Undergraduate Certificate
An interdisciplinary curriculum that traverses the arts, humanities and social sciences, the program is designed to provide a broad understanding of the emergence, transformation and consolidation of Latino/a/x as a pan-ethnic group central to the development of the United States as a nation. The course of study also highlights transnational connections and contexts of Latino/a/x peoples across the Americas, including dynamics of globalization, migration, colonialism, imperialism, citizenship and diaspora.

![Program in Latino studies [logo]](/sites/g/files/toruqf596/files/styles/freeform_1440w/public/2021-08/lao-pad.png?itok=8Oe3orF5)
Join the Program
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Students from all departments are welcome to the program. Students may enroll in the Latino studies certificate program at any time, including the first year. There are no prerequisites, and courses taken prior to enrollment may count towards the certificate requirements. Students may take the gateway course AMS 101 at any time during their studies, including after enrollment in the certificate program. To enroll in the program, students should complete the online enrollment form. New students should plan to meet with the associate director or program coordinator before the end of their first year of enrollment, to review their plans for fulfilling the certificate requirements.
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Students may earn a certificate in Latino studies by successfully completing the following requirements, consisting of five courses:
- AMS 101: America Then and Now
- Three courses in Latino studies, either originating in the program or cross-listed and preferably representing disciplinary breadth in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. No more than one course taken in fulfillment of the student’s concentration may be counted toward the certificate. With the approval of the associate director, a student may substitute a comparative race and ethnicity course that contains substantial Latino studies content for one of these courses.
- An advanced seminar in American studies, preferably taken in the senior year.
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Students who fulfill all program requirements will receive a certificate of proficiency in Latino studies upon graduation.
Fall 2022 Courses
This course provides an introductory foray into the heterogenous field of Latinx Studies, drawing on classical and contemporary texts from sociology, history, political science, feminist studies, and critical race studies. The course explores the following themes: the history of US imperialism in Latin America; decolonial Latinx thought; the criminalization and regulation of Latinx immigration in the US; race, mestizaje, Black identity, and AfroLatinidad identity; colonialism and queerness in Latin America; and liberal, radical, indigenous, and lesbian Latinx feminisms.
This course begins from the disjoint and relation between the narrated autobiography and the lived life. In reading works by authors including Myriam Gurba, Wendy C. Ortiz, Carmen Maria Machado, Richard Rodriguez, and Junot Diaz, we will explore not only how writers experiment with the project of narrating a life that contends with the structures and strictures of racial matrices, gender binaries, and traumatic abuse - but also how writers test the boundaries of what autobiographies more generally are and are for.
The international border looms large over current national and international political debates. While this course will consider borders across the world, it will focus on the U.S.-Mexico border, and then on the Guatemala-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border. This course examines the history of the formation of the U.S. border from the colonial period to the present. Borders represent much more than just political boundaries between nation states. The borderlands represents the people who live between two cultures and two nations. This course will also study those individuals who have lived in areas surrounding borders or crossed them.
This course offers an introduction to the theory, ethics, and history of the idea of international protection, while looking specifically at how Central Americans have engaged with the US asylum system over time. We will study the origins of the ideas of refugee protection, who is understood to qualify and why, how that has changed over time, and what this means for a broader understanding of human rights across borders. In collaboration with local asylum attorneys, students will get hands on experience conducting research and putting together reports to assist in real cases and, if conditions permit, we will attend immigration court.
By taking a comparative approach, this course examines the role of social, economic, and political factors in the emergence and transformation of modern cities in the United States and selected areas of Latin America. We consider the city in its dual image: both as a center of progress and as a redoubt of social problems, especially poverty. Attention is given to spatial processes that have resulted in the aggregation and desegregation of populations differentiated by social class and race.
How are ideas of belonging to the body politic defined in Spain, Latin America, and in Spanish-speaking communities in the United States? Who is "Latin American," "Latinx," "Chino," "Moor," "Guatemalan," "Indian," etc.? Who constructs these terms and why? Who do they include/exclude? Why do we need these identity markers in the first place? Our course will engage these questions by surveying and analyzing literary, historical, and visual productions from the time of the foundation of the Spanish empire to the present time in the Spanish speaking world.
This course examines the paradoxical position of Spanish in the United States. The course aims to place the issues and controversies related to linguistic subordination and the maintenance of Spanish in the broader context of Latino communities and their social and historical position in the United States. In addition, it tries to equip students with critical resources to address topics such as the relationship between language and identity, political debates around Spanish and English, and bilingualism and the processes of racialization of linguistic minorities.
This course studies contemporary urban poetry composed in Spanish on both sides of the Atlantic in cities such as New York, Madrid, Los Angeles, Mexico D.F., Barcelona and Buenos Aires. It focuses on lyrical practices that combine sound and language in a wide range of literary expressions. Contemporary hip-hop poetry and rap lyrics are at the center of the course.
Community and Conversations




Carolina Espinoza Cartes (left), an anthropologist, journalist and editor from Chile, leads a class in the course “Rapping in Spanish,” where students created their own books that were compilations of rap songs that they selected and edited themselves. Photo by Julie Clack, Office of Communications