Race, Gender, and Sexuality (382-0-20)
Topic
Queer Latinx Cultures: Aesthetics, Archives & Perf
Instructors
Adriana Silvestre
Meeting Info
555 Clark B01: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM
Overview of class
Topic: Queer Latinx Cultures: Aesthetics, Archives, and Performance.
This course is organized around the reading of books and journals exploring the interconnectedness of cultures, aesthetics, and archives. The course considers how our understandings of cultures are based on the racialization of minoritized communities. We start by an acknowledgment that Latinx sexualities are complex and not fixed. We will read texts from queer and trans scholars in Latinx studies as well as engage with visual culture, performances, archives, and music. Throughout we will explore a variety of cultures such as Drag Balls, Tea Parties, Queer Punks, Queer Femmes, Art, and Pop-Culture. Students will become familiar with important scholarship in the growing field of Latinx queer studies and will develop a stronger critical analytic on how race, class, sexuality, and gender inform our understanding in the current political climate.
Learning Objectives
• Students will obtain a firm understanding of how sexuality is shaped by social contexts and structures of power.
• Students will learn how queer Latinx have used scholarship, art, and activism to express their perspectives on sexuality and address gender and sexual injustice in society and culture.
• Students learn and apply theoretical frameworks for understanding the working conditions and cultural reception of queer Latinx cultural work.
Teaching Method
discussion, films/videos, guest speakers, lecture, listening exercises, readings, research project, seminar, writing assignments
Evaluation Method
class participation; listening exercises; paper, final; paper, mid-term; papers; readings; research project; writing assignments
Class Materials (Required)
* Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance
* Leticia Alvarado Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production
* Richard T. Rodriguez A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk & US Latinidad
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area