PROVOST’S GENERAL EDUCATION COURSE DEVELOPMENT GRANT COMPETITION

Course Proposal

1/2. Principal Investigators/Email Addresses

Dr. Tricia Gabany-Guerrero, Associate Director, Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies; Assistant Professor-in-Residence (Anthropologist). Email: t.gabany-guerrero@uconn.edu

Dr. Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Assistant Professor, History Department. Email: mark.velazquez@uconn.edu

3. Tentative Course Title

“History of Las Américas: Race, Migration, and Nation”

Course Level: Sophomore Year - Writing (W) Competency (no prerequisites); Course Capacity – 19

Sponsors: Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies and History Department

4. Course Objectives and Development

Migration made the Americas culturally, historically and geographically linked spaces. The course moves from broad chronological and spatial analyses of origins of migration in the Americas to a specific case study of Mexican migrants in Connecticut. In order to address this wide-ranging transition, students will study a range of topics from the initial settlement of the Americas to the 21^st century migrations. Following the examination of general trends in migration in the Americas, students will explore the cultural constructions of race and ethnicity in the context of the development of nation-states, the relationships between land and labor, and the impact of migration on social dynamics. By the end of the semester, students will have a strong understanding of contemporary Latin American migration in general and with specific reference to Connecticut. The following list of primary objectives of this course in terms of student learning will be studied as parts of an integrated and mutually constitutive whole, not as separate, unrelated sections.

Course Objectives and Outcomes:

1. Define and explain global citizenship in historical and cultural perspective through the lens of transnational migration.

Students will critically evaluate readings regarding transnational migration in class-based discussions and in review papers. In addition, speakers participating in campus-wide events on immigration and human rights will be invited to talk in the class to address specific transnational migration issues on Las Américas.

2. Explain how the parameters of migration are defined by and define the nation-state.

Students will read about the history of the settlement of Las Américas (indigenous origins) and the geographic and spatial context of migration. Several historical case studies will be selected to examine the ways that migrants have defined the nation-state in Las Américas and how the nation-state has defined the parameters of migration. Students will critically review these case studies in either classroom debate or writing assignments.

3. Critically analyze culturally constructed definitions of race and ethnicity in the historical context of the Americas.

Students will learn how to apply the concepts of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism to evaluating culturally constructed definitions of race and ethnicity in Latin America. They will also critically evaluate what happens to transnational migrants when they are confronted with these disparate definitions in everyday life. Film and media presentations will be used so that students can hear and reflect on “first-person” accounts.

4. Analyze how migration has historically altered social dynamics at both macro and micro (e.g., gender, generation, sexuality) levels.

Students will read about the impact of migration on specific social dynamics. They will analyze, for example, the impact of male migration from Mexico to the United States on gender roles within Mexican communities.

5. Identify and challenge one’s cultural preconceptions in the construction of knowledge.

Students will be introduced to the concepts of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and asked to incorporate these ideas in their critical writing assignments. Class discussions will also provide students with opportunities to express their learning experience and preconceptions about the topics examined in this course.

6. Characterize the dynamic relationship between land and labor and identify the impact of this relationship on migration

Students will characterize the changing relationships between use of land resources and human labor by examining the geography of Las Américas in the context of cultural and material resource use through time. The impact of changes in production and trade systems on labor will be discussed, such as the invention of agriculture, the Industrial Revolution and NAFTA. Students will be asked to specifically identify the impact of these changes on migration.

7. Formulate conceptual frameworks in order to evaluate the dimensions of Latin America's long history with the United States.

By the end of the course, students should have an operational “toolkit” which they could use to evaluate issues that they might confront in the future regarding the dimensions of Latin America’s long history with the United States.

This course will be team-taught by an anthropologist and a historian. In addition, we will invite guest speakers from a wide range of disciplines to address issues such as artistic expression, education, and economic, legal and human rights. Given its interdisciplinary nature, students will potentially be drawn from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including Art, History, Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, Latin American Studies, Geography, Economics and Education. In this course, students will critically examine the local manifestations of globalization by connecting their everyday experiences in Connecticut with migration in the Americas. We will encourage students, in both their written work and in class discussions, to engage in critical thinking, and to communicate across disciplinary boundaries.

Given the demand for sophomore level writing courses and the fact that this course requires synthesis and critical analysis of sophisticated material, we believe that it is most appropriate for students who have general curriculum experience, but not any specific training in the proposed subject area.

