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CS92PROD
Latina/o Literary Cultures and Countercultures
ENGL 348
Spring 2013 not offered
Crosslisting: FGSS 348, THEA 347

In this course we will examine instances of countercultural expression in Latina/o literature, performance, and popular media. Counterculture in this context refers to a variable set of subject positions and aesthetic forms that include feminist and queer art and criticism, socialist political movements, punk, the avant-garde, sexual cultures, and the paraliterary (comic books, zines, speculative fiction). We will approach Latinidad--the feeling of being Latina/o--as a having a fluctuating sense of value from text to text, appearing and disappearing according to the exigencies of the artist situated at a particular historical, political, and cultural juncture. We will encounter moments in major Latina/o texts where to be Latina/o is a concrete experience, placed at the center of the subject's encounters with the world and built up strategically to enable protest, recognition, and inclusion. In other, minor moments in Latina/o writing, Latinidad will seem deconstructed down to subtle transmissions of linguistic style, poetics, humor, and feeling. We will also consider Latina/o literature's relationship to major American literary movements, such as realism, the Beat generation, and postmodernism. Texts will include novels, plays, poems, graphic novels, scholarly monographs, art, film, and performance footage. We will draw insights from the fields of queer studies, performance studies, and literary theory and history. We will also maintain a blog on which you will post your own critical ventures into Latina/o counterculture.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (FGSS)

Last Updated on APR-18-2024
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