Fall 2023 NYU Consortium Classes

LATC-GA 10 - Elementary Quechua I
Date/time: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 9:30am - 10:45am 
Instructor: Odi Gonzalez
Location: 

Quechua is the most important and most widely distributed indigenous language in South America, with about 10 million speakers living from the high mountains to the tropical lowlands in Colombia (where the language is called Ingano), Ecuador (where it is called kichwa or runa shimi, "human speech"), Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina (where it is usually spelled Quechua and called, by its speakers, runa simi). Studying Quechua opens a window onto alternative ways of thinking about social worlds, about space and time, family, and humans' relationship with the natural world. Quechua is recommended for students anticipating travel to the Andean region, those interested in language and linguistics, and those interested in indigenous literatures and cultures. Students who satisfactorily complete introductory Quechua will be well-prepared for intensive summer study at one of many summer study abroad programs in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia that will put them in closer contact with the indigenous world.

LATC-GA 20 - Intermediate Quechua I
Date/time: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 2:00m - 3:15pm 
Instructor: Odi Gonzalez
Location: 

Quechua is the most important and most widely distributed indigenous language in South America, with about 10 million speakers living from the high mountains to the tropical lowlands in Colombia (where the language is called Ingano), Ecuador (where it is called kichwa or runa shimi, "human speech"), Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina (where it is usually spelled Quechua and called, by its speakers, runa simi). Studying Quechua opens a window onto alternative ways of thinking about social worlds, about space and time, family, and humans' relationship with the natural world. Quechua is recommended for students anticipating travel to the Andean region, those interested in language and linguistics, and those interested in indigenous literatures and cultures. Students who satisfactorily complete introductory Quechua will be well-prepared for intensive summer study at one of many summer study abroad programs in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia that will put them in closer contact with the indigenous world.

LATC-GA 2030 Feminist Constellations: Extractivism, Affective Labor and Politics of Care
Instructor: Ana Alvarez, Pamela Calla
Date/Time: Thursday, 2:00pm – 4:30 pm
Location: KJCC 404

In a context of late racial-patriarchal capitalism, new forms of accumulation have emerged that deepen inequalities. Securitization and financialization are added to this tendency, eroding public care infrastructure and destabilizing ecosystems and communities, particularly poor urban and rural, indigenous, queer of color, workers. Another central aspect of this process is the expansion of the extractive frontiers and the attempts of destruction of indigenous modes of human and non-human community making. In the Americas, Afro-Diasporic and Indigenous social movements are weaving together diverse feminisms with anti-racisms and anti-extractivisms to forge new and emergent modes of struggle. In this seminar, we will link these struggles with the discussion of notions such as affective economies, communities of care, ecological disasters and the entanglement between them. We will also explore that despite these multiple crises, livable spaces are still being created.

LATC-GA 1014: Comparative Racisms In The Americas
Date/Time: Thursday, 2:00pm - 4:30pm
Instructor: Pamela Calla
Location: KJCC 404

This seminar will explore emergent forms of racism in the Americas as major obstacles to the construction of intercultural relations, racial and economic justice, and democracy. The emergence of these “new or renewed racisms” is still largely a relatively uncharted terrain in the
social sciences. The course will thus explore this phenomenon as integral to the multicultural and what some have called “post racial” present defined by larger processes of economic and cultural globalization and transnational migration. Throughout the course, we will also look at
these emergent racisms in relation to the challenges facing indigenous and afro-descendant social movements, middle class political networks, and state and non-governmental institutions that seek to deepen democracy in the hemisphere by building the basis for active citizenship
and racial and economic justice. The following general questions will guide our analysis and discussion: What is the relationship between institutionalized racism, embedded in the fabric of these societies, and specific “racial eruptions,” which appear to stand in contrast to prevailing
ideologies of pluralism and intercultural relations? How to explain the persistence of racial hierarchy in societies where powerful actors explicitly endorse principles of multicultural recognition and racial equality? Does government-endorsed multiculturalism mitigate the negative impact of extractive, industrial, informal and other economic activities on indigenous and afro-descendant peoples? Or alternatively, do these economies actually lay the groundwork for what could be considered a “racialized” economic order? How do the push and pull of migration tied to larger necessities of capital accumulation and labor exploitation shape the dynamics and logics of racism within the region? What types of constitutional reforms, legislative and public policy agendas have emerged to address these dynamics and logics?

LATC-GA 2531 U.S. - Latin American Relations: WWII to the Present
Date/Time: Monday, 2:00pm - 4:30pm
Instructor: Jorge Castañeda
Location: KJCC 404

This course seeks to analyze the dynamics and issues that describe the relations between the United States and Latin America since the end of World War II. A complete picture of the current state of affairs in the hemisphere and the reasons that led to it require an analysis in three
different – but related – dimensions. To cover the first one, the course analyzes historical benchmarks that contextualize particular overt American interventions in the region, dissecting its causes, operation and consequences. In a second dimension, the course looks at topics that
have permeated the relationship between the United States and Latin America over this period.  Because of their typically cross-national nature, they illustrate a different set of dynamics and concerns that have fueled tensions in the relationship. A third and final dimension concerns
recent developments in Latin America that affect and have been affected by U.S. foreign policy. Their novelty suggests that these issues will remain relevant at least in the immediate future.