This is an introductory interdisciplinary course designed to introduce students to research and publications in related disciplines and familiarizes them with the interdisciplinary aspects of Chicana/o studies. The course is a survey of diverse historical experiences, cultural factors, and ethnic/racial paradigms, including indigenousness, gender, sexuality, language, and borders, that help shape Chicana/o identities, with an emphasis on critical reading and writing skills. The course will provide students with a comprehensive examination of Mexican, Chicana/o, and Latina/o development in the United States. Through critical reading and thinking, textual analysis, and coherent, persuasive writing and communication skills, students will gain a clear understanding of some of the central developments of Chicana/o history and culture. This course will also provide an overview of the formations, definitions, and transformations of Chicana/o peoples by critically analyzing gender roles, the borderlands, Chicana feminism, the arts, immigration, tradition, and identity of Chicano people.

This course will explore the development of Chicana/o identities through a survey of social scientific, historical and literary sources. This will include exploration of Mexican American regional cultures that trace the development of societal division based on gender, race, ethnicity and other categories.

This course is a historical survey of the Mexican/Chicano experience from the pre-Columbian period to the present. The emphasis is on Mexican settlement of Greater Mexico and the Southwest United States within the broader history of the United States. In the process, the course covers significant events in the historical development of the United States and Mexico—the colonial era, the early National period, the westward (and northward) movement of people across America in the last 150 years, and U.S.-Mexico relations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This course examines the institutional and structural conditions that have and continue to shape the Chicana/o experience in the United States. This course makes use of a Sociological perspective that incorporates various paradigms/theories including but not limited to: Stratification, Colonialism/Imperialism, Chicana Feminism, Queer Theory, Conflict Theory, and Assimilation/Acculturation. Of specific interest is the impact of social institutions such as: Education, the Legal System, the Economy, Politics, Family, and the Media on the Chicana/o community. This course will examine institutionally perpetuated systems of oppression and privilege such as: white supremacy, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism.