Latin American and Latinx Studies

“The future belongs to the ghosts,” remarked the philosopher Jacques Derrida in 1996, as his interlocutor, Bernard Stiegler, phrases the main idea behind that statement: “Modern technology, contrary to appearances, increases tenfold the power of ghosts.” With the advent of the internet, various forms of social media, and the ubiquity of filmic images in our lives, Derrida's observations have proven to be quite prophetic, such that they call for a new field of study—one that requires less an ontology of being and the real and more a “hauntology” (to invoke Derrida's punish term) of the spectral, the virtual, the phantasmic, the imaginary, and the recurrent revenant. In this seminar, we consider ways in which the past and present are haunted by ghosts and vexed by spectrality. Topics to be covered include: specters and hauntings, figures and apparitions, history and memory, trauma and political crisis, fantasy and imagination, digital interfaces, haunted data and archives, and visual and acoustical images. We will consider a range of films and video, photography, literary texts, acoustic reverberations, internet and social media, and everyday discourses and imaginings. Through these inquiries, we will be able to further our understanding of the nature of specters and apparitions in the contemporary world in their many forms and dimensions. Students will be invited to undertake their own hauntologies and thus craft studies of the phenomenal force of specters, hauntings, and the apparitional in particular social or cultural contexts.

What does it mean for a society to deem certain people “illegal” immigrants? How do the politics and policies of contemporary deportation regimes affect migrants’ lives? In what ways does discourse about borders and belonging, citizenship and criminality, shape migrants’ everyday experience in places like Ghana, Nicaragua, Italy, and the United States? In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore how social categories, language, law, and public policy shape processes of immigration and migrant lives across the globe. Drawing upon recent work in cultural anthropology, sociology, linguistics, public policy, and critical ethnic and Indigenous studies, we will examine the ramifications of immigration policies and public discourses that demarcate citizenship, membership, and belonging in diverse contexts. We will analyze how the experience of unauthorized migration is affected by the particular intersections of racial, ethnic, class, gender, generational, and legal boundaries that migrants cross. In so doing, we will pose a range of questions. For example, how do undocumented youth navigate the constraints imposed by “illegalized” identities, and how do they come to construct new self-perceptions as emerging adults? How do families navigate transnational migration, separation, and the threat of arrest, detention, and deportation in various social contexts? What forms do resistance and protest take, and how do migrants participate in social movements and social change? These questions will allow us to analyze how different forms of power—implemented across realms, including state-sponsored surveillance and immigration enforcement, language and educational policy, health and social services—shape and constrain immigrants’ understanding of their place in the world, and their experience of exclusion and belonging. These questions will also lead us to ask how the categories of legal status or citizenship help us to understand the sociocultural, economic, and political structures that shape all of our lives. In tandem with our readings, we will welcome scholar-activist guest speakers, who will present their current work in the field. Students will conduct conference projects related to the central themes of the course.

Javanese shadow theatre, Bedouin love poems, and American community life are but a few of the sociocultural worlds that anthropologists have effectively studied and written about. This is no easy task, given the substantial difficulties involved in understanding and portraying the concerns, activities, and lifeworlds other than one’s own. Despite these challenges, ethnographic research is generally considered one of the best ways to form a nuanced and contextually rich understanding of a particular social world. To gain an informed sense of the methods, challenges, and benefits of such an approach, students will try their hands at ethnographic research and writing. In fall, each student will be asked to undertake an ethnographic research project in order to investigate the features of a specific social world—such as a homeless shelter, a religious festival, or a neighborhood in Brooklyn. In spring, students will craft a fully realized piece of ethnographic writing that conveys something of the features and dynamics of that world in lively, accurate, and comprehensive terms. Along the way, and with the help of anthropological writings that are either exceptional or experimental in nature, we will collectively think through some of the most important features of ethnographic projects, such as interviewing others, the use of field notes, the interlacing of theory and data, the role of dialogue and the author’s voice in ethnographic prose, and the ethical and political responsibilities that come with any attempt to understand and portray the lives of others.

