Latin American Studies

Academic Year: 
2020-21
Affiliated Departments: 
African American Studies
Anthropology
Architecture
Art and Archaeology
Chemical and Biological Engineering
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Comparative Literature
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Economics
Electrical and Computer Engineering
English
French and Italian
History
Mathematics
Musicology
Politics
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Religion
Sociology
Spanish and Portuguese
Address: 
Aaron Burr Hall
Phone: 
609-258-4148
Website: 
Program in Latin American Studies
Program offerings: 
Certificate
Director of Graduate Studies
Maria Gabriela Nouzeilles
Graduate Program Administrator
Eneida Toner

Overview

The Graduate Certificate in Latin American Studies is open to all Princeton University graduate students currently enrolled in any Ph.D. program in the humanities, social sciences, engineering, math or natural sciences. Students enrolled in the Master's in Public Administration Degree Program at the Woodrow Wilson School may also enroll in the certificate if they write a research paper on a Latin American topic in consultation with the program director.

The graduate certificate is designed to allow students who are taking seminars in the program, working closely with our faculty, and writing dissertations on a Latin American topic to receive a formal credential in the field. Many such students prepare a generals field in Latin America, but that is not a requirement for the certificate. Upon fulfilling all of the requirements, a student will receive a certificate from the Program in Latin American Studies and is entitled to list the credential on his or her curriculum vitae. The certificate does not appear on a student’s official transcript.

The director of the Program in Latin American Studies oversees the graduate certificate program.

Students cannot be admitted to Princeton University through the Latin American Studies graduate certificate program since it is not a degree program.

Certificate

Certificate Requirements: 
Courses:

Students should complete at least four full-term approved graduate courses on a Latin American topic or substitutes approved by the program director. At least one course should be outside the student’s home department.

In addition, the program director may approve other graduate courses, on a case-by-case basis, for which the student has written a final paper focusing on a Latin American topic.

Students enrolled in the graduate certificate program are expected to participate in the program’s Graduate Works-in-Progress series during their course of study, and do at least one presentation on their dissertation research to an audience of faculty and graduate students to receive feedback.  PLAS also encourages students to attend and organize scholarly events sponsored by the program.

Language(s):

Advanced proficiency in Spanish, Portuguese, or French (for students working on the Caribbean). Students can satisfy this requirement by completing a course taught in Spanish, Portuguese, or French.

Dissertation and FPO:

Ph.D. students are expected to either 1) write a dissertation on a Latin American topic, or 2) write a dissertation that includes significant research on Latin America. Normally the dissertation should be directed by a faculty member affiliated with the program.

Faculty

Director

  • Gabriela Nouzeilles

Executive Committee

  • João Biehl, Anthropology
  • Eduardo L. Cadava, English
  • Beatriz Colomina, Architecture
  • Javier E. Guerrero, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Douglas S. Massey, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Gabriela Nouzeilles, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Christina P. Riehl, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
  • Irene V. Small, Art and Archaeology
  • Deborah J. Yashar, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs

Associated Faculty

  • Jeremy I. Adelman, History
  • José L. Avalos, Chemical and Biological Eng
  • Vera S. Candiani, History
  • Matias D. Cattaneo, Oper Res and Financial Eng
  • Miguel A. Centeno, Sociology
  • Fernando Codá Marques, Mathematics
  • Susana Draper, Comparative Literature
  • Patricia Fernández-Kelly, Sociology
  • Thomas Fujiwara, Economics
  • Rubén Gallo, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Mario I. Gandelsonas, Architecture
  • Maria E. Garlock, Civil and Environmental Eng
  • Reena N. Goldthree, African American Studies
  • Thomas D. Kaufmann, Art and Archaeology
  • Christina H. Lee, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Nicole D. Legnani, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Christina León, English
  • John B. Londregan, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Rosina A. Lozano, History
  • Pedro Meira Monteiro, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Isadora M. Mota, History
  • F. Nick Nesbitt, French & Italian
  • Stephen W. Pacala, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
  • Dan-El Padilla Peralta, Classics
  • Pamela A. Patton, Art and Archaeology
  • Grigore Pop-Eleches, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Rachel L. Price, Spanish & Portuguese
  • Alejandro W. Rodriguez, Electrical Engineering
  • Esteban A. Rossi-Hansberg, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Maria Micaela Sviatschi, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Marta Tienda, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs
  • Rocío Titiunik, Politics
  • Guadalupe Tuñón, Schl of Public & Int'l Affairs

Sits with Committee

  • Fernando E. Acosta-Rodriguez
  • Dannelle Gutarra Cordero
  • Bryan R. Just
  • Stanley N. Katz

Lecturer

  • Noa E. Corcoran-Tadd
  • Marian A. Thorpe
  • Bridgette K. Werner
  • Tony Wood
For a full list of faculty members and fellows please visit the department or program website.

