Peoples and Cultures of the Americas, Spring 2016

American Studies & Ethnicity 135gmw

Professor Macarena Gmez-Barris

Class Meets: MW, 2:00 - 3:20pm, THH 101
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 12:30- 2pm, W 12:30-1pm | KAP 448Email: [email protected]

Course Description:
This class is an introduction to the interdisciplinary
field of Latin American and Latina/o Studies, an area of
study that works to understand and analyze the
relationship between North, Central, South America and
the Caribbean as dynamic spaces of historical interaction.
We begin with the premise that the United States and
Latin America are not discrete regions of political,
economic, and social activity, but instead interconnected
in ways that are foundational to how the societies of Las
Amricas have developed out the colonial condition that
continues to persist in the modern and present eras. We
focus on culture, history, and resistance as primary
entryways into this field of study, addressing squarely the
questions of colonialism, empire, race, Indigeneity, Black
Diasporas, feminisms, aesthetics, and the prospects for
decolonization. Cultural production such as art,
performance, music, architecture, literature, film, video
and popular culture will deepen the levels of our analysis
and awareness of the field. Rather than thinking about
the Amricas as a space that exists over there we
constantly work to understand the interactivity of scale

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

and the web of interaction between various political and

cultural geographies in the hemisphere and beyond.
Course Requirements and Grading System:
In addition to regular attendance, course requirements
include:
1. A short multi-media presentation and essay that uses
visual art, performance, and music to examine ideas about
race in the Americas. Due 2/3/2016.
2. An in-class mid-term exam on the date indicated in the
syllabus. In-class, 2/22/2016.
3. A journal analysis assignment that requires you to choose
a topic of research during the course. You will be expected
to determine ways to keep up to date on the topic, including
news and Web sources, and be expected to report to your
section at least once before the end of the course. More
details to come.
4. A final take-home exam that will involve a comparative
and comprehensive essay.
5. Regular attendance at discussion sections with
participation in the conversation, and, evidence of having
completed the reading. There will be occasional in-class
quizzes and additional assignments.
Course Evaluation Summary:
1) Multi-media Presentation/Essay: 20%
2) Midterm Exam: 20%
3) Journal Analysis: 20%

SubjecttoChange

4) Final Exam: 20%

5) Regular Attendance/Section Participation: 20%
Grading System:
Each assignments scores will be allocated to letter
grades as follows:
97-100 = 87-89 = 77-79 = 67-69 = < 60 = F
A+
B+
C+
D+
93-96 = 83-86 = 73-76 = 63-66 =
A
B
C
D
90-92 = 80-82 = 70-72 = 60-62 =
ABCDThe overall course scores will be allocated to letter
grades in the same fashion, except that there the
University allows no A+ course grades; thus students
receiving 93-100 will receive an A.
Required Readings (Available in USC Bookstore):
1)Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo, New York: Grove Atlantic, 1955.
2) Rigoberta Mench and Elisabeth Burgos, I, Rigoberta Menchu:
An Indian Woman in Guatemala, New York: Verso, 1984.
3) Roque Dalton, Miguel Marmol, New York: Curbstone Press,
1987.
4) Darin J. Davis, Ed., Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy
3

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean, London:

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007.
5) Additional course readings are available on USC Blackboard,
and on-line sources.
Important Rule about Cell Phones and other
Electronic Equipment:
Computers, cell phones, tablets, and other electronics are
not visibly allowed in the classroom. All of these devices
must be turned off and stowed away. If I see you looking
at your media, you will be asked to leave class. The
Teaching Assistants also have the right to ask you to
leave sections if you are on your media. If you want to
take notes with your computer, you must sit in the first
two rows, and turn off all wireless capacity when you
come in. With a class this size, we must find ways to
engage each other, and media is simply a distraction to
me when I lecture. I thank you ahead of time for being
courteous and respecting this rule.
Students With Disabilities
If you will need any special consideration due to a
disability, you must register with the Disability Services
and Programs (DSP) office each semester. DSP will give
you a letter of verification and we will accommodate
you as needed. Please be sure to give the letter to your
TA no later than the third week of class. DSP is located in
STU 301 (hours 8:30-5:00 Monday-Friday; phone 7400776). For more information, see
http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/asn/DSP/.