There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarity. —Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is one of the most important thinkers and writers of the 20th century. His many writings and innovative concepts, which continue to be discussed and debated today, are of pressing relevance for the contemporary moment, marked as it is by themes of technological and aesthetic transformations, political violence, and histories of exile and displacement. The purpose of this intensive seminar will be to delve into the textures of Benjamin’s life—from his childhood years in Berlin to his final days in France and Spain—while considering the diverse and intricate formations of Benjamin’s thought and writing. For this inquiry, we will be drawing from a number of biographical, historiographic, political, literary, and anthropological lines of analysis to gain an incisive sense of his groundbreaking writings on film and photography, literature and translation, concepts of history, and the politics of culture. Along the way, we will connect Benjamin’s thought to other significant writers and philosophers, including Charles Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida. We will focus on a number of key texts authored by Benjamin, including Berlin Childhood around 1900, The Arcades Project, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” “The Task of the Translator,” “The Storyteller,” and “On the Concept of History.” In engaging with these and other challenging texts and giving thought to Benjamin’s life and death more generally, students will develop a richly informed understanding of the life and thought of this singularly compelling person while coming to terms with the haunted histories of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This course will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it, alongside exploring the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands and identifying the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, the Tea Party movement, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, billionaires, militias, and more) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anti-communism, immigration, environment, white supremacy and nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, anti-globalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the course will focus most specifically on United States context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage classmates in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. Students will also conduct two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the college and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food-production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment, focusing in particular on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. We will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of poverty and the making of the “Third World,” access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (e.g., the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation states to develop natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems—such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism—we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. The course will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course will examine the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and potential distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. Attendance will be required for one farm/factory field trip. Regular postings of short essays will be required, as well as follow-up commentaries with classmates. There will be occasional in-class essays and a final quiz at the end of the semester. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include debates, a film, workshopping, and small-group discussions. Students will prepare a poster project over the semester on a related topic presented at the end of the course in the final group conference.

This seminar will begin by examining competing paradigms and approaches to understanding “development” and the “Third World.” The course will set the stage by answering the question: What did the world look like 500 years ago? The purpose of this part of the course is to acquaint us with and to analyze the historical origins and evolution of a world political-economy of which the Third World is an intrinsic component. We will thus study the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of merchant and finance capital, and the colonization of the world by European powers. We will analyze case studies of colonial "development" to understand the evolving meaning of this term. These case studies will help assess the varied legacies of colonialism apparent in the emergence of new nations through the fitful and uneven process of decolonization that followed. The next part of the course will look at the United Nations and the role some of its associated institutions have played in the post-World War II global political-economy, one marked by persistent and intensifying socioeconomic inequalities as well as frequent outbreaks of political violence across the globe. By examining the development of institutions that have emerged and evolved since 1945, the course will attempt to unravel the paradoxes of development in different eras. We will deconstruct the measures of development through a thematic exploration of population, resource use, poverty, access to food, the environment, agricultural productivity, and different development strategies adopted by Third World nation states. We will then examine globalization and its relation to emergent international institutions and their policies; for example, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. The course will then turn to contemporary development debates and controversies; for example, the widespread land grabbing (by sovereign wealth funds, China, hedge funds, etc.), rising nationalism and anti-state populism, the contested role of international aid, and the climate-change crisis. Throughout the course, investigations of international institutions, transnational corporations, the role of the state, and civil society will provide the backdrop for the final focus of the class—the emergence of regional coalitions for self-reliance, environmental and social justice, and sustainable development. Our analysis of development in practice will draw upon case studies primarily from Africa, but also from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States. Conference work will be closely integrated with the themes of the course, with a two-stage substantive research project. Project presentations will incorporate a range of formats, from traditional papers to multimedia visual productions.

This introductory queer and feminist studies course will center the intellectual work of theorists within the traditions known as Black feminist theory and queer of color critique. The course will read scholarship by Gloria Anzaldúa, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Barbara Christian, Cathy J. Cohen, the Combahee River Collective, Roderick Ferguson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Saidiya Hartman, E. Johnson Patrick, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, José Esteban Muñoz, Jennifer C. Nash, C. Riley Snorton, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Williams. The course will also explore documentary films by Marlon Riggs, fiction by Toni Morrison, creative nonfiction and poetry by Claudia Rankine, and the films Moonlight (directed by Barry Jenkins) and The Watermelon Woman (directed by Cheryl Dunye). Conference projects will emerge from archival research at the Sarah Lawrence College Archives. Students will meet every two weeks at the Sarah Lawrence College Library in one of four conference groups organized around overarching topics of concern and debate from the class, including: 1) critical fabulation, 2) institutionality and the academy, 3) violence, resistance, and care, and 4) emotion. Major writing assignments will include four brief “archival dispatches,” where students will report on their research findings to describe their intellectual, political, and emotional investments in the archives. For the course's final assignment, students will develop an individual project proposal that envisions a future intellectual, activist, or artistic response to the archives.

Whitman famously embraced the internal contradictions in his poetry, asserting, “I contain multitudes.” His statement was also prophetic—and not only with regard to his large and diverse progeny among poets writing in English. Whitman’s impact on Hispanic and Portuguese literary culture began with José Martí’s 1887 essay, “El poeta Walt Whitman,” written by the exiled Cuban poet after hearing Whitman give a public reading. Published in Argentina’s La Nación, Martí’s appreciation incepted a cult of Whitman that spread throughout Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Whitman became the formative influence on Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (who said of Whitman, “He taught us everything.”), Mexican poet-critic, Octavio Paz, and Peruvian poet, César Vallejo. The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca included an "Ode to Walt Whitman" in his sequence, "Poet in New York"; and multiple strains in Whitman’s poetry can be found under the various “heteronyms” created by the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, who not only "contained multitudes" but also provided each of his multiple selves with a name, a biography, and a unique body of literary work. In this seminar, we will begin with Whitman’s major works before turning to the poetry of Pessoa, Lorca, and Neruda, among others. While observing Whitman’s influence on his Luso-Hispanic heirs, we will also strive to appreciate them on their own terms for the imaginative power and originality of their contributions to modern poetry—which have made them national and international figures in their own right. Poems written in Spanish will be read in opposing-page translations, allowing those familiar with the language to make reference to the original.

At the end of the Cold War, many Western writers wrote triumphantly about the global victory of democracy and capitalism. In the last decade, we have been bombarded with news of autocrats, both at home and abroad, undermining democracy. Income and wealth inequality have been on the rise. At the same time, surveys in a number of high- and middle-income democracies show increasing dissatisfaction with democracy. This course will address both the promise and challenges of democracy. We will consider the connections between liberal democracy and market capitalism as they have reinforced and contradicted one another. We will explore the role of social movements, including on university campuses, in bringing about change and the alternative ideals that they have offered. In this moment of great significance for the future of American democracy, particular attention will be paid to the United States; but we will also consider a set of powerful states outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which have defined themselves as the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. We will explore the increase in populist leaders and popular uprisings across these states, as well as the role of ethnic nationalism and inequality. As we learn from the past to evaluate the present, we will consider a range of popular responses to these challenges, as well as alternative frameworks for the future.

This introductory course will offer a comprehensive foundation in spoken and written language, focusing on pronunciation, speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing. Intended for students with no prior knowledge of Spanish, the course will integrate classroom learning with language-lab exercises to reinforce and supplement material. Through a variety of activities, students will develop the skills necessary to engage in basic conversations, comprehend short texts, and express simple ideas in writing. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand basic spoken phrases, introduce themselves and talk about family and friends, express their needs in everyday situations, and write short personal essays. Additionally, the course will explore the rich diversity of Hispanic cultures through music, films, and poetry, strengthening students' cultural knowledge and appreciation. Through the study of women poets like Angelamaría Dávila, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Cristina Peri Rossi, as well as urban and punk music movements, students will explore themes of resistance, identity, and cultural change. Group conferences will provide an opportunity to expand upon what we have learned in the classroom and provide a space to address any additional questions or concerns regarding the materials presented thus far. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, weekly individual meetings with a Spanish language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required.

