Writing proficiency is required for a passing grade in this course. Lectures, readings, and films will explore connections between the past and the present and provide students a forum to express their own viewpoints on the legacy of this history. We will also examine relations among Latinx and European immigrants, and consider the affects of US intervention and imperialism in Latin America on US Latinx communities. Students will become familiar with issues that have affected different Latinx populations in the United States: migration patterns, cultural interaction, community and cultural formation and racial formations. Although we will examine communities comprised of people of Central and South American descent, the focus of this course will be on the four largest Latinx groups: those of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican descent. This course focuses on the history of people of Latin American descent (Latinas/os) living in the United States. In doing so, we will learn to mobilize our readings as theoretical and historical tools in interpreting the contemporary and interrogating our responsibility toward the themes of the class. Instead of resolving these debates, our problem-based approach will emphasize how the scope and framing of texts bear on present problematics.

In order to excavate this assumption, we will survey debates on 1) the origin and history of race and racism (from the Ancients to the early moderns) 2) the deployment of categories in contested proximity to race (from class to gender) and 3) the development of different conceptual paradigms (from double consciousness to political ontology) to parse the relationship between race and the world. We will begin with the working assumption that slavery is at the root of the problem of race and racism. This course offers a critical introduction to the conditions of possibility for modern racial thinking, with particular emphasis on racial slavery and anti-blackness. Analysis of American social structure, demographic and institutional trends over time related to race and the description of racism.

Pre drilled glass blocks for crafts