SubjecttoChange

Diversity Requirement
This course meets the universitys diversity requirement
guidelines by asking students to explore the intersections
between social equality, race, and citizenship status.
Gender will also be a major theme in class readings and
discussions, especially as it relates to economic
opportunity, transnational motherhood, and immigration.
Students will learn how difference has shaped opportunity
and prosperity during various periods in the social and
material production of the Americas. More importantly,
the class will examine how Latinos, immigrants, women,
and U.S. citizens of all racial backgrounds are dealing
with contemporary American issues.
Department of American Studies & Ethnicity
This is an American Studies and Ethnicity course.
American Studies and Ethnicity (ASE) is an innovative,
interdisciplinary department that explores the history,
culture, politics, and institutions of the Americas and the
world, with a particular focus on communities of color in
and beyond the United States. Undergraduate students
have the opportunity to choose from a number of majors
and minors within American Studies and Ethnicity, African
American Studies, Asian American Studies,
Chicano/Latino Studies, and American Popular Culture. An
American Studies and Ethnicity major is more than just a
career path, (in law, media, public policy, journalism,
business, international studies, health, social justice and
social welfare organizations, graduate studies in the
social sciences, humanities, arts), its an exploration of
the principles of social justice. For the information on the
ASE majors or minors, contact advisor Cynthia MataFlores, whose office is in KAP 450. She is available by
email at [email protected] or by phone: (213) 740-3198.
5

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

Teaching Assistants:
The teaching assistants will be a primary contact for you.
They conduct the discussion sections, read and grade
your papers and exams, and will help you to understand
and synthesize course topics. As noted above, 20% of
your course grade is based on your participation in the
sections and it would be to your advantage to visit the
teaching assistants during office hours as well. Please see
your TA for their office hours and location.

Athia Choudhury: [email protected]

Rebekah Garrison: [email protected]
Floridalma Boj Lopez: [email protected]
Alexis Montes: [email protected]

COURSE SCHEDULE
Section One: Inventing the Americas
Week 1: Course Overview
1/11 - Introduction to the Course
Syllabus Review

SubjecttoChange

1/13 - Remapping and Rethinking the Hemisphere: Inverted

Views
Joseph Nevins, A Right to Stay Home, A Right to Move, A
Right to the World,
https://nacla.org/news/2016/01/04/right-stay-home-rightmove-right-world, by Joseph Nevins, January 2016 (on-line).
Walter Mignolo, Preface, to The Idea of Latin America,
https://www.academia.edu/1747245/Mignolo._The_Idea_of_L
atina_America2005 (on-line).
Week 2: Indigenous Worlds
1/18 - MLK Holiday No Class
1/20 1492: Indigenous Worlds, Colonial Visions, and
Subversions
Introduction, to Comparative Indigeneities (Blackboard)
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, The Potos Principle: A View of
Totality,
http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/emisferica-111decolonial-gesture/e111-essay-the-potosi-principle-anotherview-of-totality (on-line)
Week 3: Colonial Regimes and Resistance
1/25 Land, Visuality, and Encoded Critique
Class Cancelled, **two-page typed reflection on Guamn
Poma Reading, due in section.
Rolena Adorno, Introduction to Guamn Poma,
Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Blackboard).

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

1/27 Racialized Labor and Colonial Legacies

James, CLR. Prologue and The Property,
http://www.ouleft.org/wpcontent/uploads/CLR_James_The_Black_Jacobins.pdf, pp.
3-26. (on-line)
Anibal Quijano, Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and
Latin
America,https://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijan
o.pdf, pp. 1-44. (on-line)

Week 4 From Colony to Empire

2/1 - Race in the Americas
Darin J. Davis, Introduction to Beyond Slavery: The
Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the
Caribbean (course reading).
Evelyn Hu-deHart and Kathleen Lpez, Asian Diasporas
in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Historical
Overview. Afro-Hispanic Review 27 (1): 921, 2008
(Blackboard)
Film: Uprooted, Juan Mejia, 2007 (in-class viewing)
Class Cancelled, Material discussed 2/3.
2/3 1898: Militarization in the Caribbean Basin
Csar Ayala and Rafael Bernabe, Introduction, Puerto
Rico in the American Century (2007) (Blackboard)
Additional Reading to be Announced on Vieques
Due: Multi-media Assignment Due**

