LALS 105 - Conceptualizing Latin and Latino/a America

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2016/17b: Children’s Rights in Latin America and the United States. The course explores the theories surrounding, and legal and other strategies for understanding and advancing the human rights of children, adolescents, and youth in the United States and Latin America. Initial classes explore the foundational question of what it means to treat children as rights holders and review the origins and ongoing application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), including issues related to US and Latin American treaty ratification. Subsequent classes explore both conceptual and implementation challenges of selected child rights issues - covering both the domestic and Latin American arenas, including but not limited to: migration, alternative care and adoption; inequities in education systems; child labor; and children and small weapons trade; addressing discrimination against children based on disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation; and the policy questions around public and private sector investment in and responsibility for child rights fulfillment. Country-based case studies from the United States, Bolivia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, are used to ensure that students come away with a solid understanding of current conditions. Tracey Holland.

Two 75-minute periods.