Mapping the Borderlands: Border Culture & Migration in the U.S. & the Americas
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. ...