Course Descriptions

The course aims to acquaint students with the richness, complexity and diversity of historical experiences and cultural practices in Latin America through an array of source materials that include historical monographs, ethnography, testimonial literature, fiction, music, film, and documentaries.  Through a sample of case studies culled from throughout the region, the course will shed light on the processes, structures, and forces that have shaped Latin America.  Topics include:  pre-Columbian civilizations, Iberian expansionism and the Conquest of Latin America; Church in colonial Latin America;  sugar plantations in Brazil and the trans-Atlantic slave trade; Independence movements; agro-export economies; U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean Basin; populism, urbanization , and import-substitution industrialization; popular culture, art, literature and music; revolutionary alternatives; the Cold War in Latin America and state-sponsored violence; transnational flows of capital and labor.

Texts:

Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin AmericaMark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote

Grading:

- Attendance and Classroom Participation (10%)

- Two in-class exams (30%)

-One 2-3 pp. book review (20%).

Essay topic for book review will be handed out one week in advance of due date.  Grade for book review will be based on organization, development and clarity of argument; substantiation of thesis through textual material; and elegance of prose.

-Final Exam (40%)

This course introduces students to selected topics in Latin American history and culture through film, readings, documentaries, class discussion and lectures.  One goal is to explore significant influences that have molded Latin American history from the conquest through the early twentieth century.  Another is for students to develop their analytical capabilities to utilize both visual and written materials as they engage in discussion, write analytical essays, and prepare individual projects.

Texts:

Donald Stevens, Based on a True Story: Latin American History at the Movies, Scholarly Resources, 1998.

Other readings will be posted on Blackboard.

Grading:

Essays            6/9  (67%)

Outlines          1/9  (11%)

Discussion      2/9  (22%)

What can we learn about Latin American social worlds when we look at the place of Jews within it? Conversely, what we learn about Jewish social worlds when they unfold in Latin America?  This course examines both of these questions. Specifically, we consider the role of Latin America as both a refuge from and a source of anti-Semitism, a hub of immigration, a site of Zionism, and of Jewish success and philanthropy.  We also address themes of displacement, longing, belonging, marginalization, prejudice, immigration, community, cultural continuity, and memory, while considering Sephardi and Ashkenazi difference, and inter-generational conflict among Jewish Latin Americans. Overall, through reading, writing exercises, independent research and in-class films, the course is designed to provide students with an understanding of how Jews constructed individual lives and vibrant communities in predominantly Hispanic, Catholic countries of Latin America.

With these themes in mind, the course is divided into four units:

1. Historical literacy is a substantive introductory unit, which provides basic context from 1492 until the post-World War II period;
2. Jewish group identities in Latin American features readings on Jewish life and cultural forms in select national contexts (e.g. Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic and others);
3. Memoir and personal narrative engages students in critical reading of creative non-fiction and quasi-ethnography that focuses on individual lives;
4. Contemporary realities explores current events, contemporary trends and popular culture in Jewish Latin America.

Finally, over the course of the semester, drawing on course motifs, students will produce their own research papers addressing a specific research question in the Latin American national context of their choice.

*Enjoy Latin American breakfast beverages served in class*

Note: This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present.

This course is designed to provide students a comprehensive historical and sociological overview of media treatment of minorities, including identity constructions of racial and ethnic and gender groups as well as class issuesthat  who contextualize the minority experience. 

This course explores race/gender/sexuality, violence and everyday life in Brazil. Brazil’s history has been characterized by moments of violent encounter, from colonization, to slavery, to clashes between police and residents across Brazil’s major cities today. These violent encounters have been, in many ways, racialized, gendered and sexualized. This class investigates the race/gender/sexuality aspects of multiple forms of violence in Brazil, and how this violence creates, defines and maintains social hierarchies in the nation. Throughout the course we will think through the question “what is violence?” as we discuss the concept’s physical, structural and symbolic forms. The course pays particular attention to the politics of blackness and the unique relationship black Brazilians have to the nation-state. We will also discuss the politics of writing and theorizing violence when doing social analysis, and the precarious balance between defining and addressing issues of violence, and glorifying it.

