Courses

Fall 2024

IAS A50000 Inventing the Americas (Graduate) (Graduate) 
Monday 5:30 - 7:10 PM | Online Synchronous (Zoom)
Professor Martin Woessner

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Americas. It examines some of the ways in which the Americas have been constructed, defined, and redefined since the time of Columbus (and before). Touching upon some of the topics that have come to define the history of the Americas, students will discuss the science(s) of exploration; the imaginaries of the new world and the old; the politics and economics of empire and colonialism; the cruelties of invasion, conquest, and slavery; the transformations of ecology and biology; the contours of nationalism and transnationalism; as well as the more recent phenomenon of globalization. Open only to students accepted into the M.A. in the Study of the Americas program. 

IAS A60110 Populism and Popular Culture in the Americas (Graduate)
Tuesday 5:30 - 7:10 PM | Online Synchronous (Zoom)
Professor Carlos Aguasaco

This course explores the symbiotic relation between political populism and the emergence of national and transnational popular culture(s) in the Americas. Following Garcia Canclini’s concept of economic citizenship, and Ernesto Laclau’s visions on Populism as an articulatory form, this course focuses on revealing the economic and political aspects that constitute both cultural practices and products in the Americas. The class discussions and readings will provide the theoretical framework while the students concentrate in studying cultural practices or products of their own choosing.

IAS 60600 Musics of the Americas (Graduate)
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Online Synchronous (Zoom)
Andrew Aprile

Music of the Americas will present a survey of selected styles of Latin America music including the classical and popular traditions and will consider its native, African, and European heritage. Each session will be dedicated to discussing one genre or style (such as son, cumbia, tango, bolero, samba, corrido, Latin jazz etc.) through guided listening of relevant recordings, pertinent readings, and screening of videos. In addition, the course will present the relevant theoretical issues pertinent to those musical styles, including perspectives that shed light on ethnic identities, gender issues, migration, and diaspora questions. Weekly assignments will include listening and readings. A term paper and a class presentation will also be required.

Spring 2023

AS 62400 Literary Landscapes of Slavery and Freedom (Graduate) 
Monday 5:30-7:10 PM, in person | Professor Kathlene McDonald

The story of the African Diaspora in the Americas is circumscribed by the Transatlantic slave trade. This course will look at the stories of slavery and its aftermaths across the Americas, paying attention to the journeys taken, by force or by choice, within and across countries, oceans, seas, and continents. We will also take into account journeys that enabled formerly enslaved people and their descendants to resist the totalizing trauma of slavery and imagine a different life for themselves and their families. We will begin with the classic slave narrative, which traces the journey from bondage to freedom. We will then turn to contemporary novels, poetry, and essays that illustrate both the physical and psychic consequences of slavery as well as the power of community and the power of imagination to create healing spaces, out of which new stories can emerge. To deepen our readings of the literary works, we will also read recent scholarship that explores the global resonance of the afterlives of slavery. 

IAS A 6250 Transitions: Contemporary Ethnographic Film (Graduate)
Monday 7:30-9:10 PM, in person | Professor Campbell Dalglish

Transitions may be the most constant feature of everyday life. With endless uncertainties that are exacerbated by political turmoil, pandemic unpredictability, and climate crisis, our quotidian experiences are steeped in mutability. Transitions present us with both challenges and opportunities, not only in our everyday lives but also in our work. Within the word transition, emphasizing the prefix trans opens up avenues of thought that celebrate the in-betweenness of our state of being. Rather than focusing on the pressures to move on to the next thing (to be post-COVID, post-racial, post-colonial, as it may), tarrying in transition helps us to appreciate the difficult path toward restoring healthy relationships. This includes but is not limited to transnationalism, trans identities, transitivity, transdisciplinarity, translanguaging, transparency, transhumanism, transluminescence, translation, transliteration, transcendence, transfusion, and transmutation." (SVAFF 2023) We will spend class time viewing and discussing the latest and greatest ethnographic films as presented at the Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival 2023 in Toronto with students defining their own personal point of view on what this word means in the context of each film— in Transition.

IAS 62300 Inequality and Social Mobility in the Americas (Graduate)
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM, in person | Professor Rafia Zafar

This course will review the history and evidence of inequality and social mobility worldwide, The first part of the class will focus on rising concerns of income and wealth inequality in the United States and policy preferences. The second part of the class will focus on social mobility. We will review the existing literature on social mobility and draw a comparison around the world. We will then focus specifically on evidence from the Americas. We will examine the determinants of social mobility, such as race, place, and education. This course will also focus on the role of higher education in determining social mobility and the long-term impact on policy and governance. 

IAS 50100 Graduate Research Methodology (Graduate) 
Thursday 5:30-7:10 PM, in person | Professor Joan Robinson

This course will trace the changing definition of American Studies, originating as a field of study with a focus primarily on the United States to projects spanning both American continents. Students will study the field’s relationship to twentieth-century social movements and related theoretical categories, including Marxist theory, cultural studies, feminist theory, post- colonial theory, and ethnic studies. They will learn the various research techniques necessary to produce graduate-level writing in their courses in the Study of the Americas. Students will choose a topic, develop a research agenda, conduct interdisciplinary research, and write a final paper of 15-20 pages.
 

