Courses Taught at Reed

Spanish/LITS 361: Decentering the Human

This course provides an introduction to what has been called Posthumanism and/or the Non-Human Turn, an umbrella term that refers to various schools of thought (such as animal studies, disability studies, black studies, vital materialism, object oriented ontology, action-network theory, ecocriticism and affect theory) that call for an integral redefinition of the human and thus question, critique and/or move beyond human exceptionalism and the ontological dualities (nature/culture, human/non-human, mind/body, self/other, subject/object, etc.) that constitute it. The course combines interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives with a focus on how the relation between humans, non-humans and the environment has been represented, questioned and problematized in cultural productions from the Hispanic world. The course ultimately asks students to think critically about what it means to be human today if, that is, we have indeed ever been human. 

Spanish/LITS 378: Space & Power

What is space? How is it perceived, experienced, produced and reproduced? And what is its connection with power and relations of domination/emancipation? Drawing from spatial, urban, political, feminist and critical race theory, this course aims to explore and analyze these questions in relation to the representation and problematization of domestic, urban, national and border spaces in, mostly, Latin American novels and films.

Spanish 380: Drugs, Gangs & Aliens

In this course, we will address and think critically about the interrelated nature of irregular immigration to the U.S., the drug trade and the “War on Drugs,” and the expansion and criminalization of gangs throughout the Americas. We will examine how cornerstones of state sovereignty such as the rule of law, the care and control of space and population, and the monopoly on violence are being challenged by these phenomena, as well as analyze, question and discuss their representation and problematization in Latin and North American literary works, essays, chronicles and films in relation to theoretical concepts and processes such as sovereignty, violence, neoliberalism, border, immunity/community and globalization.

Spanish 382/LITS 398/CRES 338: Latin American, Carribean, and Latinx Critical Theory

This course focuses on how Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx critical theorists,
philosophers, writers, and artists have themselves imagined, conceptualized, and
understood Latin America, the Caribbean, and the U.S. as geographical, cultural, social,
and political spaces. Topics will include race, ethnicity, gender, and indigeneity in the
Americas, as well as concepts and theoretical discourses such as indigenismo, mestizaje,
hybridity, latinidad, négritude, liberation philosophy, and postcolonial, decolonial, and
borderlands theory, among others. Readings will include theoretical and literary works,
as well as essays and films.

Spanish/LITS 384: Latin America’s Revolutionary Century

Throughout the 20th Century, Latin America was one of the epicenters of insurgent and revolutionary struggles in the world. These represented, regardless of their ideological differences, the entry of the equality principle in national-spaces that had mostly imagined and structured themselves as two-tiered societies in which a large segment of the population—Indians, minorities and even women—had been, for all practical purposes, systematically excluded. By focusing on the cultural production (novels, films, essays, etc.) related to four revolutionary constellations—the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions, the Guatemalan guerrillas, and the Mexican Zapatistas—this course aims to explore and analyze the languages of insurgency and counterinsurgency, the figure of the revolutionary and guerrilla fighter as a political subjectivity, and the relation between politics and aesthetics.