourism, protest, and music (reggeatón). Recent work by Jorell Meléndez Badillo, Yomaira Figueroa, Marisol Lebrón, Rocío Zambrana, Yarimar Bonilla, Hilda Lloréns, Petra Rivera-Rideau, Michelle Rosario, Jose Atiles and others will be featured. Weekly assignments will include readings, podcasts and analyzing songs. Students will work on a longer form written piece as well as a multimedia presentation over the course of the semester. Knowledge of Spanish is not required.
Offered: TTH 10:00am - 11:15am
LING 304/SPAN 304: Introduction to Spanish Linguistics (Taught in Spanish)- Prof. José Luis Boigues-Lopez
In June 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlaws employment discrimination on the basis of sex must be interpreted to also protect gay and transgender people. The whole basis for this ruling was the analysis of the specific language used in the Civil Rights Act, however, how do words convey meaning? How are words' meaning established and by whom? How does language portray real world situations? This course, taught in Spanish, explores answers to these questions by presenting students with fundamental concepts in Linguistics through a comparison between Spanish and English at different levels: the sounds of languages (phonetics and phonology), the structure of words (morphology), the structure of sentence (syntax) and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). The course also incorporates an introduction to linguistic variation in the Spanish-speaking world, including the Spanish spoken in the US, and how languages evolve and change with time (historical linguistics).
Offered: TTH 1:00pm - 2:15pm and 2:30pm - 3:45pm
SPAN 385: Topics in Language and Culture: Health in Georgia Communities- Prof. Katherine Ostrom
This course applies concepts from medical humanities and community healthcare to the situation of Spanish speakers living in Georgia. Advancing in the line of SPAN 217R: Spanish for Health Care, students in this SPAN 385 continue to study grammar and vocabulary frequently used in interactions between healthcare professionals and patients. In addition, students will engage in and reflect on projects that advance the needs of organizations that serve Georgia Latino/Latinx communities.
Offered: TTH 2:30pm - 3:45pm
SPAN 423: Madrid, Barcelona, New York- Prof. Hazel Gold
Since the Enlightenment, the city has occupied a central position in Western culture, though the experience of urban life has changed with the evolution of the American and European city from modernity (the industrial city) to postmodernity (the global informational city). This course focuses on ways in which writers and artists express conflicting reactions to the city as a seductive and/or dangerous place to live, work and play, a place where people may interact via the shared culture of neighborhood communities or remain isolated by spatial segregation and the mobile nature of contemporary society. Centering on representations of Madrid, Barcelona, and New York sites of exchange and circulation among Spaniards, Latin Americans, and Latinxs we will ask: how are real cities imagined or remembered by those who live, visit, or immigrate there? How does the city map performances of social class, gender/sexuality, and ethnicity? Readings will draw from a variety of genres: memoirs, short stories, essays, poetry, film, theater, and websites.
Offered: MW 10:00am - 11:15am