Topics in Hispanic Studies

Course Number: 82-455/456

SPRING 2027: Empire, Resistance and ties that Bind: Cuba and Puerto Rico

This repeatable course explores Spanish-speaking cultures through a thematic or conceptual focus. Students critically analyze authentic documents through, for example, historical, biographical, filmic, artistic, literary, musical and theoretical perspectives, while improving and expanding their language skills.

Empire, Resistance and Ties that Bind: Cuba and Puerto Rico (spring 2027) is a survey of the sociocultural, historical, political and economic realities of Cuba and Puerto Rico — two islands whose intertwined histories have been shaped by Caribbean hurricanes, Indigenous peoples, Spanish colonizers, enslaved Africans, Spanish and other European, Canary Island, Middle Eastern and Asian migrants, independence struggles, U.S. imperialism.

Special attention will be given to the complex, evolving identities of their population and their national imaginings. In addition, we will compare and contrast these islands' relationship — one eventually independent, the other not — to the United States and to their respective diasporas. Some issues we will consider are (1) how empires imagined these islands from afar, (2) how the islanders have resisted that gaze, (3) how the islanders and their diasporas have created national identities, (4) how to analyze those national identities through their evolving cultural production; and (5) how those diasporic communities have contributed to changing notions of Latinidad in the United States, and of Americanness, itself.

Materials will be in primarily Spanish and occasionally in English or both languages when relevant. In-class work and homework will include but not be limited to poetry, plays, narratives, films, documentaries, images and music recordings and lyrics. Assignments will include reading, research, writing, single and group presentations and final projects.

View the Schedule of Classes for more details

Degree: Undergraduate
Concentration: Hispanic Studies
Semester(s): Fall, Spring
Units: 9
Prerequisite(s): 82-345