Latinx & Latin American Studies Major Requirements

Seniors

The capstone requirement will be met through a portfolio of work done in the Major, introduced by a reflective essay that addresses how the interdisciplinary nature of the coursework informs a question or topic of special interest to the student and their long-term plans. Students will publicly share these reflections during an LLAS Major Capstone Symposium.

• In the reflective essay, you must assess an issue or set of concerns that you have explored across your LLAS courses. Explain how your particular courses, and the work you have done within those courses, helped you advance your interdisciplinary understanding of the issue or set of concerns that have been the focus of your exploration. Length 2000-2500 words long (approximately 8-10 pages long, double-spaced), plus proper citations and bibliography.
• The portfolio should include a copy of the major projects that you have produced for each of the courses they’re counting for the Major, such as a final exam, term papers, and any other essays or assignments that you feel help us understand your path through the major.  This and the essay should be submitted electronically, to a shared Dropbox folder to which the individual student and each faculty member of the department have access.

The symposium will vary slightly from year to year. For the Spring of 2024, seniors will gather with the LLAS faculty to briefly present the heart of what they discussed in their reflective essays and to respond to questions from each other and form the faculty.

U.S. Latinx

• ARHA-255 Latin American Art: Strategies and Tactics
• AMST-216/BLST-240 Afro Latinos (if there is a term paper) 
• AMST-260 Latino Migration: Labor, Lifestyle and Legality.
• AMST-305 Gender, Migration and Power: Latinos in the Americas.
• AMST-317 Puerto Rican Migration (Counts as EITHER Caribbean or US Latinx)
• AMST/SOCI-326 Immigration and the New Latino Second Generation.
• COLQ-341 Meanings of Mobility: Low-Income Latinx Youth and the American Dream.
• EDST/SPAN-415 Bilingualism in the US.
• HIST-165 An Introduction to U.S. Latino/a History, 1848—Present.
• LLAS/RELI-130 Latinx Religion S2122
• LLAS-135 Race and Religion in the U.S. West/Mexico Borderlands.
• LLAS/AMST-140 Immigration and White Supremacy. F2122
• LLAS-201 Power and Resistance in the Black Atlantic. 
• LLAS/SPAN-205 Finding Your Bilingual Voice S2122, S2324
• LLAS-234 The Sanctuary Movement: Religion, Activism, and Social Contestation.
• LLAS/RELI-240 Religion on the Move: Religion and Migration in North America.
• LLAS-266/AMST/SOCI-264 Migration Across the Americas F2223
• LLAS/ENGL-308 Contemporary Latinx Literature F2223, F2324
• LLAS-343 Comparative Borderlands: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Transnational Perspective.F2223
• LLAS/SPAN- 357 Spanish Structure & Use. S2122
• LLAS-375 Amherst Latinx Lives.
• SOCI-326 Immigration and the New Latino Second Generation.
• SPAN-435 Puerto Rico: Diaspora Nation. (Counts as EITHER Caribbean or US Latinx)
• SPAN-480 Spanglish