Core Texts

~ Nancy ScheperHughes, Death Without Weeping (selected Chapters)

~Theresa Caldeira, City ot VVaiIs (selected chapters)

~ Donna Goldstein, Laughter out of Piace (selected chapters) ~Robin Sheriff, Dreaming Equality (selected Chapters)

~Caldweli, Kia, Negras in Brazil: Reenvisioning Black Women, Citizenship, And the Politics of identity (selected chapters) ~De Jesus, Carolina Marie et al., The Unedited Diaries oi Caroline Maria de Jesus (seiected Chapters)

Supplemental Texts

~Michael Hanonard ed., Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (selected Chapters)

~Gonzalez, Leila` “The Unified Black Movement: A New State in Black Political Mobilization” in Race, Class and Power in Brazil, ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine

~Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a lQtn-oentury City. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (selected chapters)

~Chevigny, Paul Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (selected chapters)

~Michael Mitchell and Charles VVood, “lronies ot Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil.” Social Forces

~Arendt, Hannah “Reflections on Violence"

Booth, Wayne C, et al. The Craft of Research (guide to writing research papers selected Chapters).

Prerequisites

No pre-reqs but a good attitude strongly preferred.

Course Description

This course analyzes Mexico’s 20th century political and economic development, with a peek at early 21st century dynamics. Why did Mexico experience both political stability and economic growth until the 1970s while other Latin American countries endured brutal military regimes? What accounts for Mexico’s severe economic crises of 1982 and 1994? Why did the PRI lose in 2000 after 71 years in power? How “democratic” is Mexico’s new democracy? The first portion of the course examines Mexico’s post-Revolutionary politics, the characteristics of the national political regime during the classic period of stability with economic growth, and the tumultuous political and economic environment from the 1970s to the end of the century. This material will bepresented chronologically, but rather than a descriptive history, we will focus on explaining political and economic outcomes. Subsequently, we will examine key themes in Mexico’s new fully competitive democracy.

Grading Policy

You have two grading options for this course. Option 1 consists of three exams (two in-class midterms and one take-home final essay).  Option 2 consists of two in-class midterm exams and one research paper.  
 
Research Paper for Option 2.  This will be an independent and largely self-directed 10-page research paper focused on a particular event in contemporary Mexican politics (i.e., after 1911). As a political science paper it should seek to explain why the event occurred. In doing this, it should focus on the actors involved, their competing interests, and their various resources. The paper should include, but be more than, a simple description of the event. As a research paper, it should involve research in the library and perhaps on the internet, but in all cases must make use of scholarly books and journal articles beyond those assigned on the syllabus. Completing the research paper will require more work than taking the final exam, but it should be more rewarding. Following the rules of citation and attribution is mandatory and plagiarism will earn a failing grade in the course and referral to the University for disciplinary action. Please review the university’s plagiarism guidelines at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs/scholdis_plagiarism.php.
 
Students who plan to write a research paper must submit a one-page statement of research intent by October 26.  The statement should include a clear summary of the event to be covered, the actors involved, and their goals. It should also include at least three citations of sources you have already read for your research. Researching and writing this one-pager will take real work, so budget about a week. If the research topic is determined to be infeasible, students will have one week to hand in a revised statement for which the same rules apply. Students who pursue this option should plan on meeting with me to discuss the topic and progress. Students that do not hand in the statement by October 26 or whose proposal is not accepted after two rounds will follow Option 1.
 
