The Latino Experiences in the United States SOC 335            FALL 2015 Instructor: Dr. Gonzalo Santos santos_class@csub.edu Office: DDH-AA205    Phone: 654-2191 Class: 3:00-5:05 pm MW, BDC 154B Office Hours: 12:00-2:00 pm, MW Teaching Assistant: Ms. Yesenia Vargas yvargasmarie@gmail.com Office: DDH-AA204   Phone: 654-2718 Office Hours: 2:00-2:50 pm, MW

This course explores the rich and diverse historical and sociological - class, gender, ethnic, and migrant - experiences of the Latino peoples in the United States around three historical eras covered in the three books assigned, plus in extra course materials placed on Blackboard. The first era corresponds to the beginning of large-scale Mexican worker migration and settlement in California's agricultural regions, which occurred in the first four decades of the 20th century, just before the Second World War (the Guerin-Gonzales book). This experience includes the imfamous "Repatriation Campaign" of the 1930s during the Great Depression.

The second era, from the 1940s to the 1980s, is marked by the social and geographic marginalization of Mexican American communities in the U.S. Southwest, their coerced assimilation and discrimination experiences, which sparked first a civil rights movement, the farmworker movement, the first Latino political campaigns, and then an ethnic rebellion in the late 1960s and early 1970s - the Chicano Movement -, all in tension with the growing guest-worker (bracero) and undocumented migrant flows  from Mexico (the Gutierrez book).

The third experience we study is the post-1965 dramatic rise in Mexican and other Latin American immigration to the U.S., both regular and undocumented, all the way to the present, combined with the contested establishment of the multicultual society model, which has led to the multifaceted, uneven and incomplete, ongoing integration of U.S.-born Latinos into the mainstream of American economic, political, and social life (the Garcia book).

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course will be run in a format combining lectures by Dr. Santos and student presentations. Students will form sixteen groups ("grupos") of up-to-three students each, and, after the first week of class, will take turns introducing and analyzing the assigned readings for each session, followed by the lecture & class discussion. Every student group will present once to the class during the quarter. Presenting students must meet beforehand and divide up the readings among themselves. Some days we may also have a video documentary presentation.

Attendance is absolutely mandatory (please, no tardiness or early departures, as these too will be penalized). ALL students must come prepared to discuss the assigned readings for each class session - a policy that will be implemented by having every student not presenting on a given day bring a reading assessment for each of the readings assigned.  The reading assessments must be turned in to Dr. Santos at the beginning of each class session. (No late submissions will be accepted.)

Besides the grupo class presentations and the reading assessments turned in at every class (except when presenting), the students will collaborate within their grupo on one research project, consisting of individual research papers around a selected grupo topic related to the Latino experience in the United States.

Class Presentations: At the beginning of the course, the students will be self-organized in 16 groups of up to three students each. Each group will be designated by a number. On the date identified in the schedule below, groups will make their individual PowerPoint class presentations. Class discussion & Dr. Santos's lecture will follow the presentations.

Please upload your presentation in the course's Blackboard account prior to giving it or immediately afterwards, for purposes of eventual grading. Time allotted per individual presentation is up to 10 minutes. Each presenting student will introduce, describe, highlight, and summarize his/her own portion of an assigned reading, and on the last slide raise one pertinent, interesting question for subsequent discussion. Each student should insert appropriate quotes, charts, and figures from the portion of the textbook he/she is covering, or from extra sources, apart from his/her own text. Please avoid cluttered slides full of tiny font text -- instead, make more slides with less text each --; or busy, messy backgrounds that render the text unreadable - please choose clean formats. Images are welcome, as long as they are relevant, informative, and will be explained by the presenter (especially charts). If you put up a picture or graph, be prepared to refer to it and answer detailed questions about it!

As a precaution, please bring your presentation in a USB-type memory stick and also email it to your own email account. IMPORTANT: When it's your turn to present, please show up EARLY to set up & test your individual presentation.

Each individual presentation will be graded based on: (a) the analytical strength of the presentation (how well it was organized, the topics selected, and how well these were covered), (b) critical thinking displayed, the quality and relevance of all visuals and materials added; (c) the relevance and quality of the question posed at the end, and (d) the quality & style of the oral delivery (your communication skills). NOTE: Points will be take off for poor group coordination and presentations' overlap or repetitiveness.