SubjecttoChange

Section Two: The Challenge of Autonomy

Week 5: Seeking Independence
2/8 Independence Struggles and 1910
Darien J. Davis, Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy
of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean, Part I
Struggles for Independence (course reading).
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo (course reading)
2/10 - Nation-Building and Industrialization
Maria Odette Canivelli, Nation Building, Utopia, and the
Latin American Writer/Intellectual (Blackboard).
Roque Dalton, Miguel Marmol (course reading, first half)

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

Week 6: Colonial Legacies and Empire

2/15: Holiday, No Class
2/17: Economic Dependency
Roque Dalton, Miguel Marmol (Second Half)
Andre Grunder Frank, The Development of
Underdevelopment,
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/ge
og_3682_f08/Articles/FrankDevofUnderdev.pdf (on-line)
Week 7: Cold War Consequences
2/22 - Revolution and Political Violence
Cecilia Menjvar and Nstor Rodrguez, State Terror in the
U.S. Latin American Interstate Regime (Blackboard)
Susana Draper, Introduction to Archives of
Confinement: Spatial Transitions in Postdictatorship Latin
America, 2012 (Blackboard)
Exam: In-Class Midterm**
2/24 Revolution and Political Violence 2
Rigoberta Menchu, Introduction and The Family in I,
Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala
(Course Reading)
Mark Danner, The Truth of El Mozote, The New Yorker,
December 3, 1993,
http://www.markdanner.com/articles/the-truth-of-elmozote (on-line)
Week 8 Neoliberalism
2/29 - The Rise of Neoliberalism
10 SubjecttoChange

 Naomi Klein, Part 1: Two Doctor Shocks: Research and

Development, in The Shock Doctrine, pp. 25-74.
http://www.infoshop.org/amp/NaomiKleinTheShockDoctrine.pdf, (on-line).
Angelina Snodgrass-Godoy, Converging on the Poles:
Contemporary Punishment and Democracy in a
Hemispheric Perspective, pp. 515-548, 2005.
(Blackboard)

11

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

3/2 State Violence and Cultural Memory

Macarena Gmez-Barris, Witness Citizenship: The Place
of Villa Grimaldi in Chilean Memory, in Sociological
Forum, 2008. (Blackboard)
Ariel Dorfman, The Day Everything Changed in Chile,
New York Times, September 7, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/911-the-day-everything-changed-in-chile.html, (on-line)
Section Three: Culture in the Americas
Week 9 Colonial Afterlives
3/7 - Fecund Spaces of Refusal
Chapter Five, Black Abolitionists in the Quilombo of
Leblon, Rio de Janeiro in Beyond Slavery (course
reading).
Chapter Six, Pan-Africanism, Negritude, and the Currency
of Blackness, in Beyond Slavery (course reading).
Tania Cypriano, Interview with Karim Ainouz, BOMB,
Winter 2008,
http://bombmagazine.org/article/3046/karim-a-nouz, (online).
Film Excerpts: Quilombo, Madame Sata
3/9 Activating Performance and Musical Cultures
AKeithia Carey, CaribFunk: A Melange of Caribbean
Expressions as New Dance Technique,
http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/emisferica-121caribbean-rasanblaj/carey

12 SubjecttoChange

 Kevin Frank, Female Agency and Oppression in

Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture, Womens Studies
Quarterly, pp. 172-190 (Blackboard).
Darin J. Davis, Chapter 9, Hip Hop in Black Public
Spheres in Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil in Beyond Slavery
(course reading).
Week 10 - Spring Recess - No Class
3/14 & 3/16
Week 11 - Border Crossings
3/21 Building and Lighting Up Borders
J. Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal
Alien" and the Making of the U.S. - Mexico Boundary,
2008 (Blackboard)
Alicia R. Schmidt, Selections from Migrant Imaginaries:
Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.
New York: New York University Press. (Blackboard)
Video: Muriel Watson and Light up the Border, Youtube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pTtqUgD8PI (online)
3/23 Anchoring Social Identities
Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Selections from meXicana
Encounters: The Making of Social Identities, 2011
(Blackboard)
Walter Nicholls, The DREAMers: How the Undocumented
Youth Movement Transformed the Immigrant Rights
Debate. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press,
2013 (Blackboard)

