Fall 2026 NYU Consortium Classes

LACTC-GA 10-001 - Elementary Quechua I
Day/Time:  Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 9:30am – 10:45am
Prof. Odi Gonzales
Location: KJCC, Room 404

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.

LACT-GA 1030-001 – Comparative Racisms in the Americas
Date/Time: Thursday, 3:00pm – 5:30pm
Prof. Pamela Calla
Location: KJCC, Room 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.

LATC-GA 1045 International Human Rights: Latin America 
Instructor: Peter Lucas 
Date/Time: Thursday, 6:00pm – 9:00pm 
Location: KJCC 404

In this graduate seminar, students will examine human rights case studies in Latin America,  popular resistance and social movements in Latin America, the role of media and  representation in reporting and promoting human rights, and educational initiatives for  human rights. We will especially study the many choices society has after collective  violence. Latin America remains a fascinating region to study human rights as the last two  decades have stood out as a period of reckoning and bearing witness of past atrocities. In  the wake of serious violence, countries continue to struggle with issues of justice,  reconciliation, truth, remembering, and healing. Over the years there have been many  different responses to collective violence in Latin America and these strategies continue to  evolve and change. This course will study the range of these responses not only to reconcile  human rights violations of the past but also to build a culture of human rights and peace in  the future. 

LATC-GA 2537-007 - Politics of Fire! Arts, Fiction and Theory in Africa and the Diasporas 
Date/Time: Tuesdays, 12:30pm – 3:00pm
Prof. Nadia Yala Kisukidi
19 University Place, Room 225           

Among the elements, fire distinguishes itself through its ability to summon fundamental metaphors of power, creation, and life that circulate between Africa and its diasporas. Whether it refers to the primordial spark Kalûnga of Bakongo cosmologies or to the transformative power of blacksmiths on the continent - analogous to the exercise of sovereign power - fire is not treated here as a "scientific object," to borrow from philosopher Gaston Bachelard, but as a symbolic object that irrigates social and spiritual imaginaries. 
It traverses modern history as a symbol of narrative sovereignty: the capacity to think by and for oneself, to be a power of self-engendering, and to contest hegemonic narratives. From the ancient forge to the incandescence of 20th-century African-American justice movements, this seminar explores how these poetics of fire coordinate psychic and social representations. 
By traversing Central Africa, Latin America, North America, and the Caribbean, we will analyze how the figures of fire and the forge, and the symbolism of combustion, irrigate the visual arts, cinema, and contemporary theory. The objective is not to establish a catalogue of representations and beliefs, but to understand how these "poetics of fire" coordinate psychic and social representations, allowing us to rethink the historical links between the continent and its diasporas through the lens of a radical and autonomous self-creation.