The Latino Experiences in the United States SOC 335                                                       Fall 2011 Instructor: Dr. Gonzalo Santos santos_class@csub.edu Office: DDH-AA205     Phone: 654-2191 Class Time: 9:30 - 10:50 am, MWF Classroom:   DDH 107G    Office Hours: 11:00 am - 12:20 pm, MWF Teaching Assistant: Mr. Joey Williams josephwilliams488@gmail.com Office: DDH-AA204 Office Hours: 11:00 am - 12:20 pm, Fridays, or by appointment

• Mario T. Garcia, 2011. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN: 0807834483.

• Camille Guerin-Gonzales, 1994. Mexican Workers And American Dreams. Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939. New York: Rutgers University Press. ISBN: 0813520487.

• Douglas S. Massey & Magaly Sanchez R, 2010. Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN: 0871545799.
  

• Kim Voss & Irene Bloemraad, 2011. Rallying for Immigrant Rights: The Fight for Inclusion in 21st Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN: 0520267559.

This course explores the rich and diverse sociological experiences of the Latino peoples in the United States around four distinct and historically specific topics covered in four books. The first one is the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, specifically the Chicano Student Movement in California (the Mario Garcia book). The second one is the earlier experience of the first large waves of Mexican worker migration, repatriation, and settlement in California's agricultural regions in the first four decades of the 20th century, just before the Second World War (the Guerin-Gonzales book). The third one takes a look at the contemporary sociological condition of U.S. Latino communities -- today 55 million strong, almost half of which are foreign-born -- specifically at the manner in which Latinos "negotiate" their ethnic & immigrant identities (the Massey & Sanchez book). The fourth topic focuses on the historic appearance of a mighty new social movement of the Latino immigrants themselves since 2006, asserting their political presence and their demands for a just & comprehensive immigration reform (the Voss & Bloemraad book). Students will have an opportunity to deepen these or other topics through writing two research papers.

The course will be run in a seminar format. Students will form thirteen groups ("grupos") of up to four students each, and, after the first week of class, will take turns introducing and analyzing the assigned readings for each session, followed by class discussion, with Dr. Santos participating. Every student group will present twice to the class during the quarter. That way each student will be asked to prepare and deliver two class presentations during the quarter, in coordination with his/her grupo.

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 each student either by giving a formal presentation that day, or, when he/she is not presenting, by bringing to class their reading assessments.  The reading assessments must be turned in to Dr. Santos at the beginning of each class session. (No late submissions will be accepted.)

Apart from the two group class presentations and the submitted reading assessments, the students will collaborate within their groups to identify, organize, divide up, research and write two research topic projects, consisting of individual research papers around a common topic related to the Latino experience in the United States.

Class Presentations: At the beginning of the course, the students will be organized in thirteen groups of up to four students each. Each group will be designated by a number. On those dates identified in the schedule below, groups will make their PowerPoint presentations on their assigned readings -- groups can expect to present twice in the quarter. Class discussion will follow the presentations. On Fridays, Mr. Joey Williams, the Teaching Assistance, will lead the class discussions.

Please email Dr. Santos an electronic copy of your presentations. Time allotted per individual presentation will be 6 to 10 minutes. Each presenting student will introduce, describe, highlight, and summarize his/her own portion of the assigned readings, and on the last slide raise one relevant, interesting question for subsequent discussion. Each student should insert appropriate quotes, charts, and figures from the portion of the textbook he/she is covering, apart from his/her own narrative. Please avoid cluttered slides, full of tiny font text (make more slides) or busy backgrounds that render the text unreadable - choose clean formats. Images are welcome, as long as they are relevant, informative, and will actually be explained by the presenter (especially charts).

As a precaution, please bring your presentations in a USB-type memory stick and also email it to your own email account. DO NOT BRING YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATION IN FORMAT ".pptx" or "ppsx", as the class computer MAY NOT READ IT (only use "ppt" or "pps" formats). When it's your turn to present, please show up EARLY to set it up & test it. It is each group's responsibility to coordinate their presentations so that there will be minimum overlap between them.

Each presentations will be graded based on: (a) the analytical strength of the presentation (how well it was organized and covered the topics selected), (b) critical thinking, original materials added, and relevance of topics covered; (c) the relevance and quality of the question posed at the end, (d) the quality of the visuals used, and (e) the quality & style of the oral delivery (communication skills).

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. No late reading assessments will be accepted, unless the student has a pre-authorized absence from Dr. Santos. PLEASE DO NOT SEND YOUR READING ASSESSMENTS BY EMAIL, as they will not be accepted.

CONTENT: Please always write on top of your reading assessments, single spaced, your name, the date, and the title of the reading you are assessing. In contrast to the presentations, these "reading assessments" must not summarize or merely describe the readings, but must critically respond to them: express what the you think about them; identify the areas of strong agreement and disagreement with the author, explaining why you do, as well as the areas or topics you find most interesting to discuss, or anything in particular that impressed you greatly, caused you confusion, or surprise. Whatever you choose to write, you should explain your specific academic and/or personal reasons for doing so. The reading assessment 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 make to analyze (by the way, early 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 their own question for class discussion.

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

Research Papers:  Students in each grupo will also be asked twice during the quarter 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 four individual research papers with complementary sub-topics. Topics can range widely in historic period, ethnic group or Latino-wide, economic, social, political, or sociocultural, immigration, social movements, wars, women, 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 for each of their individual subtopics, at least three weeks prior to the project deadlines. Grupo delegates may visit Dr. Santos for this purpose during his office hours posted above, and may also consult Mr. Joey Williams on all aspects of these research projects. The course site in Blackboard has a sample research paper to serve as a guide, as well.

Extra Points: Perfect attendance (allowing for excused absences) will be rewarded with up to five extra points. Another way to get extra credit is to attend those campus or public events Dr. Santos announces in class and write a one-to-two-page report on each of them. Prominently among these events are (a) the showing of the documentary "Taking Back the Schools," on Wed., September 21, 7:30pm, DDH-G102, and (b) the talk by Sal Castro & Mario Garcia on Friday, Sept. 30, at 4:00pm at the Doré Theater. 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 & Mr. Joey Williams:

All students are encouraged to visit Dr. Santos and/or Mr. Joey Williams regularly during their posted office hours to plan for or go over their presentations (Mr. Williams); to ensure their grupo research project topics and subtopics (Dr. Santos); to make sure their individual research papers are well focused, or to discuss any question from the class lectures, the textbooks, or their grupo class presentations (both). Consultation and approval of the grupo research topics must be done in person at Dr. Santos office by representatives of each grupo - no emails on that subject, please - at least three weeks before the research papers are due.

Dr. Santos much prefers students to come to his office during his office hours, or to call him by phone, rather than to receive e-mail messages that require more than a very short one-line reply - he appreciates the ease and fun of talking face-to-face - as opposed to typing! But if you wish to send Dr. Santos a brief, to-the-point message, you may do so at his email address above. The same applies to Mr. Williams. He will be in class on Fridays and hold office hours immediately after those classes.

My GRUPO #  is: _____                         We present on these dates: ___________ and ___________

My Own Research Subtopic # 1 is:___________________________________________________________

My GRUPO  Research Topic # 2 is:__________________________________________________________

My Own Research Subtopic # 2 is:___________________________________________________________

My  GRUPO members are:

___Name______________________Phone_____________________Email_________________________________

1._____________________________________________________________________________________________

2._____________________________________________________________________________________________

3._____________________________________________________________________________________________

4._____________________________________________________________________________________________