Admission requirements
Areas of Theory: Cultural Theory & Area Studies is a compulsory component of Academic Skills in the LUC year one curriculum. All first year students should take at least one Areas of Theory course. This course is also an option course in Global Citizenship.
Description
How is knowledge about a “place” produced and circulated? Who has the power to discursively construct a geographic area as a subject of academic inquiry? How do the boundaries of what is considered “useful” knowledge about this area shift? How does the invention and re-invention of “area studies” cast the residents of the places under academic scrutiny? How has the image of the cultural “other” evolved historically? This course will take one such area—Latin America—as its case study. The students will familiarize themselves with the different ways that knowledge about Latin America has been produced. Through reading and discussion, the students will critically reflect on the plural, often contradictory, notions of Latin America—as a colonial subject, a mythological exotic place, a hotbed of poverty and violence, a popular tourist destination—and the fears, fantasies, and power relations that belie them.
Course objectives
By the end of the course, the students will
- Have knowledge and understanding of the concepts of area studies, knowledge production, identity construction, critical reflexivity in scholarship,
- Recognize the implication of historical ideas in contemporary discourses of places and their inhabitants
- Be able to critically reflect on the “neutrality” of maps, borders, ethnic categories, and other normative classificatory mechanisms
- Distinguish between ethnocentric and non-ethnocentric forms of knowledge production
- Critically reflect in writing on sets of literature pertaining to specific subtopics or concepts, achieved through writing weekly “reader responses” focusing on frameworks, methodologies, and empirical findings presented in these works.
- Critically integrate in writing a final paper the knowledge and reflexivity gained about the complexity of the field of knowledge production.
Timetable
Please see the LUC website: www.lucthehague.nl
Mode of instruction
The course will be taught primarily in seminar format. In-class time will be divided between short lectures, student group presentations, student discussions of the assigned course material. Visual material will augment the readings when appropriate. Students will prepare for each class by posting “reader responses” to assigned readings on the course Blackboard site.
Assessment method
Each student will be assessed on the basis of in-class contribution (in-class participation), individual dynamic engagement with the assigned course materials (weekly “reader responses” posted on the web), collaborative work with their peers on presenting on an assigned topic in front of the class (group presentation), and the critical synthesis and writing skills involved in writing the final paper (final paper)
- Interactive engagement with course material: assesed through In-class participation, (20% of final grade), ongoing weeks 1-7
- individual engagement with course readings: assessed through weekly webpostings (200-300 words, 20% of final grade), due weeks 1-7, Mondays at 23:59
- Understanding and presenting academic positions; group presentations skills: assesed through group presentation (20% of final grade) , as planned in first session
- critical synthesis of course material; analytics skills; writing skills: assessed through final ethnographic report (2500-3000 words, 40% of final grade), due week 8, Friday at 17:00
Blackboard
This course is supported by a BlackBoard site
Reading list
Students should purchase a copy of “Contemporary Cultures and Societies of Latin America: A Reader in the Social Anthropology of Middle and South America, Third Edition” edited by Dwight B. Heath (Waveland Press). Additional readings will be made available electronically.
Registration
This course is only open for LUC The Hague students.
Contact information
v.m.davidov@luc.leidenuniv.nl