COML1260 - Intro to Latinx Literature and Culture

This course offers a broad introduction to the study of U.S. Latina/o/x history and culture. We will read poetry, short stories, novels, plays, and essays; watch films; and examine visual art from across a wide range of mediums and traditions, including poster art, performance art, murals, graffiti, conceptual art, and guerrilla urban interventions. In each instance, we will study this work within its historical context and with close attention to the ways it illuminates class formation, racialization, and ideologies of gender and sexuality as they shape Latino/a/xs’ experience. Topics addressed in the course will include: the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, transnational migration and the function of borders, revolutionary nationalisms, Latina feminisms, queer Latinx experience, ideology and racialization, identity formation, and the study of literature and art created within social movements. While we will address key texts, historical events, and intellectual currents from the late 19th century and early 20th century, the course will focus primarily on the period from the 1960s to the present. All texts will be in English. As part of the course, students will have the opportunity to develop and present their own artistic project. Weekly discussion posts, midterm paper, final research paper, creative project and artist statement.