This course will use +/- grading and will not be curved. The final grade for the course will be determined as follows:


Option 1:


Midterm 1                    30%                

Midterm 2                    30%                

“Final” Essay                35%                

Participation                  5%                

Option 2:

Midterm 1                    30%


Midterm 2                    30%


Research paper        35%


Participation                 5%
 

Participation: 5% of your final grade will be based on participation. Although the course is structured as a lecture, I try to involve students each day and the small class size will give many opportunities for you to participate.

Texts

Required Readings:
Ø  Kenneth F Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico’s Democratization in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), available for purchase at theCoop. In the highly unlikely case that I am issued any profits from sales of the book at UT, I will donate 100% of them to the UT undergraduate scholarship fund.
Ø  A Two-volume course packet that is available for purchase at XXX

Course Description

Government 328L is an introductory course to the politics of Latin America.  It assumes no prior knowledge of the region, nor does it require any knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese.  The only prerequisite is GOV 310-312.  It does expect an open mind about how politics works, since much of the course will not be familiar to those of you whose experiences and knowledge of politics are based on the United States.

We begin with some introductory materials dealing first with the geography and history of the region, and then with some economic characteristics.  We then cover the major actors in the political arena, identify four basic models of politics, and then conclude with an examination of US-Latin American relations.

328L/337M is an overview course, and cannot cover every topic of interest or of relevance to the region.  In addition, the course does not pretend to investigate any single nation in depth.  The course does move along quickly, and while the quantity of reading material is not great, I will expect you to know the assigned materials thoroughly.  Therefore, it is an excellent idea to keep up with the readings.

Grading Policy

There are two mid-terms and a final exam; each is composed of short answers and an essay question.  These each count one third of your total grade and are not comprehensive.  You can also write an extra paper; you are strongly encouraged to see me about a topic.  This paper counts in addition to the three exams; it does not replace one.  I will factor in in-class participation and improvement over the semester.

Grading: final grades will be determined on a +/- basis.

Texts

            Blake, Politics in Latin America, second edition (2008)

            Wiarda and Kline, A Concise Introduction to Latin American Politics and Development (2007)

            Weeks, US and Latin American Relations (2008)

            *Reading by Charles Anderson, to be distributed in class

Course Description

This course will introduce you to the political experiences of the United States Latino populations in the present and historically.  The course begins with a discussion of political identity: what does it mean to be Latino, Hispanic, or Chicano, and what are the politically relevant commonalities and differences in Latino communities.  We then discuss Latino political history, starting with the Spanish empire but focusing particularly on the 19th and 20th centuries in Texas and the southwest.  In doing so, we will study Latino political movements, organizations, and important individuals.  Moving to recent decades, the class examines Latino inputs into the American political system – particularly public opinion, voting, and the role of gender in politics.  The class also discusses the two largest non-Mexican national-origin groups in the U.S.: Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americans.  We then explore the growing voice of Latinos in political institutions, such as the U.S. Congress and state legislatures.  Lastly, the class covers key policy issues for Latino communities, particularly education and immigration. 

Grading Policy

Midterm: 30%

Final: 40%

Writing assignment: 20%

Class participation and engagement: 10%

Texts

-Garcia, F. Chris, and Gabriel Sanchez. 2007. Hispanics and the U.S. Political System: Moving Into the Mainstream. New York: Prentice Hall.

 
-Gutierrez, David. 1995. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

-Coursepack

This course examines the historical experiences of people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean (often called “Afro-Latin America”). The guiding questions of this course are: What is Afro-Latin America? Where is it? How can we write the histories of African descended peoples in the region we call “Latin America”? Can the histories of Africans and their descendants be contained within the confines of “nation”? Are there alternative frameworks (transnational and/or Diasporic) that can better enhance our understanding of these histories? While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our attention will focus on the histories of Afro-Latin Americans after emancipation. Topics we will explore include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on “racial democracy,” the relationship between gender race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from “transnational” and “diaspora” perspectives. While historians have written most of the work we will read in this course, we will also engage the works of anthropologists and sociologists who have also been key contributors to this scholarship. Thus, the course has a three-fold objective:

1)   To deepen our understanding of the diverse histories of Africans and their descendants in the region.

