U.S. Latina/o History

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This is an interdisciplinary history course examining the Latino experience in the United States after 1848. We will examine the major demographic, social, economic and political trends of the past 150 years with an eye to understanding Latino/a America. Necessarily a large portion of the subject matter will focus on the history of Mexican-Americans, and Mexican immigrants in the Southwest and Midwestern United States, but we will also explore the histories of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Latin-Americans within the larger Latino/a community. Latinos are US citizens and as such the course will spend significant time on the status of these groups before the law, and their relations with the state, at the federal, local, and community level. To explore these issues within the various Latino communities of the US we will explore the following key topics covered: historical roots of "Latinos/as" in the US; the evolution of a Latino/a ethnicity and identity within the US; immigration, transmigration, and the shaping of Latino/a communities; Latino/a labor history; segregation; civil rights; nationalism and transnationalism; the Chicano Civil Rights Movement; Latinos in film; and post-1965 changes in Latino/a life.