LatinX America — a complex region, where speakers of Spanish, Portuguese and French have their counterparts in dozens of indigenous languages — and where the conflicted histories of the literary and the political, of colonialism and liberation, have been evolving since 1492.
For more information about the requirements for the major in Latin American and Latinx Studies, please consult the General Announcements or contact the Program Advisor, Sophie Esch.
Download our program brochure as a PDF file here.
Rice’s Program in Latin American and LatinX Studies offers a range of interdisciplinary courses designed to examine the cultures, histories and politics of Latin America and the Latinx United States. We look at this complex region from both regional and global perspectives. Courses and faculty are drawn from a wide range of departments and programs, including anthropology, architecture, art history, English, French Studies, history, Spanish and Portuguese, political science, the Center for African and African American Studies and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender & Sexuality. Latin American and LatinX Studies provides a challenging context for students to develop core skills in a truly interdisciplinary setting with a focus on language; communication (oral and written); literary, cultural and political theory; research methodologies; the visual arts; and geography. The major in Latin American and LatinX Studies allows students the flexibility to study how knowledge and cultural technologies traverse social groups across Latin and Central America and the United States.
We study how knowledge is produced from sites that are local (e.g., grassroots responses to anti-immigration sentiment and legislation in Houston), or regional in character (e.g., women’s leadership in labor organizing in the U.S.-Mexico border region) or hemispheric in influence (indigenous movements that seek to create more native forms of democracy and polity). We explore the many connections that exist between the cultures and histories of the regions and nations that compose the contested geographies of what we call Latin America, and we examine how the literature and art in these regions simultaneously reflect processes of national building and shared transnational experiences.
Students majoring in Latin American and LatinX Studies will take courses with appropriate Latin American content at Rice or at an approved program abroad for a total of 10 courses (30 semester hours). No fewer than six courses (18 semester hours) have to be taken at Rice. The minor in Latin American and Latinx Studies requires 6 courses (18 semester hours).