Dr. Jasmine Mitchell
Office Hours: 1204 Boylan M 2:15-3:15; W 2:15-4:15 or by appointment
E-mail: jasmine.mitchell@brooklyn.cuny.edu

This is an introductory course exploring intersecting histories, ideas, and social, political and cultural structures in Latin America. We will focus on the workings of Latin American cultures as shaped by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, place, and religion. Throughout this course we will ask: Where is Latin America and what is Latin America? Over the semester, we will ask critical questions of a wide variety of materials: essays, television, poems, photographs, films, music, visual art, historical documents and legal texts. Students will be exposed to and experiment with a wide range of current interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches with particular attention to research approaches to the study of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and other categories of difference.

Grading Schema

• 20 points, Class participation: Students must attend all lectures and participate in class discussion. This requires that students read and/or view the assigned material ahead of time and come to class with reactions, comments, questions, etc.
• 15 points each, Written, audio, or visual responses: A total of 3 responses.
• 10 points, Class sharing: Introduction, questions, and material preparation.
• 25 points: Final project and reflection

Academic Integrity 

The faculty and administration of Brooklyn College support an environment free from cheating and plagiarism. Each student is responsible for being aware of what constitutes cheating and plagiarism and for avoiding both. The complete text of the CUNY Academic Integrity Policy and the Brooklyn College procedure for policy implementation can be found at www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/policies. If a faculty member suspects a violation of academic integrity and, upon investigation, confirms that violation, or if the student admits the violation, the faculty member MUST report the violation. Students should be aware that faculty may use plagiarism detection software. 

Student Disability Services

In order to receive disability-related academic accommodations students must first be registered with the Center for Student Disability Services (CSDS). Students who have a documented disability or suspect they may have a disability (physical or mental condition which substantially limits one or more major life activity) are invited to call the Center at (718) 951-5538 or visit us in 138 Roosevelt Hall. If you have already registered with the CSDS and submitted necessary forms, you will receive your course accommodation letter to provide to your professor and these specific accommodations can be discussed when appropriate. 

OER Statement

Unless otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This course website contains copyrighted materials available only for your personal, noncommercial educational and scholarly use. This site is used in accordance with the fair use provision, Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act where allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Every effort has been made to provide attribution of copyrighted content. If you wish to use any copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain expressed permission from the copyright owner. If you are the owner of any copyrighted material that appears on this site and believe the use of any such material does not constitute “fair use”, please contact Professor Jasmine Mitchell to have the content removed, if proven necessary.

This open educational resource was created as part of the CUNY and SUNY 2017-2024 Open Educational Resources Initiatives. Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NY State Legislature awarded CUNY and SUNY $16 million to implement open educational resources to develop, enhance and institutionalize new and ongoing open educational resources across both universities.

Special thanks to the CUNY Office of Academic Affairs, the CUNY Office of Library Services, Brooklyn College Administration and Professor Frans Albarillo, Coordinator, Brooklyn College Open Educational Resources Initiative. Site design and formatting by Colin McDonald, OER Developer.