This course focuses on how Mexican and Central American communities envision, experience, and coexist in el Norte, the American Southwest, and along the U.S.-Mexico border. The queer Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa describes the U.S.-Mexico border as an open wound: "una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds" (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 25). This dynamic creates a "third space" or "third country" where both worlds merge, resulting in a unique 'border culture' that challenges political, artistic, racial, gender, and sexual norms. Span 295 builds on these themes by employing methodologies from literary studies, cultural studies, and border studies to analyze a diverse range of artistic expressions, including fictional narratives, essays, ethnographies, films, and visual arts. The objective is for students to identify the inherent practices of resistance and self-affirmation within border populations in Mexico, Central America, and the U.S. Course materials contain a combination of Spanish and English, and class will be conducted in Spanish.
MWF 1:00 pm – 1:50 pm; 143 Henry Administration Bldg.
CRN: 79680
Instructor: Alejandro Ramírez Mendez
Course image caption: Felipe Galindo, 4th of July from the South Border (1999)