13

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

 Gretel Vera Rosas, Regarding the Mother of AnchorChildren,

http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/emisferica-111decolonial-gesture/verarosas, (on-line)
Film: Under the Same Moon, Directed by Patricia Riggen,
2007.

14 SubjecttoChange

Week 12: Border Aesthetics

3/28 Border Projects
Amy Caroll, From Papapap to Sleep Dealer: Alex
Riveras Undocumentary Poetics, Social Identities:
Journal for Study of Race, Nation, and Culture 2013
(Blackboard).
Jo-Anne Berelowitz, Border Art Since 1965, in Eds.
Michael Dear and Gustavo LeClercs, Postborder City:
Cultural Spaces of Bajalta California 2003, (Blackboard).
Film: Sleep Dealer, Directed by Alex Rivera, 2008.
3/30 - Transnational Mayan Identities
Alicia Estrada, Ka Tzij: The Maya Diasporic Voices from
Contacto Ancestral, Latino Studies, 2013, pp. 208-227,
https://www.academia.edu/11243539/Ka_Tzij_The_Maya_
Diasporic_Voices_from_Contacto_Ancestral (Blackboard).
I, Rigoberta Mench, pages to be announced (course
Reading).
Film: Discovering Dominga, Directed by Patricia Flynn,
2003.
Week 13: Cultures of Extraction and Resistance
4/4 Redefining Extractive Capitalism
Anna Zalik, Protest-as-Violence in Oil Fields: The
Contested Representation of Profiteering in Two Extractive
Sites, in Accumulating Insecurity, 2011 (Blackboard)
Matthew T. Huber, Introduction: Oil, Life and Politics,
Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom and the Forces of Capital, 2013
(Blackboard)
15

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

4/6 Oil and Biodiversity

Macarena Gmez-Barris, The Intangibility of the Yasun,
from The Extractive Zone: Submerged Perspectives and
Decoloniality, (Forthcoming, Blackboard).
Websites: www.geoyasun.org,
Film: Crude, Directed by Joe Berlinger (2009)

16 SubjecttoChange

Week 14: Dissenting Bodies

4/11 Indigenous Hunger Strikes
Macarena Gmez-Barris, Mapuche Hunger Acts:
Epistemology of the Decolonial, in Transmodernity, 2012,
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6305p8vr. (on-line)
Audre Simpson, The Chiefs Two Bodies: Theresa Spence
and the Gender of Settler Sovereignty,
https://vimeo.com/110948627 (on-line).
4/13 Earth Performances
Jean Franco, The Return of Coatlicue: Mexican
Nationalism and the Aztec Past, Journal of Latin
American Studies, 2004 (Blackboard).
Ayotzinapa: A Timeline of the Mass Disappearance that
has Shaken Mexico,
https://news.vice.com/article/ayotzinapa-a-timeline-ofthe-mass-disappearance-that-has-shaken-mexico,
(online).
David Murrieta on Regina Jos Galindos Tierra,
https://www.academia.edu/13987536/Regina_Jos
%C3%A9_Galindo_-_Tierra, (online)
Week 15 - Future Amricas
4/18 Movement Forward
Idle No More, http://www.idlenomore.ca/
Black Lives Matter, http://blacklivesmatter.com/
Hilda Solis, Immigration and Americas Future,
http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2419 (online)
Music Video: M.I.A Borders, Directed by M.I.A. (2015)

17

Subject to Change - Revised 1/11/2016

4/20 Collective Presentation on Futures (Joint lecture by

Professor and Graduate Students)
Readings to be Announced
Week 16 - Course Review and Final Exam
4/25 Course Review (No Reading)
4/27 - Final Exam and Evaluations

18 SubjecttoChange