Through an array of authentic materials such as songs, short stories, short poems, and advertising campaigns, students will develop an appreciation of the Spanish-speaking world and its cultures. Throughout the year, we will use a communicative approach to further build on students’ knowledge and employment of Spanish grammar. This discussion-based seminar will follow a "flipped classroom" methodology, where students are first introduced to the materials at home and then come to class to delve deeper into these concepts. This course is intended for novice-level students with some prior exposure to the Spanish language. It is ideal for students who want a faster pace than Beginning Spanish (SPAN 3001) but who have not yet acquired an intermediate-level grasp of the Spanish language. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, weekly individual meetings with a Spanish language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required. 

This course will survey visual forms of expression across Latin America that record history and represent cultural memories, struggles, and identities. By approaching material sources, students will broaden their comprehension skills and activate discourse production to engage critically in oral and written discussions about historical and social challenges. Among other sources, we will address political violence and resistance through comics such as El Síndrome Guastavino and Violencia política en el Perú, films such as Nostalgia de la luz and La noche de los 12 años, and arpilleras textile art. As students are introduced to Mexican muralism in the 20th century, they will broaden their understanding by analyzing contemporary expressions of street art and graffiti in Brazil and Cuba. Students will also learn about the cholets, Andean architecture from El Alto, and floating houses across delta rivers and lakes. Alongside photography, we will explore the use of body art, from the funerary rituals of Indigenous Selk'nam to Afro-Caribbean masquerades, Mara gang tattoos, and feminist activism. In this seminar, students will examine material culture to deepen their understanding of discursive structures such as description, exposition, narration, comparison, and argumentation. Students will also enhance their Spanish language skills by expanding their vocabulary and effectively applying linguistic and grammatical resources. Throughout the course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop written and oral communication skills in Spanish, as well as critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through multimedia projects that foster multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research trip to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Museo de El Barrio, Institute for Latin American Art, Hispanic Society of America, and Bronx Museum of the Arts. In addition to class time, students will attend a weekly conversation session with a language tutor. All primary sources, class discussions, and assignments will be in Spanish.

Hiding in plain sight, conveniently co-opted for political and ideological reasons, or erased from historical and national literary textbooks, Afro-Latin American and Caribbean women have long endured a battle against an imposing silence. As an undeniable trace of their existence and agency, their writings reveal a creative intellect employed to partake in the conversations that their compatriots insisted on having without them. Aware of this dynamic, these women turned to literature to circulate their ideas and, in so doing, granted us a hemispheric conversation that complicates our understanding of women’s epistemology and positionality in Latin America and the Caribbean. This discussion-based seminar will delve into this dialogue. Throughout the semester, we will read and analyze enriching narratives originally written in Spanish by Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some of these writers will include Salomé Ureña Díaz, Virginia Brindis de Salas, Luz Argentina Chiriboga, María Teresa Ramírez, Mayra Santos-Febres, and Mariángel Gasca Posadas. Through these case studies, students will learn about "artivisim" and come up with adequate creative and scholarly responses. To advance their critical thinking skills in this target language, students will further hone their communication and comprehension skills through advanced grammar review and weekly conversation sessions in small groups with the language assistant. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

This course will examine films produced in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 40 years that contributed to their nations’ collective memory, history, and cultural identity. Students will watch short and full-length feature films, ranging from melodrama to documentary and passing through thriller and romance. We will analyze how Luis Puenzo, Andrés Wood, and Mariano Barroso employed four areas of cinema to construct and visualize a collective memory after the atrocities resulting from the dictatorial regimes in Argentina, Chile, and the Dominican Republic, respectively. The course will also explore how cinema was utilized to recuperate and disseminate cultural identity and history in Peru, Honduras, and Puerto Rico. In this discussion-based seminar, students will learn a basic technical language to offer pointed criticism about films produced in Spanish in Latin America and the Caribbean. Students will also delve into the existing scholarship regarding memory, history, and nationalism to think critically about the narratives that they will encounter. Through advanced grammar review and weekly conversation sessions—in small groups with the language assistant—students will further hone their communication skills in Spanish. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

