Africana and Latin American Studies Major

Major Requirements

The requirements for the ALST major are as follows:

Three Required Courses

• ALST 199 - Entangled Intimacies: Introduction to Africana and Latin American Studies
• ALST 381 - Theories and Intellectual Traditions
• ALST 410 - Capstone: Intellectual and Community Empowerment
  ALST majors should complete ALST 199 and ALST 381 prior to taking a capstone seminar.

Six Electives

Two courses should be taken from each of the three categories listed below. These should be chosen in consultation with the student's coordinator and advisor. 

Category A - Arts, Cultures, Representations

Courses fulfilling this requirement have an attribute of ALAC in the course offerings

• ALST 204 - Performing Bolivian Music
• ALST 250 - Representations of Africa 
• ALST 273/THEA 273 - Contemporary African American Drama   
• ALST 250 - Representations of Africa
• ALST 331 - The Sexual Politics of Hip-Hop
• ALST 340 - Art & Cult Contemp Jamaica/SG
• ARTH 232 - Latin American Modern and Contemporary Art
• CORE C158 - Puerto Rico
• ENGL 207 - New Immigrant Voices
• ENGL 240 - Latinx Literature
• ENGL 333 - African/Diaspora Women's Narrative
• ENGL 334 - African American Literature
• ENGL 337 - African Literature
• ENGL 344 - African American Literature II
• ENGL 403 - Race before Race: the Literature of the Early Modern Transatlantic
• FREN 354 - Introduction to Literature in French: The Francophone World
• FREN 453 - Contemporary Literature in French
• FREN 455 - Francophone Voices from North Africa
• LGBT 227 - Machismo: Masculinity in Hispanic Cultures
• LGBT 355 - Partners and Crime: Queer Outlaws in Literature and Film
• MUSI 161 - History of Jazz
• MUSI 221 - World Music
• SOCI 348 - Contested identities: Popular Culture in America
• SPAN 354 - Latin American Literature: Colonialism, Mestizaje, and Independencies
• SPAN 355 - The Many Voices of Latin American Literature: from Modernismo to the 21st Century
• SPAN 459 - 'Nuns Having Fun' in Colonial Latin America
• SPAN 467 - Latin American Romanticism
• SPAN 468 - Vision/Revision: Span Conquest
• SPAN 478 - Literature of the Caribbean
• SPAN 481 - Major Hispanic Authors
• SPAN 482 - Major Hispanic Authors
• SPAN 483 - Spanish American Modernismo: Spleen, Femme Fatales, Artificial Paradises
• SPAN 485 - Latin American Novels Before the Boom (1910-1950)
• SPAN 486 - Latin American Dictatorship Theater
• SPAN 487 - Postdictatorial Transatlantic Theater
• SPAN 488 - Latin American Women Dramatists
• THEA 273 - Contemporary African American Drama
• WGSS 279 - Black Feminist Thinkers
• WGSS 302 - Special Topics: Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
• WRIT 248 - Discourses of Race and Racism
• WRIT 342 - Rhetoric in Black & White
• WRIT 346 - Hip Hop: Race, Sex, and the Struggle in Urban America
• WRIT 348 - Discourses of Whiteness

Category B - Societies, Mobilities, Diasporas

Courses fulfilling this requirement have an attribute of ALSM in the course offerings

