This course explores the recent feminist movements against gender-based violence (GBV) in the Americas. From Ni Una Mas/Ni Una Menos in Mexico and Argentina, to the movement against Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women in North America, students will examine the ways in which activists have developed creative, non-violent resistance to ending gender-based violence. This interdisciplinary course will invite students to rethink GBV as a global epidemic that requires both local and transnational solutions.

This course is an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of transitional justice (TJ). Transitional justice broadly refers to the ways in which communities come to terms with extreme, systemic violence through public policy and legal measures such as trials against perpetrators, as well as social and cultural measures such as media and art production. Students will explore different components of TJ such as: truth commissions, amnesty, trials, and reparations.

This course provides a humanities-based approach to examining maternal and reproductive health and medicine in Latin America. Special attention will be paid to the effects of colonization and the medicalization of pregnancy and birth, the intersection of authoritarian regimes, pregnancy, and birth, as well as current debates, social movements, and policy on reproductive healthcare in Latin America. This interdisciplinary course draws on a variety of sources, including film, scholarly texts, and guest speakers.

A syllabus is available here.

This course presents students with the opportunity to analyze diverse women-led and feminist movements, examining the strategies and methods that activists have created and re-invented to achieve their overall demands. We will pay close attention to the ways in which activists understand and articulate their movements through discourses of the law, rights, and democracy in relationship to motherhood, feminism, sexuality, race, and class.

This course immerses students into Caribbean and Latin American studies by introducing them to the history, society, politics, and culture of the region, through a cross-disciplinary and multi-national approach.

This course is multi-disciplinary and takes a non-linear/non-chronological approach to examining Latin America. Instead, we will look at Latin America as a dynamic and ever-changing place, idea, and region that is shaped by histories of colonization, slavery, and external political and economic intervention.

A syllabus can be found here.

The Southern Cone, made up of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, is the Latin American region that is most associated with Europe. From Buenos Aires, the “Paris of Latin America,” to the notion of “Chilean exceptionalism,” the Southern Cone has prided itself as the “elite,” “civilized,” and, of course, the whitest part of Latin America. In this course we will analyze literature, art, and film to explore the ways in which the creative minds of the region have worked to reinforce, challenge, and break with this identity.

The first half of the semester will be dedicated to establishing a sense of the region, key terms, and getting to know canonical works beginning with the Modernist movement. The second half of the semester will grapple with the legacy of state terrorism and the representations of life under radical neoliberal reform and “shock.”

A syllabus for this course can be found here.