The growing recognition of Latin American comics as a subject of academic study in the 21st century has further diversified the medium in the region. This course will explore the representation of Indigenous identities and cultural narratives in contemporary Chilean comics, focusing on works published during the 2000s boom. This moment was driven by various factors, such as collaborative projects, the strengthening of distribution circuits, efforts by independent publishers, access to global comic industries, and state funding opportunities. Students will engage with frameworks from comics studies and critical theory to analyze how these graphic sources challenge hegemonic representations and contribute to broader discussions on Indigenous representation, cultural resistance, and transnational dialogues on race and ethnicity. Students will analyze comic genres ranging from historical fiction and fantasy to superheroes and horror, the course will examine how Indigenous cultures are represented within the framework of post-indigenism, as studied through Alemani's research. Rather than merely recalling pre-Hispanic myths or questioning identity in response to colonial wounds, contemporary Chilean comics position Indigenous narratives within a globalized world through complex sequential narratives and hybrid aesthetics. Among other references, Chajnantor draws on Japanese manga to depict cultural aspects of the high plateau and the Atacama desert, while the Varua saga examines historical milestones and oral traditions to reconstruct Rapa Nui cultural memory. Adventure comics shape Mapuche superhero resistance in Guardianes del Sur, and manga-inspired robots depict a Selk’nam futurist society after settler colonialism in Mecha Selk’nam. The collaborative project Mitoverso creates a universe of superheroes inspired by folk stories, while Los fantasmas del viento articulates the intersection of Indigenous groups and European descendants in the Patagonian region. Throughout this course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop communication skills in Spanish and critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through a semester-long multimedia project that enhances multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research visit to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Society of Illustrators, Brooklyn Independent Comics Showcase, and The Drawing Center. All primary sources, class discussions, and assignments will be in Spanish.

What role does speculation play in subverting the past, rethinking the present, and building different futures within the Americas? The field of speculative fiction uses multiple forms of arts and media to craft fictional imaginaries that have become a vehicle to narrate historical horror by studying Merla-Watson and Olguín and to criticize versions of modernity imposed across the Americas by studying Colanzi. While these speculative imaginaries use the codes of fiction—such as space-time travel, horror, robots, alternative realities, zombies, and genetics—they also expand upon them to address struggles of the Americas’ history of colonialism, dispossession, and mestizaje. In this advanced seminar, we will engage in a cross-cultural trajectory of contemporary speculative fiction in multiple forms, such as literature, comics, film, and performance within the United States-Mexico border, the Caribbean, and the Southern Cone. Topics studied may include: from Anzaldúa’s Borderlands to her theory on Queer Futurities and from critical race theory to movies such as La Llorona, Juan de los muertos, and Sleep Dealer. This trajectory will also range from mainstream franchises, such as Marvel and Star Wars, to superheroes depiction in El Alto and Tierra del Fuego. We will focus on transdisciplinary works by Rita Indiana and Luis Carlos Barragán and artwork by Marion Matínez, Amalia Ortiz, and Edgar Clement. We will also reflect on Futurisms made by mestizos, Indigenous, and Afro-Caribbeans while assessing the scopes of climate change and environmental crisis within these communities. Throughout this course and biweekly conference meetings, students will develop communication skills in Spanish and critical-thinking abilities. Students will further advance their research skills through a semester-long multimedia project that enhances multiliteracy and public humanities competencies. The course also contemplates one field research trip to relevant local museum exhibits and artist conventions, such as the Center for Fiction, Feria Internacional del Libro de la Ciudad de Nueva York, and Museum of the Moving Image. Sources will be in Spanish, English, and Spanglish, while class discussions and assignments will be conducted entirely in Spanish.

What might it mean for a writer to be useful to a state? How have states used writers, witting and unwitting, in projects aimed at influence and hegemony? How might a state make use of language as a weapon? What might it mean for a writer to attempt to avoid being useful to a state? How might a state inflect and influence the intimacy between a writer and what we may write? In this course, we will discuss an array of choices that writers have made in relation to state power, focusing particularly on the United States from just after World War II until the present. Students will be asked to read excerpts from six texts: Joel Whitney’s Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers; Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; Eric Bennett’s Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War; Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism; and two long poems, Peter Dale Scott’s "Coming to Jakarta" and Dionne Brand's "Inventory." Group conferences will function as writing workshops to offer students feedback on their letters in progress in addition to various writing exercises. The lens of this course will be that of a writer—using deep study and playful practice to figure out the dilemmas and best practices of the present.