Fall 2023

IAS A7010 MA Capstone Seminar (Forced Migrations in the Americas)
Monday 5:30-7:30 PM, in person | Professor Danielle Zach

The number of forcibly displaced persons has reached a record-level high, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimating the size of this population at more than 100 million. This course explores the involuntary movement of peoples across borders and within countries stemming from such factors as armed conflict, state fragility, persecution, climate change, disaster, and development initiatives. In addition to considering the causes of forced migration, it also examines geographic patterns, the vulnerabilities of displaced persons, and the role of key actors such as states, UN agencies, and nongovernmental organizations in migration processes. It also delves into the consequences of forcible displacement for individuals, families, and societies, as well as national and international politics.  The course draws connections between these and the rise of populism, illiberalism, far-right parties, xenophobia, and interstate tensions. We will take a critical, interdisciplinary approach, interrogating the distinction between forced and voluntary migration, practices of border security, and the limits of existing international law and organization.  We will also examine how forcibly displaced persons have opposed abuse through artwork, literature, and protest. The course will focus on countries within the Americas from the latter twentieth century to the present.

IAS A6080 Gated Cities, Gated Communities, Gated Minds
Tuesday 5:30-7:10 PM, in person | Professor Susanna Schaller

This course explores the global phenomenon of "gating"  urban spaces to create a sense of heightened security and seclusion and a respite from the perceived chaos, violence and anonymity of the ever-encroaching city. Gated communities are no longer to be found in the suburbs but are fracturing city space as fortified enclaves become sanitized, re-imagined, branded and sold. In this course we will explore the gating of urban metropolitan spaces, taking an interdisciplinary journey into some of the "cities of walls" that have been emerging in the Americas. We will read ethnographic and sociological studies as well as urban theory.  We will explore questions focusing on what this (re)segregation by class, race, ethnicity and gender imply in terms of our day-to day encounters and relationships as well as our roles as citizens? Are we just gating our lives or our minds as well?  We will also read literary works and likely watch several films that examine how "gating" or "walling" shapes urban life. The novels include: T.C. Boyle's Tortilla Curtains set in California, The Thursday Widows by Claudia Piñeiro set in Argentina and The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

IAS A5204 The Dominican People in the US: From Migrants to Rooted People
Tuesday 7:30-9:10 PM, in person | Professor Pedro José Ortega Espinal

This course examines the migration of Dominicans to the U.S. and their transformation from migrants into settled, rooted people. The largest wave of Dominicans came to the U.S. after the implementation of the Family Reunification Act of 1965. One third of this course will focus on questions that look at the causes compelling Dominicans to move to the United States. Did Dominicans move on their own volition or was their migration the result of forces beyond their control? Did the penetration of the U.S. into the Dominican Republic create the need for Dominicans to migrate? And how has the Dominican State responded to the exodus of the Dominican people? Two thirds of the course will be dedicated to examining Dominicans who have settled permanently in the U.S. Once Dominicans are settled as a community, two overarching questions will guide the discussions in class: (1) How are Dominicans perceived by others? By other ethnic/racial communities? By mainstream society? And (2) how do Dominicans perceive themselves in relation to other ethnic/racial groups, the U.S., and the country of origin? 

IAS A6111 Race and Nation in the Americas 
Thursday 5:30-7:10 PM, in person | Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

This course is an interdisciplinary survey of the legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery/settler colonialism and their roles in forming ideas about race, nation and citizenship across the Americas. During the course, students will read theoretical, empirical and comparative texts on Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago and the United States. By the conclusion of the term, students will have a sense of the socially constructed nature of racial ideas, their historical evolution and diverse manifestations in different nation-building projects. 

Spring 2023

IAS A6118 Indigenous Visions
Monday 6:00-7:40 PM, In-Person | Professor Campbell Dalglish

This course covers films by and about the Indigenous Peoples of Americas with a primary focus on the American Indian so that students can grasp an ethnographic experience similar to that of Ethnographer Franz Boas. Beginning with Edison’s silent film projector that began the movie house industry with a single peephole projector called a Kinetoscope, we screen films from 1910 to present day videos that cover ethnographic issues of indigenous people. Students keep a journal reflecting on the impact of every film, and write two in depth reviews of at least two of the screened films. Important guest speakers (TBA and author ROBERT VETTER and other scholars) frequent the class along with significant visits to the neighboring National Museum of the American Indian.”

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Tuesday 6:00-7:40 PM, Hyflex | Professor Carlos Aguasaco

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Americas. It examines some of the ways in which the Americas have been constructed, defined, and redefined since the time of Columbus (and before). Touching upon some of the topics that have come to define the history of the Americas, students will discuss the science(s) of exploration; the imaginaries of the new world and the old; the politics and economics of empire and colonialism; the cruelties of invasion, conquest, and slavery; the transformations of ecology and biology; the contours of nationalism and transnationalism; as well as the more recent phenomenon of globalization. This is a core course in the MA Program.

IAS A6220 Hurricanes and Rising Sea Levels: Climate Change in Caribbean Art and Literature
Wednesday 6:00-7:40 PM, Online Synchronous | Professor Lisa Paravisini-Gebert

Sea level rise, stronger and more frequent hurricanes, worsening droughts, and forced displacements are generally expected to be the main environmental changes that climate change will bring to the Caribbean region. Artists and writers’ engagement with these changes—their richness and variety—have brought unprecedented attention to Caribbean creativity in the last twenty years. In this course, which will focus on the developing “hurricane imaginary” and responses to coastal threats throughout the region, we will look at a broad range of creative approaches to climate change. The artists and writers to be discussed include Rita Indiana (Dominican Republic), Hew Locke (Guyana), Yoan Capote (Cuba), Eduardo Lalo (Puerto Rico) and Celia Sorhaindo (Dominica), among others.