2)   To continually probe the ongoing tension between national and transnational processes that is embedded in much of this scholarship.

3)   To explore alternative frameworks that might enhance our understanding of the histories of people of African descent in the region.

Texts:

Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

Lara Putnam, The Company they Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica, 1870-1960

George Michael Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988

Grading:

Active Class Participation                                         20%

Map Assignment                                                       25%

Short Essay                                                                15%

Final Paper                                                                40%

This class will investigate the principal trends and issues of modern Argentine history, which has been marked by its share of social and political unrest and of economic booms and busts. Designed to provide the student with a broad knowledge of Argentina, the course devotes its attention to the period from independence (c. 1810) through to the present. No doubt, students will discover that, despite sharing many trends with other Latin American nations, Argentina’s history has been unique. The principal question remains: Why has such a talented people as the Argentineans had a turbulent and violent history—including a Dirty War and the “disappearance” of up to 30,000 citizens?

Texts:

Three books on Argentina of the student’s choice

Grading:

Each student will complete a total of five separate assignments: a map assignment, 3 five-page book essays, and a final essay examination. The student's final grade will be based on the total number of points that the student amasses on each of the assignments:

- map assignment 50 points or 5% of the final grade

- 3 written book essays 600 points or 60% of the final grade

- final exam 350 points or 35% of the final grade

The two major aims of this course are: 1) introduce students to the deeply intertwined history of US-Latin America Relations and 2) prepare each student for a potential experience in Latin America (or with Latino communities in the United States) through study abroad, research, and/or community engagement. The history of US actions towards Latin America has encompassed everything from a sentimental desire to “help the less fortunate” in developing countries through aid, to direct and indirect military intervention when the internal circumstances of a particular country have been perceived to threaten US interests. Latin American states have, in turn, attempted to establish confraternal solidarity among statesmen in the early 19th century against European incursions, to confronting and/or cooperating with an emerging imperial power to the north.  This course will allow students to deepen their knowledge of this history by exploring the historical development of the inextricably intertwined and long-standing relationships between the US and Latin America from the late 18th century until the present. Readings and lectures will allow students to consider and debate the political, economic, cultural, racial, and scientific dimensions of these relationships. These discussions are intended to allow students to consider the implications of “cultural citizenship,” a political identity that extends beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. One of the inalienable “rights” that comes with this kind of citizenship includes the right to apply  -- and the right to go beyond -- the knowledge gained through readings, lectures, and discussions by identifying a particular issue concerning US-Latin American relations that they would like to explore further through a research, community engagement or study abroad experience.

Required Readings:

Peter Smith, Talons of he Eagle: Latin America, The United States, and the World (Oxford University Press, 2013) Fourth edition.

Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Desserts: Indian Raids and the US-Mexican War (Lamar Series in Western History) (Yale, 2008)

Steven Palmer, Launching Global Health: The Caribbean Odyssey of the Rockefeller Foundation (U Michigan Press, 2010)

Course Reader available at Jenn’s Copies 220 Guadalupe St.

Assignments:

Participation & answers to weekly discussion questions                                  20%

Short 3-5 page Position Papers:                                   3 worth 20% each = 60% total.

Annotated Bibliography & Final oral presentation                                          5%

Final Paper (10-15 pages):                                                                               15%

This course will seek to identify the different ways in which religion has helped to define the political, social and philosophical structures of Latin America from colonial times to the present.  Readings and discussion will focus on the historical influence of the institutional Roman Catholic church on Latin American society.  The course will also explore the role that folk religion--from cofradias to millennialist movements--has played in the Latin American experience. Finally, the course will examine important changes in traditional Latin American religiosity in the twentieth century, including the impact of Liberation Theology and the growing influence of non-Catholic religious sectors.

