HIS 366 - Slavery and Africa

Explores slavery and slave trades in and out of Africa from the 5th to the 20th centuries, as a way of understanding changing relationships between trade, personhood, and social belonging.  Special attention to ideas of and debates about, race, slave status, and diaspora.

Satisfies a major or minor requirement in History.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement. 

HIS 369 - Urban Africa/Popular Culture

How have African cities been imagined and experienced?  Jointly offered in Africana Studies, Anthropology, and History, this course uses contemporary popular media, ethnographic texts, and historical artifacts to explore intersections of gender, ethnicity, race, and class in 20th c. African cities. We will give particular attention to visual and material culture, including radio, film, photography, and urban transit cultures. Additionally, the course examines how representations of Africa, within the nation-state and transnationally, have shaped both popular culture and academic writing about African cities. Drawing on our training in anthropology and history, we will ask how popular cultural forms can serve as a basis for powerful critiques of scholarly gazes, disciplinary boundaries, and traditional academic forms.

Satisfies a major and minor requirement in History and Anthropology
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies a Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies a cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 372 - Egypt, From Soup to Nuts

Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in International Studies.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Middle East Studies.
Satisfies a requirement in Historical Thought.
Meets the Cultural Diversity graduation requirement.

HIS 375 - Nationalism and Colonialism in the Modern Arab World

Satisfies Historical Thought requirement. 
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.
Satisfies the Middle East Studies interdisciplinary minor.

HIS 377 - Plagues, Panics and Crisis: A History of Capitalism

This course focuses on “crisis” as a systemic or patterned occurrence of the modern world in order to unpack the historical development of globalizing forces from the nineteenth century through to our collective present. We will discover that not only have epidemics and rapid economic integration been intertwined the world over, but that the language of disease - mania and contagion - is closely woven into our frameworks for understanding financial crisis, and that financial crises have marked time in capitalism with notable regularity. While finance often appears to be operating at an abstract level beyond the grasp of our own lived experience, financial crises lay bare the socio-cultural and economic forces that culminate in that moment - they act as windows into the deep structures of history.

A key theme running through the way we follow this connected human history will be to observe the ways in which established grand narratives privilege or center European/Western experiences even if they’re talking about the connections between far flung corners of the globe. One of our main tasks will be to correct this sometimes overt, and very often implicit, bias even as we track how crises have historically shaped and been shaped by the dynamics of globalization, from South Asia in the 1840s to Egypt in the 1890s, to the rise of American power, East Asia in the 1990s and our present interrelated crises of COVID-19 and global supply chains.

Satisfies History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Historical Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.

HIS 377 - Urban India

India has the second largest urban system in the world, with over a third of its population residing in cities. By 2025, it is expected that half of India’s population will be urbane. Urbanization has created manifold problems related to transportation, poverty, unemployment, unauthorized housing colonies, slums, and squatter settlements. Given that India has been dealing with hyper-modernization of its cities and fast-paced development, what might a study of cities in India be able to teach those who live in cities of the Global North? As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, the types of of metropolitan and urban centers we inhabit have also transformed dramatically-both in terms of form, as well as the reasons for their being. People once moved to cities in search of work and other opportunities, but in the 21^st century urbanization is usually associated with informal occupations and precarious modes of life in, such as slums.  This new way of living and surviving in cities across the world can be explained in a number of ways: assuming the decline of the industrial economy, the offshoring of work, the creation of network cities, and so-called “global cities.” This course addresses some of the promises and dilemmas of these alternative forms of life-on the edge of life and on the edge of profit and loss-through a number of cases, by focusing specifically on Indian cities.

This course will only be offered as part of the Semester in India Program. 

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies the History requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 378 - Gender & Sexuality South Asia

This course will investigate constructions of gender relations as power relations, as well as perceptions of sexuality in South Asia as historical phenomena from the seventeenth century to the present. Subjects include: cultural conceptions of family; notions of same-sex desire; law, tradition, and reform; the making of gender relations across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they were informed by colonialism and nationalism.

Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies a requirement in the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in South Asian Studies.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in International Studies.
Satisfies an Historical Thought requirement.
Meets the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 379 - Islam in South Asia

This course will explore the long and complicated history of Islam in South Asia, from the arrival of the Arabs in the eighth century to the emergence of Pakistan and Bangladesh in the twentieth, through both lectures and visits to sites of historical and artistic importance.

Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in South Asian Studies.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Historical Thought requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies history requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 380 - Pilgrims, Poppies, Pirates: Indian Ocean World

The wealth that crossed the Indian Ocean surpassed that of any other region.  This course explores multifaceted connections among the Indian Ocean cultures of India, China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and East Africa, from medieval to modern times.  It also examines interactions between those Indian Ocean cultures and European maritime powers.

Satisfies a South Asian Studies interdisciplinary minor requirement
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 381 - Asian Diasporas to Latin America, 16th Century to the Present

The history of Asians in the Americas dates to the 16th century in Central Mexico. Though Asian American history is most often bound to U.S. national borders, this course takes an expansive and transnational approach by examining the formation of Asian communities in Latin America from the 16th to 21st centuries. These are histories of migration coinciding with indigenous struggles for survival, as well as the transatlantic slave trade and its afterlives. In this course, we will privilege scholarly approaches that foreground migratory histories as told from migrants themselves. By examining the long chronology of diasporic Asian mobility to places like Mexico, Cuba, Peru, and Brazil, we will cover questions central to migratory experiences like assimilation, transculturation, and racial formation.

Satisfies Latin American Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement.

HIS 382 - Science and the Body II: Public Health in East Asia

This course employs an interdisciplinary approach by drawing upon and applying history, anthropology, gender studies, and philosophy to the study of science and medicine.  Designed for students interested in a) the history, philosophy, and anthropology of science, technology, and medicine, b) East Asian studies, and c) history of public health, this class offers students opportunities to analyze and critically assess the politics of the body in East Asia, 1800-present.

Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Medical Humanities.
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 383 - Pre-Modern Japan

Japanese history from ancient times to 1868. Topics include the origins of Japanese civilization, state and society, economy, law, connections to the outside world, daily life and customs, family, sexuality, warfare and the samurai, arts, literature, and religion. 

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies History requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 384 - Shanghai

This course covers the history of the city of Shanghai from the nineteenth century until the present day. Readings and assignments focus on Shanghai’s transformation from a sleepy fishing village into an international treaty port in the nineteenth century, the development of the city’s innovative fashion, music, and media industries in the early twentieth century, the Communist Party’s vilification of the city’s capitalist culture, and its post-Mao reemergence as a vibrant, cosmopolitan, and truly global city. Key themes of the course include imperialism, international trade, war, communism, fashion, literature, film, and gender and sexuality.

Counts as an elective in the History major and minor.
Counts as an elective in the East Asian Studies major and minor.
Counts as an elective in the Chinese Studies minor.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

HIS 385 - History of Imperial China, 900-1800

Survey of late imperial Chinese history with topics covering the environment, daily life, family, kinship, sex, government, law, military, economy, science, medicine, print culture, and travel.

Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 386 - History of Modern China

This course explores the major political, social, economic, religious, and cultural developments in China from the late imperial period until the present day. Course readings, films, and assignments focus on how Chinese intellectuals, women’s rights activists, farmers, artists, and environmentalists defined what it meant to be “modern,” and how their understandings of “modernity” shifted over time

Counts as an elective in the History major and minor.
Counts as an elective in the East Asian Studies major and minor.
Counts as an elective in the Chinese Studies minor.
Satisfies an Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies a Cultural Diversity requirement.

HIS 387 - Memory and Identity in the People’s Republic of China

This course explores how the government of the People’s Republic of China defines and manages ethnic and religious diversity within China, and how in turn, various ethno-religious groups in China negotiate their own sometimes fraught positions. How have local understandings of identity in China been influenced by state-driven narratives about China’s collective past? How is historical memory in China incarnated in physically tangible and symbolically meaningful places, such as museums and memorials? This course draws on historical and anthropological approaches to identity, ethnicity, language, modernity, religion, nationalism, and memory to explore these questions in detail. 

Satisfies a requirement in the History major.
Satisfies a requirement in the East Asian Studies major.
Satisfies a requirement in the Chinese Studies minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the East Asian Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the International Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies an Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 388 - War and Memory in East Asia, 1592-1598

This course examines the impact of the First Great East Asian War, involving Korea, China, and Japan. Current tensions in East Asia continue to be understood through the memorial lens of this conflict. Some issues discussed are:  war and memory, dead bodies, martyrdom, and subjecthood. 

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Historical Thought requirement.
Students entering before 2012: satisfies History requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 389 - Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Japan

This course explores gender dynamics and the lives of women in Japan from the nineteenth century to the present day. It introduces students to the gendered dimensions of Confucianism, marriage, paid employment and unpaid work, parenting, war, political activism, structural power, and popular culture in Japan. Other topics include the political, social, and economic challenges that Japanese women and the Japanese LGBTQ community continue to face.

Satisfies a requirement for the History, East Asian Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies majors.
Satisfies a requirement for the Gender and Sexuality Studies minor.
Satisfies a requirement for the East Asian Studies and International Studies interdisciplinary minors.
Satisfies an Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement. 

HIS 390 - Davidson Summer Program at Cambridge University

Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Historical Thought requirement. 
Students entering before 2012: satisfies History requirement.

HIS 391 - Writing Historical Fiction

This course teaches students about history by having them research and write original works of historical fiction.  The course approaches historical fiction with an emphasis on the “historical.”  A paper prepared in this course might be a lousy work of fiction but still a great paper if the historical research and analysis are strong.  But no fictional glitter, however sparkling, can redeem a paper marred by weak historical research and analysis.

Satisfies a major requirement in History

Satisfies Historical Thought requirement

HIS 392 - Histories of Science, Knowledge, and Skill

A study of how humans have known, verified, and communicated about natural phenomena, how they have tested their observations through science, applied technical knowledge, and skill, and how they have institutionalized scientific knowledge and engineered their own impacts on the natural world.  Satisfies the History requirement through class of 2015.  Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement for class of 2016 and after.  Environmental Studies major.

HIS 393 - Spanish History and Historical Memory

Spain’s history is long, rich, and very much alive.  The meanings of that history are multiple, contested, and politically divisive.  This course will explore both Spanish history and Spanish historical memory.  After doing some brief introductory readings about the concept of historical memory, students will proceed through a chronological survey of Spanish history.  Each unit will include an excursion to a relevant Spanish historical site.  Students will prepare for each visit by studying the site’s history.  Afterwards, students will reflect about the ways in which the site portrayed the past.  Throughout the semester, the course will chew on the following observation from Spanish writer Reyes Mate: “Although memory sharpens the sense of justice, the process of remembering is a long haul, for the painful past that we slowly uncover together surely holds many surprises.”  Students in this course should have taken three semesters of college-level Spanish or the equivalent.

Satisfies History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement.

HIS 395 - IS: Historic Documentary Film

HIS 396 - Independent Study

HIS 414 - Mapping Medieval Europe

Students in this research seminar will investigate the medieval past by reading, mapping, and writing about medieval primary sources. Students will acquire basic coding skills, build geo-databases, and engage in a collective project of digital mapping of a major medieval source or collection of sources.

Satisfies History major requirement.
Satisfies Digital Studies minor requirement.

HIS 420 - The English Civil War

HIS 422 - Gender in Early Modern Europe (C. 15th-18th Centuries)

HIS 424 - The Global French Revolution

This seminar explores the history and historiography of the French Revolution of 1789 as a global event. The Revolution released potent new ideals of political participation and social mobility, and unleashed decades of warfare in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. It marked a decisive and violent rupture between the Old and the Modern, created “sister republics” across Europe, and touched off the revolutions of free and enslaved people of color in the Caribbean, especially in the Haitian Revolution. We consider historical debates about the origins of the Revolution, and investigate the symbols and rituals of revolutionary culture. What were the consequences of the revolutionary moment for groups not included in triumphal rhetoric of liberty, equality and fraternity (women, workers, enslaved and free black people)? And how has the Revolution been remembered and commemorated around the world in the two centuries since the Bastille fell?

HIS 426 - Victorian People

Society and culture of Victorian Britain through the lens of some of its more captivating personalities and their writings. Possible figures include: Charles Darwin, George Eliot, William Gladstone, William Morris, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

HIS 427 - European Consumer Culture: 1750 to the Present

This seminar explores the history of consumer culture in Europe from the 18th century through the 1990s. From the luxury consumption of the Old Regime aristocracy to the electric-lit department stores of the 19th-century metropolis, an examination of European consumer culture allows us to trace momentous economic, social, and political transformations of the modern era through tourism, revolutionary fashion, imperialism, and socialist critiques. In the 20th century, we assess the interrelated markets and pop cultures of Europe and the U.S. with postwar “Americanization”- from rock & roll to McDonald’s.

HIS 433 - The Holocaust and Representation (=GER 433)

History and historiography of the origins and execution of the Nazi genocide during World War II, with a focus on representations of the Holocaust and cultural memory practices in popular and public history, in the visual and performing arts and in literature, and especially in memorial structures and spaces.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
Permission of instructor required.

HIS 439 - Topics in Modern European History

Topics in Modern European History.

HIS 440 - Slavery in the Americas

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).

HIS 441 - Natives and Newcomers in Early America

HIS 444 - History of Sexuality in the United States

In this course, students will study changing constructions and expressions of sexuality in what is now the United States. Considering the evolving spectrum of behaviors and identities that society has defined as normal and deviant, we will challenge notions of human reproduction and desire as timeless, unchanging, and universal. By embedding our analysis of sexuality with that of class, race, gender, age, ability, and other identities, we will examine how sexual experience and expression has varied, defied, reinforced, repressed, and liberated. Informed by the critical consideration of theory and comprehensive reading in the secondary literature, we will engage in primary source analysis of materials created by and about those who lived in our community in the past. Students will share their research via a web-based project we will build together.

Satisfies History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Justice, Equality and Community requirement.

HIS 446 - Presidents and First Ladies

HIS 449 - Age of Revolution: The United States in the 1960s

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).

HIS 451 - African American Cultural History

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: North America).
Satisfies a requirement in the Communication Studies major and minor.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

HIS 454 - Filming Southern History

Students in HIS 454 will work collaboratively to research, write, and produce a documentary film about some aspect of the U.S. South’s history, guided by an instructional team that includes both the course professor and two aspiring filmmakers from the Documentary Film Program at Wake Forest University.

Satisfies a requirement in the History major and minor.
Counts as an elective for the Film and Media Studies interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

 

HIS 455 - Law and Society in American History

HIS 459 - Topics in American History

This course challenges popular views of rape as existing outside of history. Instead of a universal human expression, both the act and idea of rape have histories situated in specific contexts. We will focus on the region that is now the United States from prior to European colonization through the twenty-first century. In doing so, we will center the experiences of women and girls, who have in the past and who now continue to experience sexual violence at higher rates than men and boys, but our study is neither exclusive nor restrictive. Recognizing the limitations of current scholarship, we will consider rape comprehensively with attention to gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, nationality, and sexual orientation. We will distinguish among acts of rape, narratives about rape told in specific moments, and the evolution of broader cultural understandings of rape’s meanings and purposes. We will balance our discussions of violence with those of resistance, and in centering survivors and their resilience, we will rewrite/re(right) narratives that have perpetuated victimization and train ourselves to engage the rape discourses that exist today.

Satisfies Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor requirement

Prerequisites & Notes
Instructor permission required.

HIS 462 - Public Health and Society in Latin America

This course introduces students to major topics in public health history in Latin America including epidemic disease, eugenics, reproductive and maternal health, indigenous medicine, and mental illness. Emphasis on the complex relationship between Latin American society, medicine, and health policies/practices in 20th- century Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Peru.  Seminar-style course focuses on reading, discussion, research paper.

Counts as an upper-level elective in the History major and minor.
Counts as an upper-level elective in the Latin American Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Public Health interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 464 - Religion and Social Change in Latin America

Exploration of the nexus between religion and social upheaval through topics including conquest, rebellion, liberation theology, and religious tradition new to the region, such as Evangelicalism.

Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 465 - Colonialism and Imagination in Early Latin America

The rise and fall of colonial power in Latin America with a focus on the emergence of colonial Latin America as a historical unit.  Topics include justification of colonial rule, civilization and barbarism, differences between the Old and New Worlds, and American Identity.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major and minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 466 - Migrations and Immigration in Latin America

Study of the relationship between internal migrations and outward immigration in Latin America.  Students will acquire in-depth information about migration/immigration in the early colonial period, in the neo-imperial nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major and minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 467 - Family and Families in African History

Studies how Africans have defined and achieved family and family connections along with ways that states have attempted to use family–as metaphor, ideal, and unit of political and social organization-to organize African life from the 17^th century to the present. 

Satisfies a major or minor requirement in History.
Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Africa).
Satisfies a major and a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies a Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies a cultural diversity requirement.

HIS 469 - Work, Gender, and Political Imagination in Africa

Investigates how gender and labor have been used to construct and contest the political imaginaries of individuals, communities, and states in 19th and 20th c Africa.

Satisfies a major requirement in History.
Satisfies a major and minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Global Literary Theory.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

HIS 470 - Global War on Terror: A History

The US war in Afghanistan is now in its 17th year, the longest foreign war in American history. The Global War on Terror, however, has yet to be historicized. For the first time, this exploratory seminar does just that. It examines the history of the global war on terror by considering 9/11 and the era it inaugurated, while also consciously understanding it in relation to the forces of modern imperalism in the twentieth century. The seminar is structured as a “people’s history” of the global war on terror. It takes seriously the impact of global warfare from the standpoint of its victims. Topics include but are not limited to: definitions of terror and terrorism; European and Anglo-American histories of orientalism and Islamophobia; torture and torture legislation; drones, proxy wars, and war crimes; legislation and state led-initiatives of disapperances and entrapment; old and new formations of the national security state; how new technologies of violence and surveillance have reshaped domestic American policies; cold war politics in relation to contemporary conflagrations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; military occupations in relation to Palestine and Kashmir; refugees and displacement; suicide bombing; contemporary travel bans; and gender and feminist politics in relation to the war on terror. This seminar will involve weekly readings and discussion, films, documentaries, and one final paper.

Satisfies a requirement in the History major and minor.
 

HIS 474 - Bollywood, Business, and India

The course will track the development of the Indian film industry, specifically Bollywood, as a business from the 1930s through the 1990s. It will examine the aesthetics of Bollywood films alongside and as a history of the economic development of the postcolonial nation. We examine the rise of the “new India” and Indian global diasporas and economic liberalization from 1991 onwards. The course charts the transitions from the imagination of the Indian nation as a cosmopolitan, secular hold-all to Hindu nationalism whilst also balancing its new role in a globalized world..

Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.
Satisfies a requirement of the Film and Media Studies Interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies South Asian Studies minor requirement.

HIS 477 - War & Post-War Memory in Asia

Why did a war that was fought in the name of a “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” result in millions of deaths in Asia and leave Japan’s major cities in ruins? Today, nearly eighty years after the end of the war, why do historical interpretations of the Asia Pacific War continue to be so politically charged in East Asia? To explore these questions, this seminar will analyze Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people’s experiences of wartime Japan. We will also explore how individuals and diverse groups in East Asia have narrated these experiences and how historical memory continues to be put to political use today. The course will start with the colonization of Korea in 1910 and deal with the entirety of the wartime experience to 1945. Next, the course will focus on how memories of the war shaped domestic politics, international relations, and national identity in Japan, China, and Korea in the post-war period.

The “Pacific War,” the “Fourteen Year War,” “World War II,” the “Asia-Pacific War,” and the “Greater East Asian War” all refer to the same general time period and series of events, but each of these names has very different political meanings. The various terms used to describe the period during which Japan was at war demonstrate how naming and memory work together. In this seminar, we will consider how imperialism and colonialism of both the Euro-American and Japanese varieties were central to the war’s outbreak, conduct, and resolution. We will also explore various local experiences - rather than simply national experiences and memories - of the war. These will include the experiences and memories of marginalized groups in Japan and its colonies, “comfort women,” victims of war atrocities, Japanese North Americans, and Pacific Islanders. In addition to learning about key issues in the study of the Second World War in the Asia Pacific region, students in this course will also come to critically analyze and reconsider mainstream views of the war.

Satisfies History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies East Asian Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement.

HIS 480 - Senior Research Seminar

Capstone course for history majors.  Students define, research, and write a major research paper on a topic of their choice.  Required of senior majors not enrolled in History 488/489.

HIS 488 - Kelley Honors Seminar: Research and Thesis

HIS 489 - Kelley Honors Seminar: Research and Thesis

HUM 103 - Connections and Conflict in the Humanities I

Bory, Boyer, Green, Ewington, Pyle, Robb, Sample, Wills

A team-taught interdisciplinary course that engages critically key texts and artifacts from both the Western tradition and beyond, with topics that fall under the broad theme of the body, from intellectual, spiritual, and artistic traditions from around the globe.  Attention to historical contexts, critical theoretical approaches, and comparative synthesis.  Introduces habits of humanistic learning as well as basic skills needed to understand a variety of humanistic discourses. including written works, musical compositions, paintings and sculptures, live performances, architecture, and film and digital media. The course meets extra sessions and requires extra work beyond the course meetings. Students take HUM 103 in the fall and HUM 104 in the spring and receive a total of three credits for those two semesters.

2 credits
 

Prerequisites & Notes
The course has a required preorientation.

Visit the Sapere Aude preorientation webpage for more information.

HUM 104 - Connections & Conflicts in the Humanities II

Boyer, Wills, Green, Ewington, Pyle, Sample, Bory

A team-taught interdisciplinary course that engages critically key texts and artifacts from both the Western tradition and beyond, with topics that fall under the broad theme of the body, from intellectual, spiritual, and artistic traditions from around the globe.  Attention to historical contexts, critical theoretical approaches, and comparative synthesis.  Introduces habits of humanistic learning as well as basic skills needed to understand a variety of humanistic discourses. including written works, musical compositions, paintings and sculptures, live performances, architecture, and film and digital media. The course meets extra sessions and requires extra work beyond the course meetings. Students take HUM 103 in the fall and HUM 104 in the spring and receive a total of three credits for those two semesters.

1 credit

Fulfills the WRI requirement, Historical Thought requirement, and Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
Prerequisite: HUM 103

HUM 195 - Advanced Studies in Humanities

During March each year students apply to take part in this course and thus the role of Humanities Fellow for the following year (either fall or spring semester). Those selected must take this required course for students serving as Humanities Fellows. This course meets with HUM 103-104 as well as during the open course period not used by HUM 103-104. In 2019-20, HUM 103-104 meets TR9:40-10:55 + R3:05-4:20. Thus HUM 195-196 meets those three 75-minute class sessions as well as T3:05-4:20. The seminar follows the syllabus for HUM 103-104, with weekly written assignments due every Sunday on the teaching team blog (for faculty, librarians and archivists integrated into the course, and fellows), to be discussed on Tuesday. Materials include all the HUM 103-104 materials as well as some additional readings and viewings. See the HUM 103-104 syllabus for readings, timeline of topics, etc. Final essay due at the end of exam period.

HUM 195 parallels material in HUM 103 (Fall); HUM 196 parallels material in HUM 104 (Spring).

Prerequisites & Notes
Instructor permission required.

HUM 196 - Advanced Studies in Humanities II

P. Boyer

During March each year students apply to take part in this course and thus the role of Humanities Fellow for the following year (either fall or spring semester). Those selected must take this required course for students serving as Humanities Fellows. This course meets with HUM 103-104 as well as during the open course period not used by HUM 103-104. In 2019-20, HUM 103-104 meets TR9:40-10:55 + R3:05-4:20. Thus HUM 195-196 meets those three 75-minute class sessions as well as T3:05-4:20. The seminar follows the syllabus for HUM 103-104, with weekly written assignments due every Sunday on the teaching team blog (for faculty, librarians and archivists integrated into the course, and fellows), to be discussed on Tuesday. Materials include all the HUM 103-104 materials as well as some additional readings and viewings. See the HUM 103-104 syllabus for readings, timeline of topics, etc. Final essay due at the end of exam period.

