Topics in Latinx Literature (377-0-20)
Topic
Chicanx and Mexican Feminisms
Instructors
Mariajose Rodriguez Pliego
Meeting Info
University Hall 218: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
Mexican and Chicanx oral traditions remember the Indigenous interpreter who led Hernán Cortés through Mesoamerica by the name of La Malinche. In the five centuries since her death, she has become a symbol for treachery, a seductress that sided with the enemy of her people for personal gain. This course takes the myth of La Malinche as a starting point to consider the construction of gender that underlies Chicanx and Mexican identities. It considers female and queer writers from the twentieth and twenty first centuries who have sought to reframe women's roles in Chicanx and Mexican storytelling. We will read stories about traitors, witches, and madwomen; stories that center language as our main instrument to fabricate and rupture gender roles. Our discussions will pay particular attention to the literary traditions that authors take up to narrate the unsettling reality of gender-based violence: surrealism, horror stories, realist fiction, and hybrid forms. We will consider how feminist reformulations of horror, surrealism, and realism might respond to the male-dominated traditions of magical realism, the Chicano nationalist movement, and Mexican philosophy. We will also study the visual mediums through which generations of Chicanx feminists have celebrated their multicultural heritage as well as the protest art forms emerging from the ongoing Mexican feminist movement Ni Una Menos (Not One More). Our course materials will reveal the rich genealogy of female artists behind contemporary feminist uprisings in Mexico and in Mexican American communities.
Teaching Method
Discussion-based.
Evaluation Method
Midterm and final paper, personal essay, attendance and participation.
Class Materials (Required)
Short stories, visual art, poetry and essays from Cherie Moraga, Amparo Dávila, Leonora Carrington, Gloria Anzaldúa, Frida Kahlo, Guadalupe Nettel, and Wendy Trevino.
Texts will be available at: Materials will be scanned and uploaded to Canvas.
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity