Latin American Studies

Academic Year: 
2016-17
Affiliated Departments: 
Anthropology
Architecture
Art and Archaeology
Comparative Literature
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Economics
English
French and Italian
History
Musicology
Politics
Religion
Sociology
Spanish and Portuguese
Woodrow Wilson School
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

Academic department detail

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.

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.

COM 563 Studies in Forms of Narrative (also
ENG 578
/
LAS 564
/
SPA 597
) A systematic analysis of narrative forms through the close examination of particular texts. At various times the following is considered: the prose romance, the picaresque, the thesis novel, the novel of manners, the stream-of-consciousness novel, the nouveau roman, and shorter forms of fiction.
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
MOD 575
/
ARC 597
/
LAS 597
/
SPA 505
) 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."
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 548 Seminar in Modern Spanish-American Literature (also
LAS 548
/
GSS 548
) An intensive study of intellectuals and nationalism in Latin America and the Caribbean; the Spanish American essay from Rodó to Paz; autobiography and first-person narrative, Martí; and the generation of 1880 in Argentina, the crónica modernista, poesía gauchesca.