Reading Assessments: To ensure that everybody come to every class prepared to discuss the assigned readings, students who are not presenting must bring to class one written "reading assessment" per chapter assigned, each one-to-two pages in length, double-spaced, one-inch margins, font 12 text. Dr. Santos may randomly select a couple of students to read their assessments and/or questions in the discussion period.  PLEASE DO NOT SEND YOUR READING ASSESSMENTS BY EMAIL, as they will not be accepted and will simply be deleted. NOTE: No late reading assessments will be accepted, unless the student has a pre-authorized absence from Dr. Santos.

CONTENT: Please always write on top of your reading assessments, single spaced, your name, the date, and the title of the chapter/book you are assessing. In contrast to the presentations, these "reading assessments" must not summarize or describe the readings, but must critically respond to a few relevant aspects you choose; express what you think about them; identify the areas of  strong agreement & disagreement with the author, or surprise, or even confusion. Whatever you choose to write, you should explain yourself. The reading assessment, being one page long, cannot and should not cover every issue found in the assigned readings for the day; you must be selective and demonstrate judgment in the choices of topics you made (by the way, "front-page topics" are always suspect!). A very bad assessment will reveal the student read very little or very superficially just to do the assignment (it's called "just going through the motion"). A good assessment will demonstrate the student really read the material and did a serious effort to select and critically grapple with some of the main issues raised. At the end of each reading assessment, students should always write an intelligent question that demonstrates you read well, for class discussion.

IMPORTANT: Students presenting on a given day do not need to submit ANY reading assessments FOR THAT DAY.

Research Paper:  Students in each grupo will also be asked to chose a pertinent sociological topic related to the varied Latino experiences in the United States, and design, organize, and carry out a written group research project on it, yielding up to three individual research papers on complementary sub-topics. Group topics can range widely in historic periods, ethnic groups; may be Latino-wide or regional; it may be primarily economic, social, political, or sociocultural; or look at specific intertwined issues in the Latino experience, such as immigration, social movements, wars, women's condition, work, family, education, religion, government, language, media, sports, health, youth, aging, etc.. The students must obtain approval from Dr. Santos for their overall grupo topic, and then work out with him each of their individual subtopics. Grupo delegates may visit Dr. Santos during his office hours posted above.

Extra Points: Perfect attendance (allowing for up to two excused absences) will be rewarded with five extra points. Another way to get extra credit is to attend those campus or public events Dr. Santos announces in class, if you write a one page follow-up assessment report on each of them. A third way to earn extra credit is this: there are two general studies courses that students are strongly encouraged to take if they wish to develop their research skills, and if they do (either or both) they will receive extra credit:  [For further information contact librarian Christy Gavin (email: <cgavin@csub.edu>, phone: 661-664-3237)].

Plagiarism: To prevent students from wittingly or unwittingly engaging in plagiarism, Dr. Santos strongly recommends students to carefully read and abide by the document CSUB Classifications of Plagiarism found at: http://www.csub.edu/tlc/options/resources/turn_it_in_help_page.shtml Anyone found guilty of engaging in plagiarism will automatically fail the course and be reported to the Office of Student Discipline and Judicial Affairs for further disciplinary action.

Office Hours & E-Mail to Dr. Santos & Ms. Vargas

All students are encouraged to visit Dr. Santos and Ms. Yesenia Vargas regularly during their respective posted office hours to plan for, or go over, their presentations; to get approval for their grupo research project topic, their own individual paper topic, and make sure their individual research papers are well organized, focused; or to discuss any question from the class lectures, the textbooks, or their grupo class presentations. 

Dr. Santos and Ms. Vargas much prefers students to come to their office during their office hours, or to call them by phone at those times, rather than to receive e-mail messages that require more than a very short one-line reply. When you send an email to Dr. santos, expect a one-line answer.

My GRUPO #  is: _____                         We present on this date: ________

My Own Research Subtopic (Paper Title) is:__________________________________________________________

My  GRUPO members are:

___Name________________________Phone_____________________Email_________________________________

1._______________________________________________________________________________________________

2._______________________________________________________________________________________________

3._______________________________________________________________________________________________