Latinx Studies Initiative

LACS 102: Introduction to Latinx Studies- Prof. Taína Figueroa

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.) 

TTH: 10am- 11:15am, 2:30-3:45pm

LACS 265W: Visitor Meets Native: This course will bring together existing research to examine tourism as at one time an economic enterprise and also as a deeply significant cultural experience that has played an under-recognized part in shaping the cultural mores and lifestyles of both the island destinations and the home countries.

TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm, 4pm-5:15pm

LACS270: Topics: Latin Americn Issues: God, Sex, and Crime- Prof. Javier Villa-Flores

 Throughout history, crimes have tested and measured the social and cultural values that hold human beings together. In a society such as New Spain (Mexico) articulated around the defense and propagation of Catholic religion, religious crimes constituted a threatening subversion of the colonial discourse that justified the Spanish presence in Mexico, and a contradictory expression of the social tensions lived in the Spanish colony. This course will look at colonial society through the lens of crime by analyzing some of the main transgressions prosecuted by the Mexican Inquisition between 1520 and 1820, and the specific historical circumstances in which the trials took place. Our goal will be not only to analyze the reasons for inquisitorial repression, but also to disentangle the tensions lived in the social fabric of the colony in light of the classic divides of race, class, and gender.

M 2:30pm-5:15pm

LACS270: Topics: Latin Americn Issues: Heroes,Martyrs-Cults in Latin- Javier Villa-Flores

Throughout Latin American history, heroes and martyrs have played a crucial role in the creation of unifiying national narratives. At the same time, they have often become the source of discord, as different groups disagreed over what and who should be remembered as heroic and exemplary. This course will explore some of these debates by focusing on the representation of exemplary lives in the region through a variety of means, including photography, monuments, museums, archives, ceremonials, and rituals. Among the topics to be addressed are: modernity, nation building, social rebellion, and accountability.

T 2:30pm-5:15pm

LACS363W: Sugar and Rum

Sugar and rum were for centuries the quintessential Caribbean products, commodities which created fortunes for planters and merchants, while changing the lifestyles of the European working classes. This class will examine not only the development of sugar and rum production and its effect on the Caribbean's socio-economic organization in the form of the plantation, but also how these commodities have come to define social status in the metropolis through changing patterns of consumption. Students will use materials from a variety of genres and disciplines, from social history to advertising, and from anthropology to popular music and film.

TTh 8:30am-9:45am

LACS 385: Special Topics in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: History of Puerto Rico- Prof. Taína Figueroa

This course is an interdisciplinary overview of the history of Puerto Rico.  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, and various forms of protest and resistance. Recent scholarly work by Jorell Meléndez Badillo, Yomaira Figueroa, Marisol Lebrón, Yarimar Bonilla, Hilda Lloréns, Petra Rivera-Rideau, Vanessa Diaz, Michelle Rosario, Jose Atiles and others will be featured. Weekly assignments will include readings, podcasts and analyzing artistic productions. 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.

MW 10am-11:15am

LACS 385: Special Topics in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: Latin American Politics, same as POLS 331- Prof. Luis Martinez

Overview of the major political systems in Latin America; emphasis on patterns of authority; development of groups; the nature of institutions; political culture; forces of change; and the role of the state.

MW 4pm-5:15pm

LACS385: Special Topics in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: Hispanic Caribbean Literature- Prof. Laura Torres-Rodriguez

(Same as SPAN 318 2)

In this course, we will explore the literature, art, and music of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean through the lens of its cultural history and coastal ecologies. We will examine how Caribbean cultural practices and discourses reshape and influence the temporal and spatial understanding of modernity within the broader Latin American context. The course will adopt an interdisciplinary approach that combines environmental humanities, Caribbean Studies (with an emphasis on race, indigeneity, and diaspora), and will engage with historical, literary, and cultural analyses of primary materials, as well as conversations with guest speakers.

Prerequisite: SPAN 212 or an Official Spanish Placement into our Foundational Course level. Take the online Spanish Placement Exam at http://spanport.emory.edu/home/undergraduate/placement/index.html.

TTh 4pm-5:15pm

LACS 385: Special Topics in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: Maternidades- Prof.- Katherine Ostrom

(Same as SPAN 385 1)

This course listens to stories of pregnancy, birth, and abortion from contemporary Latin America. How do women negotiate cultural norms, legal structures, poverty, discrimination, and other barriers to make decisions for their lives, families, and health? How are these struggles depicted in novels, documentary films, journalism, activist publications, and other forms?

Prerequisites: a Foundational Spanish Course or SPAN 217 (Spanish for Health Care).

