Latiné/x Realities: Identity, Inequality & Resistance

Catalog description

Three hours lecture per week Prerequisite(s): Successful completion of Golden Four GE Areas (1A, 1B, 1C, 2) This interdisciplinary course explores the lived experiences of Latiné/x communities. To fully understand Latiné/x realities, students examine historical and contemporary experiences in the United States, Latin America, and across the diaspora. Grounded in sociology and enriched by perspectives from anthropology, political science, history, ethnic studies, and cultural studies, the course takes a multidimensional approach to Latiné/x life. It emphasizes how systems of power intersect across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, citizenship, and language to shape everyday realities. Storytelling is central to this course. Through critical engagement with texts, media, testimonios, and community voices, students explore how Latiné/x individuals and communities share their stories to resist exclusion, build resilience, and advocate for justice. These narratives illuminate the complexity of Latiné/x identities and the power of lived experience as a tool for transformation. Particularly, this course will be placing the stories of the Latiné/x population in southern California (i.e., Ventura County) in the front.This course fulfills UDGE Area 4 by connecting social science inquiry to multicultural perspectives and emphasizing the role of institutions in shaping lived experience.