Course Listings

SPA-277-01D=HSP-107-01D Trauma & Popular Culture in Contemporary Latinx Literature Students will examine how a young generation of Latinx authors navigate trauma through appropriating Latin American popular cultures. The focus of the course is to consider how trauma and family take form in texts. The goal is to develop a critical close reading of selected contemporary Latinx ethnographic texts. Their writing is marked by the mass consumption of popular culture represented in television, radio, and later on computers, cell phones, and tablets. Other vital characteristics present in their creative work are experimentation, hybridity, 90s culture, nostalgia, love, gender, sexuality, mental health, and digital platforms. These characteristics often center on how they seek to create new forms of representation with the languages found in memory or transnational popular cultures from North America and Latin America. They do this all while celebrating self and community, giving visibility to notions of love and pain. Their work embodies a new literary aesthetic that turns to Latin American popular cultures while longing to be read as American literature, then Latinx, ethnic, or multicultural literature.

What motivates a terrorist? When are people likely to rebel? Are counterterrorism or repression efforts successful? We will focus on scientific explanations for rebellion, the rise of terrorist organizations, political and economic explanations for terrorist attacks, and the effects of efforts to combat terrorism. After this class, you will have not only an understanding of the major players and factors influencing terrorism, but a base understanding of the social scientific processes which govern political violence and rebellion more generally. As such, this class is not a history class or a class on current events. Though current and historical events will be discussed, your grade will not depend on your rote memorization of these events. Instead, the focus will be on understanding the underlying interests of important actors for international security, the arenas in which these actors interact, and the rules which govern their interactions. This focus on the basic principles will provide you with a rich practical knowledge of the study of terrorism.

SPA-277-01D=HSP-107-01D Trauma & Popular Culture in Contemporary Latinx Literature Students will examine how a young generation of Latinx authors navigate trauma through appropriating Latin American popular cultures. The focus of the course is to consider how trauma and family take form in texts. The goal is to develop a critical close reading of selected contemporary Latinx ethnographic texts. Their writing is marked by the mass consumption of popular culture represented in television, radio, and later on computers, cell phones, and tablets. Other vital characteristics present in their creative work are experimentation, hybridity, 90s culture, nostalgia, love, gender, sexuality, mental health, and digital platforms. These characteristics often center on how they seek to create new forms of representation with the languages found in memory or transnational popular cultures from North America and Latin America. They do this all while celebrating self and community, giving visibility to notions of love and pain. Their work embodies a new literary aesthetic that turns to Latin American popular cultures while longing to be read as American literature, then Latinx, ethnic, or multicultural literature.