Latin America

• ANTH-205 Latin American Nations.
• ANTH-220 Collecting the Past: Art and Artifacts of the Ancient Americas.
• ARHA-187 Native American Art.
• ARHA-255 Latin American Art: Strategies and Tactics.
• BLST/HIST-350 Africa/Brazil.
• COLQ-333 Advanced Topics in Latin America's Political Economy.
• COLQ-337 The Expansion of LGBT Rights in the Americas and Beyond.
• HIST-340 The Inquisition in Iberia and Latin America.
• HIST-466 Mexican Material and Visual Culture.
• LLAS/ARHA-186 Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture.
• LLAS/ARHA/HIST-216 Frida and Diego F2223
• LLAS-225 Latin American Literature in Translation J2122
• LLAS/HIST-261 History of Central America.
• LLAS-262 Latin America and the United States.
• LLAS/HIST-263 Struggles for Democracy in Modern Latin America, 1820 to the Present. S2122
• LLAS/HIST-264 Introduction to Latin America: Conquest, Colonization and Rebellion. F2122
• LLAS/HIST/ENST-265 Environmental History of Latin America. F2122
• LLAS/BLST/HIST-268 Black History Spanish America. F2122
• LLAS/BLST/HIST-275 SWAG-274 Gender and Slavery in Latin America F2223
• LLAS-341 Mexican Rebels.
• LLAS/HIST/SWAG-345 Gender and Sexuality in Latin America.
• LLAS-346 Indigenous Histories of Latin America.
• LLAS-349 Latinx and Puerto Rican Diasporic Cultures in Holyoke. F2223
• LLAS/SPAN-430 The Baroque Roots of Latin American Culture. F2122
• LLAS/SPAN-455 One Hundred Years of Solitude.
• LLAS-485 Telenovelas
• POSC-231 The Political Economy of Petro States: Venezuela Compared.
• POSC-300 Sexuality and LGBT Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.
• POSC-307 States of Extraction: Nature and World Politics in the Americas.
• POSC-411 Indigenous Women and World Politics.
• POSC-421 Indigenous World Politics.
• POSC-486 U.S.–Latin American Relations.
• SPAN-211 Literature and Culture of the Hispanic World.
• SPAN-222 Short Stories from the Hispanic World.
• SPAN-241 Towards a Latin American Poetics of Liberation.
• SPAN-325 Art as Protest in Spain and Latin America
• SPAN-330/FAMS-238 Latin American Cinema.
• SPAN-335/FAMS-324 New Latin American Documentary. 
• SPAN-440 The Latin American Philippines

Caribbean

• AMST-310 Spanish Caribbean Diasporas.
• AMST-311 Race and Nation: The History of Hispaniola.
• AMST-317 Puerto Rican Migration. (Counts as EITHER Caribbean or US Latinx)
• AMST-371 Race and Revolution in Cuban History.
• ARHA-257 The Colonial City: Global Perspectives.
• BLST-317 Caribbean Poetry: The Anglophone Tradition.
• BLST-375 Spirit Possession.
• ENGL-491/LLAS 461 The Creole Imagination. F2324
• LLAS/BLST/HIST-277 Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. F2223
• LLAS-344 The Cuban Revolution, 1959–2009.
• POSC-248 Cuba: Polit of Extremism.
• POSC-300 Sexuality and LGBT Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean. (Counts as EITHER Latin America or Caribbean)
• SPAN-226 Mare Nostrum: The Caribbean as Idea and Invention.
• SPAN-363 One Hundred Years of Solitude.
• SPAN-435 Puerto Rico: Diaspora Nation. (Counts as EITHER Caribbean or US Latinx)

Electives: Comparative across categories

• AMST-216/BLST-240 Afro Latinos
• AMST-315 Race and U.S. Empire: 1898 in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
• BLST-201 Power/Resist Black Atlantic. (¼ Latin American and ¼ Caribbean)
• COLQ-343 A Social History of the Spanish Language. (¼ Latin American and ¼ Caribbean)
• COLQ-412 Globalism and Its Discontents: Point/Counterpoint.
• LLAS/SPAN Spanish for Bilingual Students. F2223
• LLAS-144H Contemporary Dance Technique: Salsa Performance and Culture.
• LLAS-280 Slave Resistance in Latin America & the Caribbean. F2324
• LLAS/ARCH/ARHA-204 Housing, Urbanization, and Development. S2122
• LLAS/BLST-226 Theorizing the Black Queer Americas S2122
• LLAS/SPAN-301 Literature and Culture of the Hispanic World. F2122, S2122, F2223, F2324
• LLAS- 350 Black Latinas: Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latinx Women of African Descent. F2324
• LLAS/SPAN-448 Hybrid Identities. S2122
• LLAS-463/BLST-363/HIST-463 Atlantic Slave Trade. S2122
• SPAN-365/SWAG-236 Queer Migrant Imaginaries. 

 Five College Courses

 LLAS Majors Worksheet