Courses

Permanent Courses

Courses listed below are graduate-level courses that have been approved by the program’s faculty as well as the Curriculum Subcommittee of the Faculty Committee on the Graduate School as permanent course offerings. Permanent courses may be offered by the department or program on an ongoing basis, depending on curricular needs, scheduling requirements, and student interest. Not listed below are undergraduate courses and one-time-only graduate courses, which may be found for a specific term through the Registrar’s website. Also not listed are graduate-level independent reading and research courses, which may be approved by the Graduate School for individual students.

ART 515 Decolonizing Art History (also
HUM 515
/
LAS 515
) Art history's disciplinary origins are inextricable from European colonialism and imperialism, and often work to uphold racialized concepts of development, civilization, style. The contemporary practice of art history demands that we acknowledge these origins while imagining a decolonized art history for the present. Drawing from decolonial paradigms, recent scholarship, and foundational texts of critical race studies, we work to analyze and actively reconfigure conventions of field formation, research, and format. In keeping with the political imperative of praxis, students workshop research topics and problems individually and collectively.
ENG 555 American Literary Traditions (also
GSS 555
/
LAS 505
) A study of selected major American writers in the context of intellectual, religious, and cultural traditions.
HIS 504 Colonial Latin America to 1810 (also
LAS 524
) An examination of selected subjects in early Latin American history from the apogees of the great Amerindian civilizations, through the years of Spanish and Portuguese imperial control to the rebellions preceding independence. The course emphasizes social and cultural change, explores developments in historiography, and treats a variety of major problems in the field.
HIS 506 Modern Latin American History Since 1810 (also
LAS 526
) This course covers some of the major themes in Latin American historiography. It centers on the formation and contestation of different levels of community, from the local to the national, and gives additional consideration to Latin America's integration into global economic and political processes.
HUM 597 Humanistic Perspectives on History and Society (also
ARC 597
/
LAS 597
/
SPA 557
/
MOD 597
) In this seminar we locate Spinoza and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) in the exciting currents of seventeenth-century philosophy, theology, biblical scholarship and exegesis. Resituating Spinoza in Golden Age Holland we examine the resources and relevant controversies that shaped the Tractatus, with an eye to common concerns and traditions: the legacies of humanism and Reformation in the Netherlands, for instance, the larger worlds of his friends, as well as the vibrant Jewish community in Golden Age Amsterdam and the varieties of Christian lay piety that fall broadly under the banner of "the Radical Reformation."
POR 562 Luso-Brazilian Seminar (also
LAS 562
) To suit the particular interests of the students and the instructor, an intensive study of a subject chosen from either Portuguese or Brazilian literature, such as the Cancioneiros and the origins of lyric poetry in Galicia and Portugal, the theater of Gil Vicente, Camões and Os Lusiadas, the fiction of Eça de Queiroz, the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, the novel of the Brazilian Northeast, or recent trends in Brazilian poetry, culminating in the concretistas of São Paulo.
SOC 581 Urban Sociology: Changing Cities in the Global Age (Half-Term) (also
LAS 518
/
AMS 581
) For the first time in history, more than half of the world's population lives in cities. By 2030 that figure may rise to 60 percent. Such telluric transformations are taking place amidst (1) global economic integration; (2) rapid climatic and environmental change; and (3) rising levels of migration both internal and across international borders. The course provides a sketch of urban evolution prior to the onset of modernity. It then examine urbanization in the United States and selected locations in Latin America, Europe, and Asia with special attention to spatial reconfigurations, population shifts, and challenges faced by urban dwellers.
SPA 547 Narrative Prose in Latin America (also
LAS 547
) Literary and extraliterary contexts of prose fiction in Latin America over the past hundred years through a study of representative writers, including Machado de Assis, Cambaceres, Borges, Onetti, García Márquez, Felisberto Hernández, Rulfo, and Cabrera Infante.
SPA 550 Seminar in Colonial Spanish American Literature (also
LAS 550
/
GSS 550
) Intensive study of topics such as Bartolomé de las Casas and the conquest of the Indies; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; Neoplatonism and history in El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega; criollo letters and culture (1690-1824); and research methods and literary criticism pertinent to colonial literary studies.
SPA 562 The Cinema of Cruelty (also
LAS 542
/
HUM 562
) Drawing on Antonin Artaud's ideas around theatre of cruelty and André Bazin's notions of auteur film and its subversive capacity, this course looks at a group of Latin American and Spanish films and directors to explore how cruelty has become a recognizable aesthetic, one with strategic relevance for Hispanic film. This seminar understands film as a text in which cruelty functions as a cinematic trope, and also reflects on spectatorship, film's ability to inflict pain and, even more, the possibility that film constitutes a modern spectacle of cruelty.