Fall 2026
CH ST 594 - Special Topics by Prof. J. Garcia (Racialized Illegality, Stress, and Health Inequities: Chicanx Critical Perspectives)
This doctoral seminar examines the intersections of racialized illegality, migration, racism, stress, and mental health through interdisciplinary frameworks grounded in Chicanx Studies, sociology, public health, Critical Race Theory, and feminist epistemologies. The course interrogates how immigration law, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and state violence produce and sustain mental health inequities among Latinx communities. Students will engage foundational and contemporary scholarship on deportability, racialization, stress processes, structural vulnerability, and immigrant health while critically examining the production of knowledge surrounding migration and mental health. Particular attention is given to Chicana feminist epistemologies, Latinx Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), decolonial methodologies, and qualitative research approaches that center lived experience, resistance, and community knowledge. The seminar culminates in the development of an original research paper suitable for conference presentation or publication submission.
CH ST 594 - Special Topics by Prof. E. Hernandez (Chicanx Studies in the Twenty-First Century)
This graduate seminar examines emerging intellectual, cultural, political, and methodological trends
shaping contemporary Chicanx Studies. Building upon foundational scholarship, the course explores
contemporary developments, paying particular attention to decolonial theory, migration, queer and
Trans studies, environmental justice, digital humanities, and millennial/Gen Z anxieties shaped
by neoliberalism, racial capitalism, and border violence. Students will investigate how contemporary
Chicanx cultural production responds to precarity, displacement, surveillance, social media, and mental
health uncertain futures.
Participants will engage with major theoretical interventions alongside literature, visual culture, film,
music, social movements, archival practices, and digital humanities projects. Special emphasis will be
placed on border epistemologies, decolonial methodologies, and the evolving relationship between
scholarship, humanities, history, film and cultural production. This is an interdisciplinary course.
The course also emphasizes graduate-level research formation, encouraging students to develop original
work, interdisciplinary projects that connect historical frameworks in Chicanx Studies to contemporary
issues and emerging scholarly conversations.
Winter 2027
CH ST 594 - Special Topics by Prof. G. Batz (Central American Political History)
The course will provide a historiography of Central America with an emphasis on the region's political history. This will include (but not limited to) an examination of grassroots social movements, indigenous and black resistance, and geopolitical perspectives and foreign intervention.