Affiliated Courses

Spring 2026

These courses will have guest lectures from Faculty Fellows. Students enrolled in these courses will be invited to attend other Latin American Studies Co-Lab (LASCOLAB) events, explore the benefits of interdisciplinary research, and to envision how the collaborative inquiry modeled by the co-lab may support their chosen path of study.

ARTH 3015 Latinx Visual Art and Culture (Community Engaged Learning) (Gonzalez)
Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:30 a.m. - 1:15 pm.
From Chicano muralism and conceptual artist collectives to experimental film and performance, this course explores how U.S. Latino/a/x artists have used visual culture to challenge and reshape ideas of identity, power, and belonging from the 1960s to today. We’ll examine how art intersects with movements for social justice, exploring themes of representation, gender, sexuality, class, and politics across media including photography, film, performance, and exhibition practices. This semester, we’ll focus on contemporary Latinx artists connected to the upcoming Shaw Gallery exhibition. The course also features visits from practicing artists, hands-on workshops, and a community-engaged project that connects classroom learning to the world beyond campus.

ARTH 3050 Contemporary Art (Community Engaged Learning) (Gonzalez)
Mondays & Wednesdays, 2:30 - 4:15 p.m.
From protest posters and performance art to immersive installations and feminist collectives, this course explores how artists have challenged and reimagined culture from the 1960s to today. We’ll look closely at multimedia art, photography, performance, installation, and feminist practices, with special attention to how postmodern movements respond to broader social and political currents. This semester, we’ll engage with artists featured in the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale and contemporary Latinx artists connected to the spring 2026 Shaw Gallery exhibition. The course also includes visits from practicing artists, hands-on workshops, and a community-engaged project that connects classroom learning to the world beyond campus.

HIST 4730: Gold to Guacamole: Latin American Commodity History (Almeida)
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.
This course studies commodities as a window into economic, social, environmental, and cultural histories. Students will study theoretical and methodological models and apply them to the history of commodities that moved across the globe. Assignments in this course help students to build research skills in historical analysis and develop critical thinking skills as we consider the construction of the present through products that powered a changing world. The course will have an emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean as connected to the rest of the world through the circulation of raw materials, processed goods, and human laborers.

SPAN 3570: Latin America Underground: Cold War Espionage, Counterculture, and Documentary Film (Mulligan)
Thursdays, 10:30 - 11:45 a.m.
Why does the age-old metaphor of the underground continue to be relevant today? Why, in particular, does it appear with such prevalence in speech about Latin American culture from the 1960s to the 1980s? This Special Topics in Culture seminar invites you to explore the cultural politics of Cold War Latin America through an interdisciplinary approach, which combines intellectual history, literary analysis, and the sociology of cultural forms. Using a massively popular contemporary novel as its point of departure, this course will explore the difference between official discourse and countercultural discourse in the fields of historiography, literature, and documentary film. You will learn how literature and film have been used to cast light on some of the darkest moments of Latin American political history — moments that often have been obfuscated by the official historical record. In this way, this course invites you to carefully consider the value of cultural memory in societies that live through authoritarian regimes and dictatorship. To explore the value of cultural memory, you will carry out original scholarship through high impact learning experiences, in which you will take seriously the critical potential of parody during historical moments when cultural values are threatened by unlawful censorship, prosecution, detention, and violence.