Race Culture and Society In the Latino Caribe (12 credits)
FAIR 337:
Winter Quarter Travel Course
January 7 to March 8, 2010
This course contains three major segments:
I. Spanish Language Acquisition
II. Historical, Cultural and Social Underpinnings of Caribbean Latin Society
III. Service Learning/Contemporary Issues
Increasingly, the Caribbean is becoming a critical area of study and interest to researchers, academicians, theorists and others who wish to understand the growing nexus between the Latino Caribbean and U.S. Society. Recent overtures to Cuba by the Obama administration coinciding with a steady rise in immigration from the region has prompted a greater awareness of the hemispheric linkages and co-dependency between the United States and the Caribbean.
In partnership with the Institute Intercultural del Caribe (IIC) the
course will:
- Provide students with Spanish language training at their particular level of competency
- Examine the past and present context of how race and cultural fusion have been experienced among peoples in and from the Latino Caribbean.
- Explore the various ways in which racial/cultural identities are influenced and complicated by questions of gender, class, religion and sexuality both in the Caribbean as well as those Latino Caribbean populations residing in the United States.
- Feature Dominican guest lecturers as well as week-end excursion trips that relate to the subject material and cultural understanding of the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean region.
- Allow students to participate in a designated service-learning project with Dominican students
- Offer opportunities for students to intermingle with Dominican as well as other international students at both of the IIC campuses in Santo Domingo and Sosua.
This course may also:
- Satisfy either lower division (FAIR 202A, FAIR 203A) OR upper division humanities and expressive arts and social relationships and responsibilities core requirements for Fairhaven students
- Meet part of the major or minor requirements in Spanish with permission of the Modern and Classical Languages Department
- Fulfill language and culture based requirements within the Woodring College of Education Bilingual Education and TESOL programs
- Qualify as an International Studies course and can be applied to I.S. minor requirements.