This innovative interdisciplinary course will serve as a model for future courses that help students imagine and practice their responsibilities as global citizens by creatively placing critical issues of the 21^st century within their rich historical and cultural contexts. Through this course, we seek to foster ideas and practices of global citizenship by exposing students to new and interdisciplinary research. The course will also provide students with the essential intellectual tools required to participate in an optional field study course in Mexico, which we will develop separately in collaboration with the Study Abroad program. We expect to offer the field study course in the semester or intercession period following the offering of the GEOC-proposed course. The field study course will expose students to the cultural and historical origins of Mexican migrants found in Connecticut. Students will visit community centers, talk with researchers studying migration in Mexico and observe the economic, environmental and social conditions that affect Mexican migrants at their points of origin. We believe that these study experiences will profoundly impact students’ lives and equip them to analyze the complexities of globalization that they will face in their future.

Course Development Plan: The co-principal investigators will identify appropriate sophomore-level reading and multimedia materials; develop study guides for readings and visual presentations on selected topics, design the course venue on WebCT, and develop specific assessment criteria and tools in collaboration with Instructional Design specialists in the Institute for Teaching and Learning.

5. Relation to GEOC Goals:

As well as satisfying the writing (W) competency, this course integrates all of the broad goals of the general education program. Also, due to its interdisciplinary nature, the course will meet the General Education Guidelines for content areas One (Arts and Humanities), Two (Social Sciences), and Four (Diversity and Multiculturalism).

The inter- and transnational subject matter and multidisciplinary source material for this course will require the students to expand their intellectual breadth and versatility and develop new analytical frameworks. Furthermore, examining how historical questions have been approached differently across time, geographic location, and by individuals with different backgrounds (gender, racial/ethnic, generational, etc.) will encourage students to inspect their own notions of the production of knowledge. Encouraged to develop an empathetic and moral sensitivity to the interrelated historical experiences and actions of both elites and commoners, students also will be asked to assess the dimensions of Latin America's long history with the United States. Historical issues treated in this course that demand these types of analyses will include migration, human and labor rights, colonialism, cultural and economic imperialism, racism, and citizenship.

This course will explore the diversity of las Américas, from an ethnographic study of state officials and indigenous migrants to the role of transborder performance artists in the articulation of nationhood and ethnic and gendered identities. Students will be asked to pay careful attention to shifting conceptions of national membership in different Latin American countries and the resulting migratory waves, especially following the economic and military interventions by the United States in the modern era. The lives of Latin American migrants will also figure prominently in our readings, multi-media presentations and discussions.

History of Las Américas will enable students to understand the processes by which they can continue to acquire and use knowledge. They will be exposed to divergent opinions on historical and anthropological themes and encouraged to be active participants in the production of knowledge by examining primary sources (e.g., government and judicial documents, oral histories, film, songs, and images) as well as critically reading secondary sources. Students will be asked to consider how dynamics of social, political, and economic power are integral to the migratory experience. Students will study the social dimensions of migration and how it has affected the historical development of families and communities in the Americas and, in particular, in the State of Connecticut.

6. Relationship to Current Course Offerings

The course will complement several existing courses on Latin American history and society, among them: LAMS 190W Perspectives on Latin America; LAMS 290 Latin American Studies Research Seminar; AGEC 255 Agricultural Development in Latin America; ANTH 215 Migration; ANTH 227 Contemporary Mexico; ANTH 229 Caribbean Cultures; ANTH 241/PRLS 241 Latin American Minorities in the U.S.; ANTH 275 Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism; ECON 223 Economics of Poverty; ENGL 261/PRLS 232 Latino/a Literature; GEOG 200 Economic Geography; GEOG 234 Geography of Economic Development; GEOG 255 Latin American Geography; HIST 278/PRLS 220 History of Latino/as in the US; HIST 280 Modern Mexico; HIST 282 Latin America: National Period; HIST 285 Cuba, Puerto Rico. Its uniqueness lies in its special attention to how social, economic, political, and cultural dynamics in Latin America impact the State of Connecticut.

7. Evaluation of Course Objectives

This course simultaneously encourages the acquisition of critical judgment, moral sensitivity, and awareness of their era and society by requiring students to critically examine the history of the Americas from the initial human settlement to the present. Student learning will be measured through quizzes and written assignments on the course content. The quizzes will be self-administered through WebCT. Students will proceed through the content quizzes by specified deadlines in the course syllabus. The course will foster students’ careful articulation in both oral and written formats through the completion of several short (2 page) revised review essays and a medium-sized (5-10 page) revised research paper, and regular individual and group presentations. Moreover, structured daily class discussion will challenge students to articulate their ideas in a more extemporaneous manner.

Students will select their own topics for the final research paper. They will be required to develop a problem statement and a hypothesis about the problem, and, in a non-ethnocentric manner, defend and substantiate various perspectives on the problem drawn from scholarly literature. One draft will be submitted for grading by the middle of the semester. The second and final draft will be the final paper. The corrected final research papers will be made available in pdf format on-line through the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) website to illustrate student research on migration. Students will also have the opportunity to present their research at the year-end CLACS Student Research Symposium.

8. Supporting Program Director/Department Head

Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Director, Dr. Peter Kingstone (Political Science)

History Department, Dr. Altina Waller

9. Relevant Instructor Experience

This course integrates the current, on-going research of both instructors.

Dr. Tricia Gabany-Guerrero teaches Latin American Studies at the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies. An ethnohistorian and anthropologist, Dr. Gabany-Guerrero has worked for over 15 years with indigenous communities in Michoacán, Mexico, the point of origin for the largest numbers of Mexican migrants to the U.S. She has conducted research about Latin American migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border as a Research Associate at the Center for Inter-American & Border Studies at The University of Texas at El Paso. In addition, she has worked in non-governmental agencies and universities providing services to Latin American migrants in the U.S. and most recently conducted interviews with Latin American migrants working in the agricultural industry in Connecticut. She plans to publish her work on deportees on the U.S.-Mexico border in the next year. She has taught a wide range of courses from the Aztecs and Studies in Colonial Spanish and Indian Language Documents to Advanced Research Methods in Latin American and Border Studies, and Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Field Methods.

Professor Mark Overmyer-Velázquez teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in modern Latin American and U.S. Latino/a history. Supported by an SSRC International Migration Studies Grant, he has initiated research on a second book project provisionally entitled A Transnational History of Mexico – U.S. Migration” This study examines the history of indigenous labor communities that migrated from the Mexican state of Oaxaca to the United States between the end of the nineteenth century and the present day. Emerging from the research for his first book, Visions of the Emerald City: Modernity, Tradition and the Formation of Porfirian Oaxaca, Mexico (Duke University Press, 2006), the project explores the origins of what has become one of the largest transnational communities in the world. The final stages of this project analyze the history of the furthest regions of the Mexican diaspora in the state of Connecticut.

10. References and Potential Textbooks

Pablo Vila, Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.

Leo Chavez, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace College Publishers, 1992.

Victor Villaseñor, Rain of Gold. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 1991.

David J.Meltzer, “Clocking the First Americans,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24:21-45, 1995.

Blanca Premo, “From the Pockets of Women: The Gendering of the Mita, Migration and Tribute in Colonial Chucuito, Peru,” The Americas 57(1):63-93, 2000.

María de los Angeles Torres, “Transnational Political and Cultural Identities: Crossing Theoretical Borders,” pp. 169-182 in Borderless Borders: U.S. Latinos, Latin Americans and the Paradox of Interdependence. Edited by Frank Bonilla, Edwin Meléndez, Rebecca Morales, and María de los Angeles Torres. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998.

Thomas M. Whitmore, and B.L. Turner II, “Landscapes of Cultivation in Mesoamerica on the Eve of the Conquest,” pp.119-143 in The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A Reader. Edited by Michael E. Smith and Marilyn A. Masson. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

David Gutiérrez, ed., The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960: New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

David Jacobson, ed. The Immigration Reader: America in a Multidisciplinary Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2001.

Juan Poblete, ed., Critical Latin American and Latino Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1991.

Guillermo Gomez-Peña, The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras For the End of the Century. San Francisco: City Lights, 1996.

Durand and Massey, Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

Maria Herrera-Sobek, "Corridos and Canciones of Mica, Migra, and Coyotes: A Commentary on Undocumented Immigration." In Stephen Stern and John Cicala, eds. Creative Ethnicity: Symbols and Strategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1991.

March 30, 2005

Vice Provost Veronica Makowsky

U-2086

Re: Provost’s General Education Course Development Grants

Dear Veronica;

I am writing to offer my strong support for the course, “History of Las Americas: Race, Migration, and Nation,” that my colleague Mark Overmyer-Velazquez is proposing in conjunction with a colleague in Latin American Studies, Tricia Gabany-Guerrero. This is just the kind of interdisciplinary effort the Provost’s grant competition is meant to encourage. We plan to offer this course once a year, for several years. I believe that it will respond to the needs of our students to gain a more international understanding of the Americas.

Sincerely,

Altina Waller

Head, Department of History