Topic: Writing Latina/o Chicago - *LA *H
(same as ENGL 274)

Instructor: Rodriguez, R.
This course will examine novels, poetry, and memories by Latinos and Latinas writing from and/or about Chicago.  Through these texts, we will simultaneously track a Chicago-based Latina/o literary history and analyze articulations of Latino/a everyday life and politics grounded in the city's distinct topographical and social contexts.  Issues of migration, gentrification, segregation, youth culture, gender, sexuality, race, violence, poverty, class consciousness, and struggles for social justice will figure prominently in lectures and class discussions.  Guiding questions include:  How do Latino/a literary perspectives emerging from Chicago contribute to and shift the terms of Latino/a cultural politics?  How does Latina/o literature shed light on the history of Chicago and the city's long standing and emergent Latino/a communities?  Does Latino/a writing about Chicago challenge commonly held perceptions of the city or sustain them?  How are particular areas of Chicago (by way of neighborhoods, streets, ethnic populations, suburbs as distinct from the city proper, etc.) represented?  What is the correlation between these representations and the way Chicago-based Latino/a experiences and identities are fashioned? 3 hours.

Topic: Comparative Citizenship - *H
(meets with GWS 390)

Instructor: Cacho, L .
The class will examine how citizenship has always been conferred and/or denied according to race and gender, focusing on Latinas/os and Asians.  We will begin by looking at the ways in which legislation and court cases used race and gender to confer citizenship to Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, but denied citizenship to Asians.  Through examining marriage, we will see how women, regardless of race, could be stripped of citizenship if they married "aliens ineligible to citizenship"; we will also analyze how marriage determined whether children born overseas were conferred US citizenship.  The second half of the class will explore 2 interrelated themes:  1) how has the United States used the "noncitizen" category to further exclude people along racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual lines? and 2) how are Asians, Latinas/os, and other immigrants of color challenging and changing the meanings and definitions of US citizenship? . 3 hours.

Topic: Race and Mixed Race:  Changing Racial Classification in the U.S. - *SS

(meets with AAS 290 and SOC 396)

Instructor: Dowling, J .
This class will focus specifically on the history of racial classification in the U.S. with special attention to the census and the role of the state more generally in defining race.  The emphasis will be on how race-mixing has been understood in American culture, and on the current literature on "multiracials" and the future of "race" in the U.S.  3 hours.

Topic: Body, Culture, and Power - *H

Instructor: Inda, J.
This seminar offers a critical examination of the dynamics related to the embodiment of difference.  Although the body is usually equated with nature, our focus will be on how truths about the body are produced in ways that justifiy and contest formations of power.  In other words, we will argue that the body, rather than being in any simple way natural, is a construct of culture and therefore always implicated in relations of dominance and subordination.  The course will focus primarily on the body in western culture (with some emphasis on the Latino body) and will emphasize the optics of science, technology, and visual culture in the making and remaking of bodies.  Specifically, it will interrogate how difference has been tracked, represented, and rendered visible through the body -- how difference has been marked, contained, and dispersed -- and how modern knowledge regimes have not merely observed and reported on bodies but have produced them.  In effect, this course will explore the construciton, imaging, and experience of the body in light of modern regimes of power/knowledge.

Topic: Latinas in Television, Film and Popular Culture - *SS
(meets with COMM 391 and GWS 490)

Instructor: Valdivia, A.
Until fairly recently, scholars have almost completely ignored Latinos/as in films and television, and in popular culture in general.  This course situates the media and their relation to multicultural representation, reception, and consumption within concrete historical and material contexts.  The urgency of studying Latinas and the media is not only for Latinas to have access to interpellation possibilities iwth media texts, but also for a particular set of voices to be included in the contestation over culture, a set of voices that will enrich our understanding of ourselves and others.

Topic: Hispanics in the U.S.:  Building a Social Policy Agenda - *SS
(meets with SOCW 418)

Instructor: Piedra, L .
Hispanics, the fastest growing population group in the United States , comprise a population diverse in race, ethnicity, and class, as well as economic and social indicators. The number of Hispanics and their heterogeneity, as well as the proximity of their migration, raises complex issues and interesting social and political questions, in crafting public policy and creating and delivering social services. For these reasons, the way society incorporates this growing population will greatly define the US in the twenty-first century. This course offers an extensive portrait of Hispanics in the United States . Students will explore questions of demographic characteristics, categorization, identity; language and religious practices; education; criminal justice; neighborhood and economic restructuring; immigration; social service systems; and social and community action in the context of creating an effective public policy agenda.