TTh 11:30am-12:45pm

 SPAN 421W- Mexican National Cinema- Prof. Laura Torres-Rodriguez

(Same as SPAN 421W 1)

Once the world's leading producer of Spanish-language motion pictures and a competing alternative to Hollywood in Latin America, the Mexican film industry has undergone major transformations in distribution and exhibition networks, as well as in the regimes of film production and consumption, since the mid-1980s. This course will examine the evolving perceptions of the social function of film and shifting spectatorship practices from the Mexican Golden Age of Cinema (1930-1950) to the screen-viewing practices of our streaming age.

PREREQUISITES: At least one Foundational Course (SPAN 300-318W)

TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

LACS 490R: Advanced Seminar in Latin and Caribbean Studies: Latin American Film- Prof. Hernan Feldman

(Same as SPAN 485 1)

This course explores the intersection of patriarchy, racism, and violence in 21st-century Latin American film. Students will examine how various family formats are portrayed on film, and to what extent they construe, challenge, and/or otherwise reproduce influential concepts (such as care, work, motherhood, childhood, decency, masculinity, or promiscuity) across gender, racial, and/or class-based lines. In examining these issues, we will look at how People of Color, Women, Children, and members of the LGBTQ+ collective bear the brunt of abuse and generalized violence brought against them due to the sheer fact that they dare to exist. We will also explore the concept of patriarchy paying attention to the many traits that turn masculinity in particular, and cisheteronormativity in general, (as well as subtle forms of white supremacy-ism) into vigilance vectors bent on building "the normal". In analyzing narrative depictions that address the aforementioned forms of inequality, the class will discuss to what extent State-sponsored forms of violence manufacture hegemony, neutralizing and destroying any detectable "deviance" from a desideratum for docile and malleable citizens that remains under constant (de)construction.

EVALUATION: Participation in class, written critical responses, an oral presentation, and a final research essay.

PREREQUISITE: At least one foundational course (SPAN 300-318W) or permission from the instructor.

MW 1pm-2:15pm

LACS 490RW: Advanced Seminar in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: US Frontera and Other Border – Prof. Vialla Hartfield-Mendez

(Same as SPAN 485W 1)

In this class we ask: what exactly are "borders," "borderlands," and "border spaces"? How do they function? How can we understand the Mexico-U.S. frontera/border within both historical and contemporary contexts? How does that border inflect other "border spaces" far away from its geography, including spaces in Atlanta? The course looks at how the stories of these borders are shaped and then re-told, in written and visual texts. The course is taught primarily in Spanish while also integrating the multi-lingual nature of border stories.

We will partner with the Latin American Association, whose building on Buford Highway can be described as a border space, and we will engage with a visiting artist, Yehimi Cambrón. You will complete a collaborative project that supports the Latin American Association's work and provides a framework for you to actively reflect on the integration of the humanistic inquiry (like this course) in your own future work.

PREREQUISITES: At least one Foundational Course (SPAN 300 - 318W), or one 400-level Spanish course, or permission from the instructor.

T 1pm-3:45pm

LACS 490RW: Advanced Seminar in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: Contagion in Latin America

(Same as SPAN 485W 2)

Contagion in Latin America: Infection, Virality, and Racial Hygiene since 1492

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class examines historical and contemporary depictions and understandings of medical and social contagion in the Americas, from 1492 to the present. As Europeans invaded what came to be called the Americas, disease transmission between the populations marked every encounter. Indigenous people were considered by Europeans more prone to disease, and seen by some as a sickness that had to be contained, treated, and potentially eradicated. Since then, and especially in the modern world of global pandemics, disease and its treatment has only gained power as something through which the world is interpreted and through which power is exercised.

 Through novels, films, pamphlets, and newspaper coverage, we look at the history and contemporary of contagion and epidemics in Latin America, including the initial colonial encounter, the Spanish Empire's 18th century hygienization program, riots in response to Rio de Janeiro's Yellow Fever treatments in the early 20th century, and the indefinite jailing of Haitian children on Guantanamo Bay because they were perceived as an HIV risk by the U.S. military in the 1990s. By way of these sources and historical junctures, we ask, how have conceptions of contagion changed over time? How have medical narratives and treatment been used by the powerful to hold power and by the poor and marginal to seize it? How have the characteristics associated with biological diseases -parasitism, mutability, reproducibility- been assigned to Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and poor communities by governments, doctors, and others, and how have those communities created their own forms of treatment and their own narratives? This class will be of special interest to those studying medicine and hoping to understand the social import of medical narratives, both personal and collective.

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