Texts:

Virginia Garrard-Burnett, On Earth As It Is in Heaven: Religion and Society in

Latin America (Rowen and Littlefield, 2000)

Supplemental reader

Grading:

Grades for this course will be based on students’ participation in class discussions based on readings and on the satisfactory completion of the following written assignments:

3 essays based on readings and discussion, 3-5 pages each in length

1 research paper of between 15-20 pages.  Students will submit outlines, drafts, and rewrites of the term paper.

Final grade:

25%: essays

75%: research paper

This course surveys the history of colonial Spanish America from first encounters to independence. An underlying focus will be to explore the dynamics of scholarly analysis, tracing how and why historians and social scientists have revisited and provided alternative (revisionist) interpretations of key themes. These include: the arrival of humans in the Americas, alternations in the pre and post contact indigenous (Maya, Aztec, Inca) and Iberian worlds, processes of conquest and early colonization, ecological and demographic trends, the consolidation of imperial power (governmental, economic, religious and social institutions), changing dynamics of gender, race and class; the Bourbon Reforms; and precipitating variables for independence.

Texts:

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain (Penguin 1963)

Richard Boyer, Colonial Lives: Documents in Latin American History 1550-1850 (Oxford University Press 2000).

Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s  Choices:  An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico (University of New Mexico Press 2006)

Grading:

Students must pass a map quiz to receive a grade in the course. There will be a midterm and a final examination. Study sheets will be handed out a week prior to each examination and there will be a review in class of the materials to be covered.  Students should be prepared to discuss the assigned readings in class as well as show their comprehension of the material in examinations and essays.  Additionally students will write one (4-5) page essay based on the Boyer readings.   A sheet will be handed out suggesting possible topics or students may develop their own topic with the approval of the professor. Each examination and writing assignment will count equally in assigning a final grade. From time to time students may be presented with opportunities for extra credit through attendance at scholarly presentations or Internet assignments.  A brief outline of the lecture topics as well as terms and concepts to know will be handed out prior to each topical segment and will be posted on Blackboard.

This course examines Mexico’s Revolution through both its armed and post-revolutionary phases, from 1910-1940. During the semester we will focus on several key questions. What kind of revolution was the Mexican Revolution: an agrarian, political, social, cultural, or even mythical process? What caused and drove it? What did ordinary people think about the revolution and how far did they shape its course or simply suffer its consequences? Did “many Mexicos” just produce many revolutions, or can a broad narrative be discerned? What were the main contours of the post-revolutionary regime, and how different were they to those of the old regime? The course will consist of lectures, group discussions of set readings, primary documents, and folk songs (corridos), and occasional viewings of theater films made during (or about) the revolution. By the end of the course you will have a broad theoretical sense of what constitutes a social revolution and a detailed knowledge of Mexico’s revolutionary history that will help you to make up your own mind about the $64K questions: did twentieth-century Mexico truly experience a revolution? If so, how “revolutionary” was it?

Texts:

Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution

Leslie Bethell (ed.), Mexico since Independence

David Brading (ed.), Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution

Luis González y González, San José de Gracia: Mexican Village in Transition

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz

Stephen E. Lewis and Mary Kay Vaughan, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940

John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution

Grading:

Map quiz, 5%

Reading papers, 60%

Final paper, 35%

This course traces the history of the politics of religion, and of the religion of politics, in modern Latin America, with special emphasis placed on the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the region. Chronologically, the course covers begins with a brief survey of the colonial period and then gives special attention to the national period running from independence (circa 1820) up to the Cuban Revolution (circa 1960), after which Church and state entered significantly new and distinctive phases (e.g. Liberation Theology). Thematically, we will examine the various causes of Church-state tension in the aftermath of Latin American independence, and the Church’s multifaceted response sto the gradual rise of political liberalism, nationalism, and secularism. In the second half of the course, we will emphasize significant national cases (e.g. Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala), allowing the course to branch out in a more comparative sense as we proceed. As the focus on questions of devotion as well as power implies, we will not just be looking at the way in which the Church responded to changing political circumstances after the demise of the colonial regime, but at changes in religious practice and meaning, and how these were experienced by ordinary people.

