ID 3531/SP 3531: Contemporary Us Latino Literature & Culture

This course introduces students to the field of Latino studies, paying particular attention to the cultural productions of U.S. Latinos in film, theater, music, fiction writing and cultural criticism. At the same time that this course reflects upon a transnational framework for understanding the continuum between U.S. Latinos and Latin American/Caribbean communities, we closely examine more U.S. based arguments supporting and contesting the use of Latino as an ethnic-racial term uniting all U.S. Latino communities. We examine the ways in which U.S. Latinos have manufactured identities within dominant as well as counter cultural registers. In this course, special attention is given to the aesthetics of autobiography and to how Latino writers experiment with this genre in order to address changing constructions of immigration, language, exile, and identity. This course is taught in English. This course will be offered in 2022-23, and in alternating years thereafter. This course satisfies the Inquiry Practicum requirement.