HUM 195 parallels material in HUM 103 (Fall); HUM 196 parallels material in HUM 104 (Spring).

HUM 395 - Independent Study

Humanities: Independent Study

Prerequisites & Notes
(Fall)

HUM 396 - Independent Study

Humanities: Independent Study

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring)

LAT 101 - Elementary Latin I

This course introduces you to classical Latin. You will establish a foundation in Latin vocabulary and grammar and develop skills in reading, writing, and speaking Latin. We will also explore the history and culture of the ancient Romans through our reading of adapted excerpts of Latin texts. Each week, in addition to three full-class sessions, you will participate in two smaller drill sessions led by Apprentice Teachers.

Prof. Truetzel will be on campus, and she welcomes the opportunity to meet outside of class - both in-person and digitally - throughout the semester.

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered annually, Fall only.)

LAT 102 - Introductory Latin II

This course builds upon the foundation in Latin established in LAT 101. You will continue to develop your skills in reading, writing, and speaking increasingly complex Latin. By the end of the term, you will have been introduced to all major grammatical constructions and will be prepared to read unadapted excerpts of Latin texts. Each week, in addition to three full-class sessions, you will participate in two smaller drill sessions led by Apprentice Teachers.

Prof. Truetzel will be on campus, and she welcomes the opportunity to meet outside of class - both in-person and digitally - throughout the semester.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Offered annually, Spring only.)

LAT 101 or Placement Test

LAT 201 - Intermediate Latin

This course fulfills the college’s language requirement and is your gateway to advanced Latin at Davidson. Together, we’ll review the language’s grammar, read and discuss a variety of excerpts in prose and poetry, and explore concepts such as semantics, pronunciation, metrics and translation.

Fulfills the foreign language requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
LAT 102 or placement test. (Offered annually, Fall only.)

LAT 221 - Roman Comedy

Forced to immigrate to Rome from Carthage as an enslaved person and later freed, the playwright Publius Terentius Afer, also known as Terence, was a popular Roman author whose six comedies continue to be read to this day. In particular, his comic play Eunuchus (“The Eunuch”) was an immediate success upon its debut in 161 BCE, prompting an encore performance and earning Terence more money than any of his other comedies.

In this course, we will read Eunuchus in its entirety, examining not only Terence’s lively and conversational Latin, but also his engagement with the complex dynamics of Roman daily life, including topics such as gender, slavery, prostitution, and sexual assault. By placing Eunuchus in conversation with comedies by Terence, Plautus, and Menander (to be read in translation), we will explore the ways in which Terence incorporates the established themes of New Comedy, and the ways in which his Eunuchus is unique for its genre. Finally, we will consider Terence’s influence on subsequent writers and thinkers, including Shakespeare, Phillis Wheatley, Thornton Wilder, and Maya Angelou.

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major.
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test. Students who have already taken a LAT course beyond 201 should enroll in this course as LAT 321.

Not offered in 2023-2024

LAT 222 - Elegy: Catullus to Ovid

Under the reign of Rome’s first emperor, a new genre of erotic poetry called elegy overturned traditional Roman values with its descriptions of affairs between elite men and lower class women. This genre flourished for just a few decades before its final practitioner, Ovid, was exiled for “a poem and a mistake.” In this class, students will read selections of Latin love elegy from its roots in Catullus to its end in Ovid, explore the genre’s challenges to traditional Roman systems of gender and status, and find out how a poem can get you kicked out of Rome.
 

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test. Students who have already taken a 200-level course beyond Latin 201 should enroll in LAT 322

LAT 244 - Roman Historians: Livy

Titus Livius (59 BCE - 17 CE) wrote a 142-volume history of the city of Rome from its founding down to his own day. This monumental opus became the standard account of the history of the Roman republic, and it remains one of the best historical sources for this period. But Livy’s work is also a complex piece of literature in its own right, as he selected, arranged, and presented the historical material to create his own overarching story of the Roman past and its relationship to the Roman present. 

In this course, we will read selections from the extant portions of Livy’s work, ranging from the expulsion of Rome’s kings, to the war against Hannibal, to the infamous Bacchanalian conspiracy. In doing so, we will explore topics such as Livy’s conception of history, narrative structure, literary style, characterization, speeches, morality, monumentality, religion, and women. We will also consider where Livy himself stands in history, by looking back at selections of his sources (for example, Cato the Elder, Polybius, inscriptions) and by eamining the impact on Livy’s work of the transition from republic to empire that occurred during his own lifetime.

Prof. Truetzel will be on campus, and she welcomes the opportunity to meet outside of class - both in-person and digitally - throughout the semester.

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major.
Counts towards the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
LAT 201 or placement test. Students who have taken a LAT course beyond 201 should enroll in this course as LAT 334. (Fall)

Not offered in 2023-2024

LAT 277 - Augustine’s Confessiones

This course treats the Confessiones of St. Augustine (354 - 430 CE), an indigenous African man from the ancient Roman province of Numidia (modern Algeria). A learned master of the Latin language, he produces in his Confessiones a rich literary work at once philosophical, informed by his rigorous study of Greek thought, and deeply personal, an intimate account of, among other things, his struggles - in all their ugliness and beauty - with morality, the liberal arts, his mother, and God.
 

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test. Students who have already taken a 200-level course beyond Latin 201 should enroll in LAT 377.

LAT 321 - Roman Comedy

Forced to immigrate to Rome from Carthage as an enslaved person and later freed, the playwright Publius Terentius Afer, also known as Terence, was a popular Roman author whose six comedies continue to be read to this day. In particular, his comic play Eunuchus (“The Eunuch”) was an immediate success upon its debut in 161 BCE, prompting an encore performance and earning Terence more money than any of his other comedies.

In this course, we will read Eunuchus in its entirety, examining not only Terence’s lively and conversational Latin, but also his engagement with the complex dynamics of Roman daily life, including topics such as gender, slavery, prostitution, and sexual assault. By placing Eunuchus in conversation with comedies by Terence, Plautus, and Menander (to be read in translation), we will explore the ways in which Terence incorporates the established themes of New Comedy, and the ways in which his Eunuchus is unique for its genre. Finally, we will consider Terence’s influence on subsequent writers and thinkers, including Shakespeare, Phillis Wheatley, Thornton Wilder, and Maya Angelou.

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement.
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major.
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory.

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test.

Not offered in 2023-2024

LAT 322 - Elegy: Catullus to Ovid

Under the reign of Rome’s first emperor, a new genre of erotic poetry called elegy overturned traditional Roman values with its descriptions of affairs between elite men and lower class women. This genre flourished for just a few decades before its final practitioner, Ovid, was exiled for “a poem and a mistake.” In this class, students will read selections of Latin love elegy from its roots in Catullus to its end in Ovid, explore the genre’s challenges to traditional Roman systems of gender and status, and find out how a poem can get you kicked out of Rome.
 

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test. Students who have already taken a 200-level course beyond Latin 201 should enroll in LAT 322.

LAT 344 - Roman Historians

Titus Livius (59 BCE - 17 CE) wrote a 142-volume history of the city of Rome from its founding down to his own day. This monumental opus became the standard account of the history of the Roman republic, and it remains one of the best historical sources for this period. But Livy’s work is also a complex piece of literature in its own right, as he selected, arranged, and presented the historical material to create his own overarching story of the Roman past and its relationship to the Roman present. 

In this course, we will read selections from the extant portions of Livy’s work, ranging from the expulsion of Rome’s kings, to the war against Hannibal, to the infamous Bacchanalian conspiracy. In doing so, we will explore topics such as Livy’s conception of history, narrative structure, literary style, characterization, speeches, morality, monumentality, religion, and women. We will also consider where Livy himself stands in history, by looking back at selections of his sources (for example, Cato the Elder, Polybius, inscriptions) and by eamining the impact on Livy’s work of the transition from republic to empire that occurred during his own lifetime.

Prof. Truetzel will be on campus, and she welcomes the opportunity to meet outside of class - both in-person and digitally - throughout the semester.

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major.
Counts towards the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
LAT 201 or placement test. (Fall)

Not offered in 2023-2024
 

LAT 377 - Augustine’s Confessiones

This course treats the Confessiones of St. Augustine (354 - 430 CE), an indigenous African man from the ancient Roman province of Numidia (modern Algeria). A learned master of the Latin language, he produces in his Confessiones a rich literary work at once philosophical, informed by his rigorous study of Greek thought, and deeply personal, an intimate account of, among other things, his struggles - in all their ugliness and beauty - with morality, the liberal arts, his mother, and God.
 

Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric distribution requirement
Counts towards the Classical Languages and Literature major and as an elective for the Classical Studies major
Counts towards the Latin minor and the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory
 

Prerequisites & Notes
Latin 201 or placement test. Students who have not yet taken a 200-level course beyond Latin 201 should enroll in LAT 277.

LAT 399 - Independent Study in Latin

LAT 499 - Senior Thesis

LAS 101 - Introduction to Latin American Studies

LAS 101 is an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of Latin America.  The class draws on expertise of Latin American studies experts from across the faulty.  Important areas of study include theory, cultural production, history, and contemporary politics and society. 

Satisifies Cultural Diversity requirement.

The course is a requirement for the Latin American Studies major and minor.
 

Prerequisites & Notes
(Spring)

LAS 120 - Afro-Latin America (= AFR 120)

From Mexico to Brazil and beyond, Africans and people of African descent have fought in wars of independence, forged mixed race national identities, and contributed politically and culturally to the making of the Americas.  Even though Latin America imported ten times as many slaves as the United States, only recently have scholars begun to highlight the role blacks and other people of African descent played in Latin American history.  This course will explore the experiences of Afro-Latin Americans from slavery to the present, with a particular focus on Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.  In doing so, the course seeks to answer questions such as: What does it mean to be black in Latin America? Why has racism persisted in Latin America despite political revolutions claiming to eliminate discrimination? What are the links between blacks in Latin America and the United States? How have differing conceptions of “race” and “nation” caused the rise and decline of transnational black alliances between U.S. blacks and Afro-Latin Americans?  All course readings will be in English and will include memoirs, films, and first-hand historical documents in additional to scholarly books and articles.  

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major or minor.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

LAS 220 - Politics and Economics of Brazil (= POL 344)

Treatment of political and economic change in modern Brazil.  Focus on inequality, violence, environmental protection, and US-Brazil relations.  Course includes historical background from 1946 forward.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement
Meets the Cultural Diversity requirement

LAS 221 - Afro-Brazilian Culture and History

Brazil has the largest population of people of African descent outside of Africa. This course will employ an interdisciplinary approach to understand the historical and sociocultural experiences of people of the African diaspora in Brazil. Once heralded internationally as a “racial democracy” or racial paradise due to centuries of racial mixture and national narratives of mestiçagem, Brazil has been the subject of an ongoing critical re-evaluation that has revealed quite a disparity between the national ideal and the social reality. In this course, we will critically engage with these paradoxical discourses and realities, as well as with the histories, ideas, and movements that address and expand our notions of politics, pleasure, and autonomy. This course addresses these questions by focusing on a wide range of themes including social movements, popular music, religion, the arts, and culinary traditions. We will collaboratively read, view, and listen to a variety of sources and literature in order to analyze and write about blackness, Afro-Brazilian cultural expression, and the everyday lives of Black people in Brazil.

Satisfies Africana Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Latin American Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

LAS 235 - The 1959 Cuban Revolution (= AFR 235, =HIS 362)

This course explores the historical underpinnings of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, U.S.-Cuban relations, and how Cubans have experienced the changes the island has undergone in the past 100 years. Particular attention is given to people of African descent who make up over a one-third of the island’s population. This Cuban narrative illuminates a variety of themes including the spread of U.S. imperialism, Cuba’s fight for sovereignty, and race relations in the Americas.  

Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies (Geographic Region: Latin American/Caribbean).
Satisfies a major or minor requirement in History.
Satisfies a major or minor requirement in Latin American Studies.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

LAS 240 - Introduction to Latinx Studies

An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Latinx studies based on ethnographic texts by anthropologists and sociologists. It examines how Latinx people in the United States are criminalized and constructed as threatening to the nation, as well as how they have constructed meaningful lives in relation to structural inequalities. Particular attention given to issues of language, identity, migration, and gender and sexuality.

Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Anthropology major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Gender and Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community graduation requirement.

LAS 241 - Latin American Social Movements

Throughout Latin America, social movements extend democratic participation far beyond the ballot box and transform political possibilities for those who had previously been excluded from power. In this course, we will examine how social movements convince national populations of their legitimacy, how they negotiate with and relate to national governments, and how they challenge the legitimacy of elected and unelected leaders.

Satisfies a major requirement in Latin American Studies.

Satisfies a minor requirement in Latin American Studies.

Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.

Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

LAS 243 - Sex, Drugs, & Money on the Mexico/US Border

Ethnographic approach to understanding the social effects of several profit-generating industries in Mexican border cities: drug trafficking, sex work, and the maquiladora industry.  Emphasis on Mexico’s relationship to the United States and how the implementation of neoliberal economic policies have profoundly circumscribed the way that people in Mexico earn a living and fulfill gendered kinship obligations.

Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Anthropology major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Gender & Sexuality Studies major and minor.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Fulfills the Justice, Equality, and Community Requirement.

 

LAS 245 - Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

Race and ethnicity are among the principal concepts through which difference is explained and enacted throughout Latin America. Though they have no grounding in biological sciences, these socially constructed realities play an outsized role in how we envision national, regional, and temporal spaces. In Latin America these discourses often frame race in terms of blending (harmoniously or not) of African, Indigenous, and European peoples, and the construction of a new racial identity. This course will explore constructions of race and ethnicity in Latin America through a comparative approach, juxtaposing distinct constructions from particular contexts within Latin America to each other and examining their relationship to global discourses about race, ethnicity, and difference.

Satisfies Latin American Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

LAS 273 - Art, Activism, and Environment

In this course students will explore environmental themes in American visual culture. Taking the art related to the environmental justice movement as a point of departure, students will be exposed to a broad range of visual material that offers insight into how humans have advocated for a wide range of political opinions through their painting, sculpture, memorials, historical markers, roadside and yard installations, printmaking, murals, and the natural environment. Students will gain a strong sense of how this visual material not only has been used as important tools in inspiring political action but also how these materials also serve as important “texts” in documenting and preserving less well-known environmental perspectives.  

Satisfies the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and interdisciplinary minor.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

LAS 280 - Special Topics in Latin American Studies

Fall 2021

Latin American Nations and Nationalisms 
Instructor: Sturtevant

This course will address political projects that strive to construct national identities and legitimize government authority throughout Latin America in the present day. We will explore how the privileges and obligations associated with citizenship within a national community are unequally distributed; how elite groups and marginalized communities deploy conceptions of national identity to achieve their political goals; and how racial and ethnic diversity transform and is transformed by these national identity projects. At the heart of this exploration is the difficult relationship between a people and a political authority: the “untenable hyphen” between nation and state.

Satisfies Social-Scientific Thought requirement
Satisfies Cultural Diversity requirement

LAS 284 - Latinx and Environment (=ENV 284)

In this course, students will examine a broad range of Latinx environmental experiences across time and place in the United States.  Taking the environment as a key category of analysis, students will explore the ways that the natural and built environments shape, and are shaped by, Latinx culture.  Looking to important rural, urban, suburban, and wilderness sites across the United States, students will construct a nuanced “picture” of how Latinx environments have changes over time.  With our methodology placed squarely in historical and visual analysis, we will frequently engage interdisciplinary approaches to enhance our understanding of key issues including: labor, migration, public health, community and neighborhood building, transportation networks, natural resource development, education, and tourism.  Students will be exposed to a wide range of human expressions of place, such as art, literature, and activism, to gain a better understanding of how Latinxs have represented their environmental experiences.

Satisfies the Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the Latin American Studies major.
Fulfills the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.

LAS 300 - Major Thinkers in Africana Studies: Afro-Cuban Feminisms (=AFR 300)

Black and mulata women have participated in constructing Cubanidad (Cuban nationalism) since the beginning of the Cuban republic in 1902. However, the largely male-dominated national narrative that has made Che Guevara’s “New Man” famous since 1959 frequently overshadows their interventions. Despite this public silence, Afro-Cubanas (Afro-Cuban women) have consistently challenged narratives of exclusion and contributed to antiracist and antisexist movements in Cuba. As theater critic, Inés María Martiatu Terry explained in 2011 one of the goals of the Afrocubanas movement is to “feminize negritude and to blacken feminism.”  

This course will analyze Afro-Cubana feminisms through a close reading of the work of four key black and mulata intellectuals and activists-Sara Gómez, Nancy Morejón, Daisy Rubiera, and Gloria Rolando. In doing so, it seeks to trace the legacy of the many black and mulata women who participated in revolutionary Cuba from the 1960s to the present. In particular, the course will examine how Afro-Cubanas have challenged negative stereotypes about black women, worked both inside and outside of Cuba’s state-sponsored women’s movement, and fought to create space for racial and sexual rights. All course readings will be in English and will include memoirs, films, and first-hand historical documents in additional to scholarly books and articles.

The course can be repeated for credit given sufficiently distinct topics.

Satisfies a major requirement in Africana Studies

Satisfies a major requirement in Latin American Studies

Satisfies the Histories and Genealogies major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies

LAS 321 - Indigenous Politics in Latin America Today

In recent years, indigenous movements have transformed national political landscapes throughout Latin America. They have challenged the position of indigenous peoples within the nation and within long-held ideologies of national identity based on race-mixing (mestizaje); reconfigured ideologies of citizenship and belonging; and upended longstanding hierarchies of inclusion and marginalization. In doing so, these movements have also produced shifting conceptions of what it means to be indigenous. This course will explore these changing conceptions of indigeneity and nationhood, alongside political projects that call for alternatives to national frameworks, including indigenous autonomies and cosmopolitical entanglements.

Satisfies a Latin American Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement. 

LAS 342 - The Latin American City: Historical Narratives & Cultural Representations (= SPA 342)

This course will study the Latin American city through histrocial and cultural perspectives.  Students will learn about the history of select cities and then analyze the relationship between historical context and cultural production through texts offering historical, cultural and literary representations of the cities.  The course will emphasize comparison of cities over time, with attention to the prehispanic city, the modern city and the contemporary Latin American city,  as well as US cities with a strong Latino influence.
(Taught in Spanish.) 

Satisfies an Area III requirement for the Hispanic Studies major.
Counts as an upper-level elective in the Latin American Studies major.

Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement
Satisfies a requirement in the History major and minor.

Prerequisites & Notes
SPA 260 and/or SPA 270

LAS 350 - Latinx Experiences in North Carolina

This is a practice-based course. We will develop the skills to tell stories through audio documentaries (aka podcasts). We will use those skills to explore the variety and richness of Latinx experiences in North Carolina, focusing on the area around Davidson. Students will be encouraged to choose from a wide array of topics in their research, including culture and entertainment, sports, labor, race and racism, gendered perspectives, queer theory, business and commerce, and others.

Satisfies a major requirement in Latin American Studies
Satisfies a minor requirement in Latin American Studies
Satisfies the Social-Scientific Thought requirement
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement

LAS 353 - Practical Encounters in Latinx Studies

Satisfies a Latin American Studies major and minor requirement.
Satisfies Social and Scientific Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.

LAS 360 - History of the Caribbean: Race, Nation, and Politics (= AFR 360, = HIS 360)

This course explores the history of the Caribbean from pre-Colombian times to the present. The goal of the class is to trace the emergence of modern Caribbean nations beginning from their status as slave colonies of the not-so-distant past within an emphasis on the central role the Caribbean islands have played in global history.  Particular emphasis is given to the maintenance of European and North American imperial enterprises and the elaboration of racial ideologies growing out of the diversity that has characterized the island populations.  Issues to be addressed include colonialism, piracy, sugar revolution, slavery and emancipation, national independence, tourism, and Caribbean migrations. Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica will be the main areas under consideration, although texts from other islands such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Martinique are included.

Satisfies a requirement in the Africana Studies major (Geographic Region: Latin America/Caribbean).
Satisfies a requirement in Latin American Studies major and minor.
Satisfies a requirement in the History major or minor.
Satisfies the Historical Thought requirement.
Satisfies the cultural diversity requirement.

LAS 380 - Special Topics in Latin American Studies

Spring 2022 - History and Politics of US Immigration

Instructor - Parsonage

A survey of the impact of race, religion, gender, and politics on our immigrant history and on current immigration law and policy. 

Counts as an elective in Latin American Studies major and minor.

LAS 381 - Colonialism and Digital Media in Latin America and the Philippines

Fulfills an elective in the Latin American Studies major and minor.

LAS 394 - Latinx Sexual Dissidence and Guerrilla Translation (=GSS 394)

Instructor 
González

Despite local differences and sociocultural contexts, there are also remarkable convergences in subcultural minority activisms focused on liberation from intersecting oppressions related to sexuality, race, gender, ability, citizenship status, and class in North and South America. In this upper-level bilingual seminar, students will translate guerilla-style-functionally and in a non-literary fashion-texts by activists and cultural producers focused on intersectional sexual dissidence. Working in teams, students will have the opportunity to consult with some of their target texts’ authors, and the course’s final product will be an online archive of English and Spanish translations of texts related to intersectional, feminist, and queer Latinx American activisms and cultural productions.  First, students will study the rhetorics and aesthetic strategies of feminist and queer activist collectives focused on social issues such as immigration, transgender rights, anti-racism, economic equality, anti-speciesim, body positivity, and prison abolition with a pro-pleasure, leftist perspective. Second, students in the course and I will elaborate a list of the principles and goals informing our functional, guerrilla translations. In the third unit, students will work exclusively on the translation projects they have been developing throughout the semester. They will have the opportunities to interview at least one of the authors whose work they are translating. Collectives, authors, and artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and the U.S. that we will study include: Colectivo Lemebel; Colectivo Universitario de la Disidencia Sexual (CUDS); TransLatina Coalition; Biblioteca Fragmentada; Lino Arruda; Constanzx Alvarez Castillo; Jorge Díaz; Valeria Flores; Daisy Hernández; Jennicet Gutiérrez; Claudia Rodríguez; Ignacio Rivera; Julio Salgado; and Susy Shock.
 

Satisfies a major requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies a minor requirement in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Satisfies a major requirement in Latin American Studies.
Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Latin American Studies.
Satisfies the Justice, Equality and Community requirement.
Satisfies the Literary Thought, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.

Prerequisites & Notes
Requires permission from the instructor.

LAS 395 - Independent Study

Independent study in a topic related to Latin Amercan Studies

LAS 395 - Independent Study in Latin American Studies

LAS 396 - Latin American Studies Independent Study

Independent study in a topic related to Latin American Studies

LAS 490 - Latin Amer Studies Capstone

Capstone course for Latin American Studies majors.  Students will study one theme from an interdisciplinary perspective and prepare a related major research paper.

Prerequisites & Notes
Spring

LAS 495 - Honors Independent Research

Independent study dedicated to research and writing the honors thesis: Grade will be noted as NG after the first semester and the final grade will be applied in the spring semester at the completion of the thesis.  The final grade for the thesis will be determined by the thesis committee following a spring defense of the thesis.

LAS 499 - Honors Independent Study

Honors Independent Study

CSC 385 - Linear and Discrete Optimization

Instructor
Pulaj

This course will serve as an introduction to the theory of linear and discrete optimization, which underlies algorithmic methods with connections to both pure and applied mathematics. We will learn fundamental techniques that solve linear programs and discrete optimization problems in a mathematically rigorous way. The focus of the course will be the interplay between geometry, linear algebra and the resulting duality theory and simplex method. Within this framework, we will learn how to prove that an algorithmic solution to a problem of interest is optimal.

Satisfies Theory elective within Computer Science major and minor.
Satisfies Mathematics major and minor requirement.

 

Prerequisites & Notes
Prerequisites & Notes

Math 150, one of CSC 120, CSC 121, CSC 200, or CSC 209, and one of CSC/MAT 220, MAT 230, or MAT 255.