Topic: Graffiti and Murals - *H
(meets with ARTH 391)

Instructor: Vasquez, O.
From Bronx walls to the Berlin wall, from ancient palatial decorations to Spray-can art, murals and graffiti have been revolutionary political tools, objects of aesthetic contemplation, and vehicles for identity formation, especially within the problematic realm of the public.  This course, while examining a few ancient and early modern examples, as well as those from several different cultures, will focus on examples from Latin American and US Latina/o context.  Course will include possible field trips to sites and an examination of how wall art/writing in public spaces has been contextualized within the popular and critical debates, especially since the early 1970s and in light of the transformation of major urban centes.  Students will examine the histories and ramifications of various debates ranging from those of the Mexican "Mural Renaissance" through Nicraguan revolutionary works, to contemporary urban graffiti and murals in US centers such as San Diego, East Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  No previous Art History required.

Topic: Claiming Space:  Performance, History and Ethnography - *SS

Instructor: Pena, E.
This seminar considers "the production of space" using critical ethnographic studeis and performance realized in the Caribbean and across the Americas.  We will use spatial theory as a lens through which to examine how communities shape conceptions of geopolitical borders, cultural boundaries, and national identities. Topics discussed include diasporic religion, cultural performance, globalization, informal economy, nationalism, race, gender, and sexuality..

Topic: Race, Ethnicity and the Politics of Identity
(meets with SOC 596)

Instructor: Dowling, J.
This course explores the shifting terrain of racial identities in the US.  We will explore the history of "race" and "ethnicity," the construction of "panethnic" identities, and contemporary debates surrounding racial self-definition.  Readings will focus on the politics of enumeration, including how racial identity is measured, and the problems inherent in collecting racial demographic data.  Additional emphasis will be placed on immigrant identities, assimilation/acculturation, and ethnic resilience in the second generation and beyond.

Topic: Race and Cultural Critique
(meets with AAS 590 and ANTH 515)

Instructor: Rana, J.
This graduate course examines recent works in the field of US Cultural Studies that draw from a critical tradition linked to British Cultural Studies and US studies of race and racism.  To begin with we will examine the concepts of race and culture as they have critically evolved since the post-war era from the aforementioned scholarly traditions.  We will then consider some recent monographs that combine various methodologies including those found in anthropology, history, legal studies, literary criticism and political economy, to develop critical understandings of the race and culture concepts.  Our task throughout this class will be to examine the complex relationship between race and culture in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches, and to understand how the concepts of race and culture have shifted in meaning and usage.  As an examination of particular disciplinary methodology, we will examine historical, sociological, literary, ethnographic, and cultural studies approaches.  Finally we will examine recent monographs important to the field of Ethnic Studies.

Topic: Women of Color Feminism
(meets with AAS 590 and GWS 590)

Instructor: Cacho, L.

This course will explore recent theories and methods that have emerged from women of color feminism by examining the kind of work that was enabled by seminal texts, such as This Bridge Called My Back, Sister Outsider, and Borderlands.  Following the work of Grace Hong in Ruptures of American Capitalism, we will consider the following questions:  How and why the identity category of women of color was negated when it emerged.  How might we define women of color feminist practice?  How is it different from racialized immigrant women's culture?  Our discussions and reading responses will revolve around this fundamental question.  How does women of color feminism challenge the theories, methods, and evidence of not only traditional disciplines but also the interdisciplines of Ethnic Studies, American Studies, and Women's Studies?

Topic: Race, Gender, and Performance
(meets with AAS 590, GWS 590 and DANC 451)

Instructor: Wong, Y.

What does it mean to "perform" race or gender?  How does body go about "performing" race and gender in theatrical contexts and in everyday life?  Are performances of race and gender aesthetic, political or both?  This seminar invites a close examination of racializing and gendering discourses in relationship to its affect on the form and content of performative events.  Materials in the course will draw on readings and viewings across a variety of performance genres including dance, performance art, physical theater, and festivals.