• ALST 201 - Africa 
• ALST 202 - Introduction to African American Studies
• ALST 203/CORE C163 - The Caribbean  
• ALST 220 - The Black Diaspora
• ALST 225/HIST 225 - Jamaica: From Colony to Independence (Study Group)
• ALST 227/HIST 227 -Civil Rights & Civil Fights: The History of the Long Civil Rights Movement in the United States
• ALST 230 - Introduction to Latin American Studies
• ALST 237 - Ghana: History, Culture and Politics in West Africa
• ALST 245/CORE C145 - Dirty South  
• ALST 281/HIST 281 - Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa  
• ALST 282/HIST 106 - The Making of Modern Africa  
• ALST 284/HIST 284 - Decolonization in Africa      
• ALST 290 - Model African Union
• ALST 312/WGSS 312 - Gender, Race and Punishment: Toward an Inclusive History of the American Carceral State
• ALST 320 - African American Women's History 
• ALST 321/SOCI 321 - Black Communities
• ALST 341/WGSS 341 - Corridors of Black Girlhood
• ALST 388/HIST 388 - The American South: From Reconstruction to the Present
• ANTH 355 - Ancient Aztec Civilization
• CORE C146 - Haiti
• CORE C148 - Black Migrations
• CORE C149 - Hispaniola (Haiti/Dom. Rep.)
• CORE C160 - Latin America
• CORE C169 - Rwanda
• CORE C170 - Islamic North Africa
• CORE C171 - Mexico
• CORE C172 - California
• CORE C173 - Ethiopia
• CORE C177 - Peru
• CORE C180 - Francophone and Creole Identities
• CORE C193 - Brazil
• CORE C195 - West Africa
• CORE C199 - Bolivia
• EDUC 205 - Race, White Supremacy, and Education
• EDUC 245 - Educ-"New" Immigrants in US
• EDUC 308 - Global Inequalities of Education
• EDUC 315 - Pedagogies and Publics
• HIST 209 - The Atlantic World, 1492 - 1800
• HIST 218 - The African American Struggle for Freedom and Democracy
• HIST 229 - Latin American Migrations
• HIST 359 - Resistance and Revolt in the Colonial Atantic World
• HIST 318 - African American History: African Background to Emancipation
• HIST 319 - African American Leadership and Social Movements
• HIST 320 - New York City History
• HIST 337 - Pirates in the Atlantic World, 1500s - 1730
• HIST 379 - U.S. and Africa
• HIST 381 - Pre-Colonial Africa
• HIST 382 - Modern Africa
• HIST 384 - Somalia: From Independence to Collapse
• HIST 385 - Darfur in Historical Perspective
• HIST 462 - Seminar on Problems in African History
• HIST 475 - Seminar in African American History
• POSC 216 - Comparative Politics: Latin America
• POSC 331 - Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa
• POSC 354 - Capitalism, the State, and Development in Latin America
• POSC 451 - Seminar: Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa
• SOCI 212 - Power, Racism, and Privilege
• SOCI 228 - Immigration
• SOCI 321 - Black Communities
• SOCI 368 - Power, Politics, and Social Change

Category C - Human and Non-Human Ecologies

Courses fulfilling this requirement have an attribute of ALHE in the course offerings

• ALST 219/MUSE 219 - Healing Arts: The Idea of Africa in Medicine and Museums 
• ALST 242/LGBT 242 - Religions of Resistance: Gender, Sexuality and Performance in the Caribbean  
• ALST 244/RELG 217 - African American Religious Experience
• ALST 334/GPEH 334 - Public Health in Africa 
• ALST 371 - Medicine, Health and Healing in Africa
• ALST 358/ENST 358 - Ecosystems, Environmental Threats, and response in Trinidad and Tobago (Study Group)
• ECON 238 - Economic Development
• ENGL 365 - Fugitive Mobilities: Migration and Environmental Imagination in 20th-Century America
• ENGL 431 - Ethnographic Fictions: Human Rights and Literature
• ENST 232 - Environmental Justice
• GEOG 310/PCON 310 - Geopolitics   
• GEOG 321 - Transnational Feminist Geography
• HIST 358 - Conquest and Colony: Cultural Encounters in the Americas
• LGBT 310 - Imagining Queer Caribbean Futures
• RELG 227 - Visual and Material Religion
• RELG 219 - African Religious Traditions
• RELG 235 - Religion, War, Peace, and Reconciliation
• RELG 243 - History of Religion in America
• RELG 248 - Christianity, Islam, and Political Change in Africa
• RELG 333 - Theorizing Black Religion
• SOCI 305 - Urban Sociology
• SOCI 312 - Social Inequality

Honors and High Honors

Students interested in pursuing honors can find the additional requirements on the Africana and Latin American Studies program page.

Africana and Latin American Studies

For more information about the program, including Faculty, transfer credit, awards, etc., please visit the Africana and Latin American Studies program catalog page.