IAS A6210 Postcolonial Caribbean Thought and Aesthetics
Thursday 5:30-7:10 PM, In-Person | Professor Sophie Maríñez

Ever since the arrival of Europeans, the Caribbean has been marked by repeated inflections of violence in all its forms, be it physical, cultural, epistemic, gendered, or environmental. As indigenous populations and enslaved Africans in the plantation system developed strategies for survival, new, creolized cultures of resistance began to emerge, standing against a history marked by centuries of colonialism, slavery, imperialism, nationalism, and the slow, brutal impositions of neoliberalism. This course offers an overview of these developments through a transdisciplinary approach, including theory, history, literature, and music. We will discuss how writers and artists across languages spoken in the Caribbean, including its diaspora in the United States, address colonialism in their work and engage in a pan-Caribbean conversation aiming at breaking from the legacies of historical violence.
 

Fall 2022

IAS A6190 Who Cares: Self-Care and Caregiving in the Americas
Monday, 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

Self-care is everywhere these days, circulating as a marketing tool, refuge from (and in) consumer goods, fix for productivity, and cure for burn out. This course takes a critical approach to the concept of self-care exploring the different intellectual traditions from which it emerges, including a Black feminist lineage that positions it as a radical tool for change as well as literatures that critique it as neoliberal form of self-making. It then turns to specific ethnographic examples asking how care plays out in different places and historical moments across the Americas. The course will foreground how care can be transformational, how the right to care is unevenly distributed, and how self-care for some relies on and elides the caring labor of others.

IAS A6200 Women’s Revolutionary Fiction in the Americas
Tuesday, 6:00-7:40 PM, online synchronous | Professor Kathlene McDonald

This course will examine literature by women writers from Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Antigua, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, and the United States. Specifically, we will be exploring the following questions: How do women respond to political violence? How do women participate in nation building? How does the legacy of colonialism shape women’s political organizing? How is women’s labor in revolutionary movements marginalized? What particular organizing strategies do women draw upon? How does gender shape women’s experience of revolution, both within and across cultures? (How) do women’s revolutionary activities contribute to a transnational feminist movement? This course will be offered ONLINE, with the possibility of some in-person sessions. Online sessions will be held on Zoom during scheduled class time, and any in-person sessions would also have a Zoom option.

IAS A5000 Graduate Research Methodology
Wednesday, 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Justin Williams

This course is an introductory survey of research methods of the social sciences and the study of the Americas. It will provide students the opportunity to learn step by step how to collect and analyze primary and secondary data. In addition to learning how to collect and use sources, students will also be introduced to major theories that continue to inform social science research. The course is open only to students accepted into the MA in the Study of the Americas program.

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Wednesday, 7:30-9:10 PM, HYFLEX | Professor Carlos Aguasaco

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Americas. It examines some of the ways in which the Americas have been constructed, defined, and redefined since the time of Columbus (and before). Touching upon some of the topics that have come to define the history of the Americas, students will discuss the science(s) of exploration; the imaginaries of the new world and the old; the politics and economics of empire and colonialism; the cruelties of invasion, conquest, and slavery; the transformations of ecology and biology; the contours of nationalism and transnationalism; as well as the more recent phenomenon of globalization. This is a core course in the MA Program.

Spring 2022

IAS A6170 The Power of Place: Youth and the City
Monday, 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Susanna Schaller

This seminar will use Lefebvre's concept - “the right to the city" and the "social production of space" - to explore how young people (children and adolescents) experience and shape urban space as they go about their daily lives individually and socialize collectively. Young people, especially adolescents, are often pathologized, ignored, and left out of the design of urban spaces and political life of cities. We will read theoretical literature to define "the right to the city" and discuss how it has been enshrined in legal or normative frameworks in relation to children and youths. We will explore how we might design not just "child-friendly" but youth-friendly cities. Moreover, we will center young people's experiences in urban spaces and examine how they claim the right to the city in variegated ways. Major topics will include, but will not be limited to: street art and graffiti; LGBTQ youth and the right to the city; youth social movements; skateboarding and the production of urban space; youth and participatory research; as well as youth political participation in appropriating and producing urban space.

IAS A5107 Bachata for a Diaspora: Dominican Fiction & Film of the 21st Century
Tuesday, 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Jerry Carlson

In a poll of American literary critics organized by the BBC in 2015, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was voted the 21st century’s best novel so far. To be sure, it is a great literary achievement, a mark of pride for all Dominicans. But Juno Diaz’s remarkable Pulitzer Prize winning fiction is more than a singular accomplishment. It is a portal to a mansion of Dominican storytelling with rooms in English and Spanish, in prose fiction and feature films. Our course will visit those rooms to see how they show the history and experience of the Dominican Republic and its diaspora in the USA. In addition to Diaz’s masterpiece, we will consider writing by women such as Angie Cruz’s Dominicana and Rita Indiana’s Tentacle. No less impressive in recent years is the growth and quality of feature filmmaking in the Dominican Republic. This includes works such as Sugar, Sand Dollars, Woodpeckers, and Cocoté, among others. We will analyze these stories for what they say about Dominican experience and – equally important as works of art – how they say it. A number of questions will frame the ways we come to understand these works. How do they portray alternative views of Dominican history, culture and society to challenge official versions? To what degree does Trujillo’s 20th century dictatorship still shape aspects of the 21st century life? In what ways do the works explore how Dominican lives are influenced by race, class, and gender? How do different generations understand these issues? What role does the diaspora play in all of this? Who controls what constitutes Dominican culture? For example, how does a once despised musical genre – bachata – become a reference point for other expressive forms such as the novel and movies? How is all of this captured in three languages: Spanish, English, and Spanglish? Who gets to be in the story and who is permitted to tell it? The course will be conducted as lecture/discussions. Students will write several essays based on the readings and screenings (which are available streaming).

IAS A6180 War and Justice in the 21st Century
Wednesday, 5:30-7:10 PM | Former International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and Professor Danielle Zach

Through a series of case studies, this interdisciplinary course analyzes the international legal order in the 21st century. It is grounded in the practice of Luis Moreno Ocampo as the founding Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). During his tenure (2003–2012), Moreno Ocampo had to make decisions that no prosecutor had made before—where and when to trigger international criminal investigations in sovereign states. As the ICC was getting off the ground, the United States was intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of its global War on Terror. Moreno Ocampo was thus a participant in and a privileged witness of the emergence of two international paradigms to manage violence: the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, and the War on Terror. They both transformed the concept of sovereignty. Students will study the interaction between political, judicial, and military decisions in Afghanistan, Colombia, Darfur, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Libya, Syria, Uganda, and Venezuela. They will actively engage in debate and simulate decision-maker roles in a number of relevant institutions—the US National Security Council, the UN Security Council, and the ICC.

A7010 Capstone Seminar: Cultures of Surveillance
Thursday, 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Joan Robinson

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING US, George Orwell famously wrote in the book 1984. Multiple forms of surveillance capture our lives -- CCTV cameras film the urban space, big data tracks our web visits, and our own cell phones track our locations with GPS. Meanwhile, large national and international projects in policing, biomedicine, and border control proscribe the actions of hundreds of millions of bodies, telling us which bodies should do what and when and how they should do it. All of these surveillance projects, from the algorithms to the borders, are highly raced and gendered -- inequalities are built into the fabric of the systems. It can feel as if we are always beeing watched, but sometimes, surveillance systems can be useful. Advertisements can algorithmically appear at the moment we need something, seemingly able to read our minds. Some people have been able to find missing biological relatives using DNA databases. And sometimes, the camera can be turned around on those in power, like when a teenager named Darnella Frazier courageously filmed the police murder of George Floyd, sparking protests worldwide for months. Most of us live and avidly participate in cultures of surveillance in our public lives, our work lives, and even in our most personal moments. This course will examine cultures of surveillance from historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives. It will start by examining classic works in surveillance studies then move to contemporary topics in surveillance including Population (e.g., borders, medicine, reproduction), Crime and Policing (e.g., digital, DNA, body cameras), Security (e.g., military, intelligence), Capitalism (e.g., organizations, advertising), and Digital Spaces (e.g., social media, video games). Students will write a research paper in one of these areas comparing the cultures of surveillance in the United States to that of another country in the Americas. As surveillance continues to calcify into our systems of information, economy, and governance, what are the implications for privacy, identity, and anonymity? What are the implications for human rights, equality, and community?
 

Fall 2021

IAS A6119 Cultures of Capital
Monday, 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

This course will explore both theories and everyday experiences and construction of capitalism. We will begin with foundational texts, looking at historical, theoretical, and social constructions of capitalism.  We will then move on to ethnographic examples, asking how capitalism plays out in different places and historical moments across the Americas.

IAS 52004 The Dominican People in the United States
Tuesday, 6:00-7:40 PM | Dr. Ramona Hernández

This course examines the migration of Dominicans to the U.S. and their transformation from migrants into settled, rooted people. The largest wave of Dominicans came to the U.S. after the implementation of the Family Reunification Act of 1965.  One third of this course will focus on questions that look at the causes compelling Dominicans to move to the United States. Did Dominicans move on their own volition or was their migration the result of forces beyond their control? Did the penetration of the U.S. into the Dominican Republic create the need for Dominicans to migrate? And how has the Dominican State responded to the exodus of the Dominican people?  Two thirds of the course will be dedicated to examining Dominicans who have settled permanently in the U.S.  Once Dominicans are settled as a community, two overarching questions will guide the discussions in class: (1) How are Dominicans perceived by others?  By other ethnic/racial communities? By mainstream society?  And (2) how do Dominicans perceive themselves in relation to other ethnic/racial groups, the U.S., and the country of origin?

IAS A6150 African Diasporas in the Americas
Wednesday, 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Justin Williams

The term "African diaspora" refers to the long-term historical process by which people of African descent have been scattered from their ancestral homelands to other parts of the world.  The first part of this course will offer a broad historical, political, economic and cultural overview of the creation of African diasporas in the Americas via the transatlantic slave trade and settler colonialism.  The second half will explore voluntary movements of African (and diaspora) immigrants across the Americas in the age of decolonization and globalization.  Case studies will focus on examples from the United States, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Thursday. 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Martin Woessner

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Americas.  It examines some of the ways in which the Americas have been constructed, defined, and redefined since the time of Columbus (and before).  Touching upon some of the topics that have come to define the history of the Americas, students will discuss the science(s) of exploration; the imaginaries of the new world and the old; the politics and economics of empire and colonialism; the cruelties of invasion, conquest, and slavery; the transformations of ecology and biology; the contours of nationalism and transnationalism; as well as the more recent phenomenon of globalization. This is a core course in the MA Program.
 

Spring 2021

IAS A5106 Haiti and the Americas, from the Revolution to Today
Tuesday 6:00-7:40 PM | Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés

In this seminar, we will examine the contributions of Haiti to the Western hemisphere and the world. Beginning with Columbus’s arrival on the Taino island of Ayiti, and drawing from literary and historical sources, we will study the importance of the Haitian Revolution and its immediate impact on the surrounding countries, including its challenge to prevailing discourses of liberty and freedom as defined by Western European intellectuals. Other moments covered will include the War of Restoration in the Dominican Republic; the US military occupation of the entire island; early 20th-century migration of workers to Cuba; the 1937 Massacre; the rise and fall of the Duvalier regimes; the legacy of Jean-Bertrand Aristide; the earthquake of 2010 and its aftermath. Over the course of the semester, we will center Haiti and its rich history, restoring it to its needed place in the Study of the Americas.  All readings will be posted to Blackboard; assignments will also include music and film selections.

IAS A5010 Graduate Research Methodology
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken

This course will trace the changing definition of American Studies, originating as a field of study with a focus primarily on the United States to projects spanning both American continents.  Students will study the field’s relationship to twentieth-century social movements and related theoretical categories, including Marxist theory, cultural studies, feminist theory, post- colonial theory, and ethnic studies. They will learn the various research techniques necessary to produce graduate-level writing in their courses in the Study of the Americas.  Students will choose a topic, develop a research agenda, conduct interdisciplinary research, and write a final paper of 15-20 pages. Open only to students accepted into the M.A. in the Study of the Americas program.

IAS A6140 Forced Migrations in the Americas
Wednesday 7:30-9:10 PM | Professor Danielle Zach

The number of forcibly displaced persons has reached a record-level high, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimating the size of this population at 79.5 million. This course explores the involuntary movement of peoples across borders and within countries stemming from such factors as armed conflict, state fragility, persecution, climate change, disaster, and development initiatives. In addition to considering the causes of forced migration, it also examines geographic patterns, the vulnerabilities of displaced persons, and the role of key actors such as states, UN agencies, and nongovernmental organizations in migration processes. It also delves into the consequences of forcible displacement for individuals, families, and societies, as well as national and international politics.  The course draws connections between these and the rise of populism, illiberalism, far-right parties, xenophobia, and interstate tensions. We will take a critical, interdisciplinary approach, interrogating the distinction between forced and voluntary migration, practices of border security, and the limits of existing international law and organization.  We will also examine how forcibly displaced persons have opposed abuse through artwork, literature, and protest. The course will focus on countries within the Americas from the latter twentieth century to the present.

IAS A7010 Capstone: Climate Change, Sustainability and Urban life in the Americas
Thursday, 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Susanna Schaller

Fires and floods, pandemics and sea-level rise, hurricanes and mass migrations--this capstone class focuses on urban sustainability in the context of climate change. Given the reality of climate change, we will explore what this means for urban areas throughout the Americas. How might we relate these concepts to the idea of justice? Using an interdisciplinary lens, we will read works like Christian Parenti's Tropic of Chaos and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, and view films such as Icíar Bollaín's Even the Rain.  

The course will focus on processes of urbanization as they relate to sustainability. Cities are are often associated with disorder, disease, danger, and inequality. Yet, planners, architects, sociologists, scientists, engineers, writers and artists have also looked to cities for inspiration. They have often sought to harness both optimism and pragmatism to try to imagine and shape a more “sustainable” future. So, in this capstone course, we will examine climate change and its impacts, moving between levels of governance from the global to the local. We will ask what we mean by "sustainability" more broadly and by “sustainable development" specifically. We will analyze this through the lenses of environmental racism and environmental justice and will investigate how areas of planning, such as land use, culture, housing, food systems, and mobility, intersect with the built environment and shape socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of neighborhood life. Students will be asked to complete capstone projects of their own design that address questions of sustainability and urban life.
 

Fall 2020

IAS A6130, 3CWE Contemporary Gender Activism in the Americas
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Joan Robinson

From Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires, Argentina to Nunavut, Canada near the North Pole, activists of all genders have been taking to the streets demanding equal rights for women and gender justice for all. This course will give students the analytic tools that social scientists use to understand social movements, and in particular, movements around women’s rights and gender justice.  Using the tools learned through the class, each student will have the opportunity to deeply examine one contemporary gender movement of their choice in the Americas.  The Americas are a diverse and interesting place to examine such movements, and we will consider the historical, cultural, political, and religious institutions that shape each social movement in unique ways.  Anyone with an interest in activism, politics, economics, or law is encouraged to enroll.

IAS A5105, 4CWE Slavery, Gender and Resistance in Hispaniola
Thursday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Sophie Maríñez  

This course examines the institution of slavery in the Caribbean, most specifically Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It also explores the various modes of resistance that led to its abolition and how contemporary authors have addressed it in their works. We will begin with an overview of theoretical texts on what constitutes slavery, its history, legacy, and contemporary forms, to then focus on the establishment of slavery on both sides of the island as well as the revolution of Saint-Domingue and its impact on the modern world. Key authors include Franklyn Franco Pichardo, Carolyn Fick, Laurent Dubois, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot. The second half of the course will focus on what is known as neo-slave narratives, or contemporary representations of the lived experiences of the enslaved. Films and documentaries on the Haitian revolution will be complemented with Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World, while special attention will be given to the role of gender, sexual exploitation and women’s resistance to enslavement through a close reading of Haitian novelist Evelyne Trouillot’s Rosalie the Infamous and Dominican-American author Ana-Maurine Lara’s haunting poetry collection, Kohnjehr Woman.  Readings, papers, and discussions will be in English but students who wish to read primary texts and write their papers in either French or Spanish will be encouraged to do so. 

IAS A6011, 4CWE Populism and Popular Culture in the Americas 
Thursday 7:30-9:10 PM | Professor Carlos Aguasaco 

This course explores the symbiotic connection between political populism and the emergence of national and transnational popular culture(s) in the Americas. Following García Canclini’s concept of economic citizenship and Ernesto Laclau’s visions on populism as an articulatory form, this course focuses on revealing the economical and political aspects that constitute both popular cultural practices and products in the Americas. The class discussions and readings provide both a theoretical framework on Populism and case studies of its emergence and recent consolidation in the Americas.

Spring 2020

IAS A70100  Political Violence and Justice in Latin America and the Caribbean (MA Capstone Seminar)
Tuesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Danielle Zach

This course examines various forms of contemporary political violence in Latin American and Caribbean countries. In addition to state repression under dictatorships and the region’s civil wars in the twentieth century, it addresses the legacies of violence in the present, including in terms of state capacity, democracy, development, organized crime, emigration, and human rights. Students will also analyze the range of justice mechanisms that have been established in the region to achieve redress for mass human rights abuses -- such as truth commissions, trials, reparations -- and evaluate their effectiveness. Violence and justice will be viewed through the lenses of gender, race, and class.

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Martin Woessner

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Americas.  It examines some of the ways in which the Americas have been constructed, defined, and redefined since the time of Columbus (and before).  Touching upon some of the topics that have come to define the history of the Americas, students will discuss the science(s) of exploration; the imaginaries of the new world and the old; the politics and economics of empire and colonialism; the cruelties of invasion, conquest, and slavery; the transformations of ecology and biology; the contours of nationalism and transnationalism; as well as the more recent phenomenon of globalization. Open only to students accepted into the M.A. in the Study of the Americas program.

IAS A6120 Literature and Art in the Contemporary Caribbean
Wednesday 7:30-9:10 PM | Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Sarah Tod Fitz Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair, Vassar College

This course analyzes the ongoing dialogue between contemporary Caribbean literature and the visual arts around topics of deep cultural and historic resonance: slavery and the plantation, Creole religiosities, pan-Caribbean popular culture, environmental degradation, migration, and migration, among others. Texts to be discussed include Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (Dominica), Pedro Cabiya's Wicked Weeds (Puerto Rico/Dominican Republic), Mayra Montero's The Messenger (Puerto Rico), Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John (Antigua), and others. We will look at the work of artists like Tony Capellán (Dominican Republic), Jaime and Javier Suárez (Puerto Rico), David Boxer (Jamaica), Firelei Báez (Dominican Republic), and Yoan Capote (Cuba).
 

Fall 2019

IAS A6119 Cultures of Capital
Tuesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

This course will explore both theories and everyday experiences and construction of capitalism. We will begin with foundational texts, looking at historical, theoretical, and social constructions of capitalism.  We will then move on to ethnographic examples, asking how capitalism plays out in different places and historical moments across the Americas.

IAS A5010 Graduate Research Methodology
Tuesday 7:30-9:10 PM | Professor Justin Williams  

This course will trace the changing definition of American Studies, originating as a field of study with a focus primarily on the United States to projects spanning both American continents.  Students will study the field’s relationship to twentieth-century social movements and related theoretical categories, including Marxist theory, cultural studies, feminist theory, post- colonial theory, and ethnic studies. They will learn the various research techniques necessary to produce graduate-level writing in their courses in the Study of the Americas.  Students will choose a topic, develop a research agenda, conduct interdisciplinary research, and write a final paper of 15-20 pages. Open only to students accepted into the M.A. in the Study of the Americas program.

IAS A6080 Gated Cities, Gated Communities, Gated Minds
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Susanna Schaller                  

This course explores the global phenomenon of “gating” and privatizing urban spaces to create residential and commercial areas that offer a sense of heightened security and seclusion, a respite from the perceived chaos, violence and anonymity of the ever encroaching city. Gated communities are no longer to be found in the suburbs but are fracturing city spaces as fortified enclaves become sanitized, re-imagined, branded and sold. In this course we will explore the contours and content of this gating of urban metropolitan spaces through divergent lenses, taking an interdisciplinary journey into some of the “cities of walls” that have been emerging in the Americas.  We will read ethnographic and sociological studies and urban theory as well as literary works that examine how the privatization of the city is redefining urban life in the Americas - from Buenos Aires and Sao Paolo to Los Angeles and New York. What does this (re)segregation by class, race, ethnicity and gender imply in terms of our day-to day encounters and relationships as well as our roles as citizens?  Are we just gating our lives or our minds as well?  We will cover some of the theoretical debates on gated communities, thinking about the reasons behind gating and the typologies associated with these different motivations, assessing the impact on the urban fabric as well as investigating the implication the increasing privatization of neighborhood and commercial spaces has in term social inclusion and exclusion. We will be examining the formation of "American Apartheid" in the US, scrutinize the “the City of Walls” of Sao Paolo and“excavate the “fortress cities” of Los Angeles and New York.  We will also read several novels and view films to explore the physical gating of or living environment and the "gating" on our minds and social encounters.

Spring 2019

IAS A6118 Indigenous Visions Across the Americas
Tuesday 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Campell Dalglish

This course covers films by and about the Indigenous Peoples of Americas with a primary focus on the American Indian so that students can grasp an ethnographic experience similar to that of Ethnographer Franz Boas. Through weekly screenings, discussions and written assignments, students learn to understand the critical importance of multiple diverse tribal and indigenous cultures when confronted with a modern day outside colonial perspective. Beginning with Edison’s silent film projector that began the movie house industry with a single peephole projector called a Kinetoscope, we begin with silent ethnographic studies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (North and South America). Important guest speakers frequent the class along with significant visits to the neighboring National Museum of the American Indian.

IAS A5104 The Making of the Dominican People: From African Slavery to the Advent of Trujillo
Wednesday 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Ramona Hernandez

This course addresses relevant issues that marked the formation of Dominican society from the 1500s to 1930 and whose repercussions continue to impact and define the Dominican people today. It pays particular attention to the birth of African black slavery, to the ideologies and ideals behind the formation of the Dominican Republic, to the development of a Dominican national identity, and to the United States’ occupation of 1916. The course ends in 1930, with the ascendance of Rafael L. Trujillo.

IAS 6011 Populism and Popular Culture in the Americas
Thursday 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Carlos Aguasaco

This course explores the symbiotic relation between political populism and the emergence of national and transnational popular culture(s) in the Americas. Following Garcia Canclini’s concept of economic citizenship, and Ernesto Laclau’s visions on Populism as an articulatory form, this course focuses on revealing the economic and political aspects that constitute both cultural practices and products in the Americas. The class discussions and readings will provide the theoretical framework while the students concentrate in studying cultural practices or products of their own choosing.
 

Fall 2018

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Tuesday 6:00-7:40 PM | Professor Martin Woessner

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Americas.  It examines some of the ways in which the Americas have been constructed, defined, and redefined since the time of Columbus (and before).  Touching upon some of the topics that have come to define the history of the Americas, students will discuss the science(s) of exploration; the imaginaries of the new world and the old; the politics and economics of empire and colonialism; the cruelties of invasion, conquest, and slavery; the transformations of ecology and biology; the contours of nationalism and transnationalism; as well as the more recent phenomenon of globalization. Open only to students accepted into the M.A. in the Study of the Americas program.

IAS A6117 Founding Fathers
Wednesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Doctor Marlene Clark

In his “Letter from Jamaica” (1815), Simón Bolívar repeatedly states his belief that South and Central America, on their way to liberation from Spanish rule, are not yet ready for a “Federal Republic” on the model of the United States to the north. With freedom from colonial power not yet won, it is difficult for him to say what form of government the huge landmass from Mexico to Patagonia should adopt once free to form a government or governments. But what is a “federal republic” and how does it differ from a Constitutional Republic, a Democratic Republic, a Parliamentary Republic or, for that matter, a “Banana Republic”? This course will trace the formation of governments in the early Americas, and the influence of Enlightenment philosophy on their founders’ design and implementation. The course will begin by studying a wide selection of influential Enlightenment philosophy, mainly Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, with particular emphasis on the notion of the nation-state and rulers. We will then build upon that foundation by closely reading notable biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, whose at times acrimonious debates laid the foundation for the Constitution of the United States of America. We will closely read that constitution and the Bill of Rights that informed it, as they are debated and revised prior to ratification. Slavery was of course the main bone of contention, but so was the creation of a central bank and a standing army. To better understand these heated exchanges, we will look at a number of pertinent essays from The Federalist Papers. Perhaps then we can begin to understand Bolívar’s reservations as to the feasibility of the Federal Republic for the southern hemisphere. Hence, the course now will return to Bolívar, and study the formation of nation-states to the south: Argentina and Peru, and their “founding father,” José de San Martín. Again we will read his biography and study the founding constitution of these states. Finally, in the same manner, we will explore the  “founding” of the Dominican Republic by Juan Pablo Duarte. In each case, we will frequently refer back to the Enlightenment philosophy that greatly influenced the ideas of these men. One notable surprise: the influence of women during this period. For each of these “founding fathers,” we will examine the growing body of scholarship on the women in their lives--their roles, their contributions, and their political tendencies (and oftentimes, their astuteness).

IAS A611 Race and Nation in the Americas
Wednesday 7:30-9:10 PM | Professor Justin Williams

This course is an interdisciplinary survey of the legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery/settler colonialism and their roles in forming ideas about race, nation and citizenship across the Americas.  During the course, students will read theoretical, empirical and comparative texts on Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago, and the United States.  By the conclusion of the term, students will have a sense of the socially constructed nature of racial ideas, their historical evolution and diverse manifestations in different nation-building projects.

Spring 2018

IAS A70100  The Labor of Care (MA Capstone Seminar)
Tuesday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Kathlene McDonald

Every year, millions of women leave economically challenged countries in the Americas for care jobs in the United States as nannies, domestic workers, and home health aides. This transfer of labor results in a care deficit in their home countries in order to ease a shortage of care workers in the US.  This capstone seminar will focus on this labor exchange, with an emphasis on home health workers, whose labor is becoming more and more necessary as life expectancy increases in the US and those with chronic illnesses and disabilities are living longer than in previous eras. The labor of home health care work has been at the crux of most major policy debates in the United States as of late, including immigration reform and affordable health care.  It has also been a central issue in labor organizing campaigns across the country.  This seminar brings together narrative inquiry and social science research to provide students opportunities to produce innovative interdisciplinary research projects that draw on multiple research methodologies.  The first part of the class will explore the flow of workers within the Americas and the role of carework in the global economy through readings in history, sociology, anthropology, and public policy.  In the middle part of the semester, students will be given an introduction to oral history methodology and will conduct two oral history interviews with care workers in the NYC area.  Ultimately, students will develop capstone projects that connect these interviews to course readings and themes and which could take the form of a research paper or a written or digital narrative (short story, documentary play scene, autoethnography, podcast, etc.).

IAS A5060 Latinos and Race
Tuesday 7:30-9:10 PM | Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

This course explores constructions of race in the U.S. with a focus on “Latinos.” Seen as perpetual outsiders, those who would be defined by this term are not easily categorized: do they comprise a cultural, religious, racial, ethnic, linguistic, national group? To get at these questions, we begin with the historical and legal construction of whiteness and its “others.” We then explore how Latinos fit into the black-white racial binary—how are they situated and how do they situate themselves within this paradigm? Finally, we turn to emergent forms of racialization, honing in on language and immigration as newly defined sources of difference.

IAS A61160 Black Atlantic Cultures
Thursday 5:30-7:10 PM | Professor Cheryl Sterling

African cultural forms have been preserved and transformed in radically new ways in the Black Atlantic. This course will explore the “roots” and “routes” of African cultural dynamics and their transformation through literature, religious rituals, and musical forms. First we will begin with an exploration of theoretical constructs that foreground ideas of diaspora, creolization, hybridity and the rhizome. We will then use these concepts to explore “Vodou” and the Haitian/Dominican Divide, Rastafari and Reggae in Jamaica, and Brazilian carnival and candomblé. We will conduct a series of critical readings and discussions of texts from different genres such as literature, film, and music, and use these texts to interrogate issues of race and representation in cultural forms.
 

Fall 2017

IAS A5010 Graduate Research Methodologies
Professor Susanna Schaller

IAS A61130 Childhood Poverty in the Americas
Elizabeth Matthews

IAS A 6115 Dreams, Ethics, and Society in the Americas
Craig E. Stephenson

Spring 2017

IAS 5090 Urban Sustainability and Neighborhood Change
Professor Susanna Schaller

IAS 5000 Inventing the Americas
Doctor Marlene Clark

IAS 6011 Populism and Popular Culture in the Americas
Professor Carlos Aguasaco
 

Fall 2016

IAS 50100 Graduate Research Methodology
Justin Williams

IAS 50700 Making Race in the 21st Century
Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

IAS 60400 Religion in the Americas
Professor Martin Woessner

IAS 5040 Crime Narratives of the Americas
Professor Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken

Spring 2016

IAS A70100 Dictatorships in the Americas (MA Capstone Seminar)
Justin Williams

IAS A5060 Latinos and Race
Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

IAS 5090 Special Topic Series: Human Rights
Professor Danielle Zach

IAS 5000 Witches, Masons, Slaves, and Revolutionaries
Professor Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken
 

Fall 2015

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Alessandra Benedicty

IAS A6010 Gender and Race in the Americas
Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

IAS A6080 Gated Cities, Gated Communities, Gated Minds
Professor Susanna Schaller

IAS A61120 Indigenous People and Human Rights
Marcia Esparza, Professor of Sociology, John Jay College

Spring 2015

IAS A5010 Graduate Research Methodology
Karen Gregory, Title V Lecturer in Sociology

IAS A6100 Critical Childhood and Youth Studies Across the Americas 
Wendy Lutrell, Professor or Urban Education, CUNY Graduate Center   

IAS A6111 Race and Nation in the Americas
Justin Williams

IAS A7010 American Revolutions of the 20th Century (MA Capstone Seminar)
Monday 5:30-7:10 PM | Doctor Marlene Clark
 

Fall 2014

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Professor Martin Woessner

IAS A6011 Populism and Popular Culture in the Americas
Professor Carlos Aguasaco

IAS A6100 Microfinance in the Americas
Rosa Franco

Spring 2014

IAS A5010 Graduate Research Methodology
Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

IAS A6020 Comparative Slaveries of the Americas
Justin Williams

IAS A7010 Slavery & Its Historical Legacy in the Film & Fiction of the Americas (MA Capstone Seminar)
Professor Jerry Carlson            
 

Fall 2013

IAS A5000 Inventing the Americas
Doctor Marlene Clark

IAS A6080 Gated Cities, Gated Communities, Gated Minds
Professor Susanna Schaller

IAS A6090 Labor Strategies in the Americas
Ian MacDonald

Spring 2013

IAS A5010 Graduate Research Methodology
Justin Williams 

IAS A5020 Society and Cultures of the Americas from the 19th to 21st Century
Professor Carlos Aguasaco

IAS A6010 Race and Gender in the Americas
Professor Susanna Rosenbaum

IAS A7010 MA Capstone Seminar: Poverty
Alessandra Benedicty
 

Fall 2012

IAS A50300 Geopolitics and Diplomacy Across the Americas
Professor Susanna Schaller

IAS A60400 Religion in the Americas
Professor Martin Woessner

IAS 60600 Musics of the Americas
Antoni Piza