Bachelor of Arts - Latina/Latino Studies

Latina/Latino Studies is a unique liberal arts B.A. degree program with an emphasis on equity, social justice, and community empowerment. The program offers an opportunity to study within a multidisciplinary framework of knowledge to develop critical thinking skills, analytical writing skills, and an area of expertise centered on Latinas/Latinos/Latinx in California and the United States. The program is designed to develop the knowledge, skills, and consciousness that empower students to function as effective leaders. The major prepares students for graduate and professional schools, for a wide range of public and private sector employment, and a lifetime of community commitment and involvement. The Latina/Latino Studies curriculum is critical, analytical, holistic, and cutting-edge. Students choose an integrated series of required and elective courses, as well as General Education classes, focused on Latinas/Latinos/Latinx in the United States. Theoretical frameworks address race, class, sexuality, and gender inequities historically and in the present time in an analysis of multiple marginalities, community resistance, and empowerment. The Latina/Latino Studies curriculum favors a pan-ethnic and comparative approach grounded in the U.S. but sometimes following a trajectory to Latin American countries of origin and the indigenous cultures and histories connected to Latina/Latino diasporic communities. The institutional experiences, social and national identities, cultural expressions, and resistance movements of Chicana/o/x, Mexican, Caribbean, Central American, and South American communities in the U.S. are centrally addressed. The program focuses on gender, transnational identities, global economies, social movements, and literatures of resistance. The Latina/Latino Studies curriculum is grounded local communities. This program is committed to community service, civic engagement, social justice, and equity. The Department recognizes the importance of critical, socially responsible scholarship and link classrooms to local communities and their empowerment through Community Service Learning Program.