Acosta, Oscar Zeta: The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973); Anzaldúa, Gloria: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987); Castillo, Ana: So Far From God (1993); Cisneros, Sandra: The House on Mango Street (1991); Paredes, Americo: "With His Pistol in His Hand": A Border Ballad and Its Hero (1958); Rivera, Tomás: ...y no se lo tragó la tierra/...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1971); Villarreal, Jose Antonio: Pocho (1959)
This course is an introductory survey of the aesthetic forms and social locations of Chicanx art and literature in the United States, from the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848 to our present moment of anti-immigrant nativism, which is signified rhetorically by the xenophobic rallying cry of "build the wall" on the one hand, and politically through the neo-fascist terror of U.S.-sponsored child concentration camps along the U.S.-Mexico border on the other. Between these two moments of racialized historical violence, we will read Chicanx cultural productions (novels, poetry, short stories, film, nonfiction narrative, visual art, and scholarship) vis-à-vis the Great Depression, the Chicana/o Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the anti-colonial feminism of Xicanisma and the "New Mestiza consciousness" of the 1980s, and the emergence of "critical Border theory" in response to neoliberal globalization under late capitalism in the American hemisphere. While these moments help anchor our exploration of Chicanx culture in particular political and historical contexts, we will also pay careful attention to questions of aesthetics and form in this course.