Texts:

John Schwaller, The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: from Conquest to Revolution and Beyond

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

Austin Ivereigh (ed.) The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival 

Edward Wright Rios, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934

Shorter readings (supplied)

Grading:

Reading responses, 60%

Final essay, 40%

Texts:

John Schwaller, The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: from Conquest to Revolution and Beyond (New York: New York University Press, 2011)Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (London: Penguin, 2003)Austin Ivereigh (ed.) The Politics of Religion in an Age of Revival (London: ILAS, 2000) (NB: often out of print: required chapters provided on Blackboard) Edward Wright Rios, Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism: Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009)

Grading:

There is no final exam. Instead there will be weekly (five) writing assignments.

This course explores Cuban/U.S. relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Our exploration of Cuban/U.S. relations prompts students to grapple with issues of empire and transnationalism, both as actual historical processes and as analytical tools that can be used to examine historic and contemporary phenomena. Drawing upon monographs, travel writings, primary documents, fiction, and audio/visual materials, students will examine the complex interactions between the island’s population and their U.S. American neighbors across all facets of society. A particular emphasis will be placed on the social and cultural engagements between Cuba and the United States before the Cuban Revolution in an effort to grasp the profound impact of the Cold War on the conceptualization of Cuban history and society in the post-1959 period. While this is a course primarily rooted in Cuban history, it does not attempt to provide a “national” survey of the island’s past. Instead, it invites students to think about writing post-national histories of Cuban/U.S. interaction, one that explores the multiple connections and alternative principles of affiliation that exist among Cubans and U.S. Americans.

Texts:

Achy Obejas, Memory Mambo

C. Peter Ripley, Conversations With Cuba

Coursepack Readings

Grading:

3 Tests at 25% each: 75% of final grade

Active Class Participation: 25%

The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with some of the outstanding Jewish writers, filmmakers, and other creators from Latin America, with special emphasis on those who portray in their work the situation of the Jewish communities of their respective cities and countries.  The readings will include works by both Ashkenazic and Sephardic writers and from a range of Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, along with one Brazilian author and several who represent U.S. Latino Jewish writing in English, in addition to relevant films. Another topic will be the Jewish themes that appear prominently in some of the writings of a non-Jewish author, the renowned Jorge Luis Borges.

            One of the requirements of the class is to write a term paper of at least 1700 words (approximately 6-7 pages in normal-size type) on a topic not covered in the syllabus.  Each student will need to analyze literary works that are not in the course readings, although other writings by the same author may appear in the syllabus.  Any student with a reading knowledge of Portuguese is welcome to write his or her term paper on a Brazilian Jewish writer. The alternative to writing a literary analysis for the term paper is to research and write a paper on a Latin American Jewish creative figure working in some other medium, such as a painter, sculptor, or film director.  

Supervised individual study of selected problems in Latin American studies.

Prerequisite: Upper-division standing and consent of instructor and the undergraduate adviser in Latin American studies.

For honors candidates in Latin American studies. Individual reading of selected works for one semester, followed in the second semester by the writing of an honors thesis.

Prerequisite: For Latin American Studies 679HA, Latin American Studies 359H, admission to the Latin American Studies Honors Program, and written consent of the Latin American Studies Honors Program adviser; for 679HB, Latin American Studies 679HA.

For honors candidates in Latin American studies. Individual reading of selected works for one semester, followed in the second semester by the writing of an honors thesis.

Prerequisite: For Latin American Studies 679HA, Latin American Studies 359H, admission to the Latin American Studies Honors Program, and written consent of the Latin American Studies Honors Program adviser; for 679HB, Latin American Studies 679HA.