WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2010-2011       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Reading Latinidad: Ethnicity and Strategies of Representation
ENGL 310
Spring 2011 not offered
Crosslisting: AMST 355

How might we read Latinidad? More fundamentally, how is ethnicity constructed? Our close readings of Latino/a literature and critical essays on ethnicity will help us reflect on what's at stake in such questions. Too often the cultural production of the ethnic subject is read as a transparent document that exhibits some truth or essence about the community in question. The theoretical component of our seminar explores the logic and ideological machinations behind this kind of reading practice through examinations of ethnicity as a historical category and an analytic paradigm in literary studies. By investigating the repertoire of narrative strategies through which Latino/a authors have represented ethnicity and identity, we will develop a more nuanced and tactical understanding of how the literary and the political intersect. In every set of texts, we will scrutinize a particular component of representation (the body, language, sexuality, affect, or space) to focus, but not constrict, our readings. The ultimate goal of our seminar exchanges is to read literature that troubles, expands, and destabilizes latinidad as a fixed conceptual category.

Essential Capabilities: Intercultural Literacy, Interpretation
This seminar will explore how and why ethnicity is constructed.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST)

Last Updated on DEC-06-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459