English R1B

Book List

Anzaldúa, Gloria: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza ; Cuadros, Gil: City of God; Islas, Arturo: The Rain God: A Desert Tale

Other Readings and Media

Other Required Texts (all available in course reader): Short pieces by authors including but not limited to Cherríe Moraga, Jose Estéban Muñoz, Heather Love, Tomás Almaguer, Antonio Viego, Leo Bersani, Mel Chen, Michael Hames-Garcia, Judith Butler, and David Halperin.

Description

In this course, we will read and write about Chicanx/Latinx literatures and cultural productions that explore GLBT and queer themes. In our approaches to the course materials, we will consider the notion of the queer, GLBT, and Chicano text.  What is a queer, Chicano, GLBT text? What is queer, Chicano, and/or GLBT writing? How and to what extent are these identitarian descriptors appropriate to the texts we study? Alongside these questions, we will also consider the interrelationships between art and activism. Can literature “do” activism? How and to what extent? In the types of literature we will be reading, is it even supposed to? What are the costs? These are some of the questions we ask as we read a set of multivalent texts situated within a triangle encompassing the Texas Río Grande Valley, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

As we analyze the various methods of research and exposition that our authors employ to convey social and literary meaning, we will work on developing our own methods of research and analysis for effective critical writing. To this end, we will focus throughout the semester on asking precise and significant questions, on identifying useful print and online sources to help us refine and answer these questions, and on translating our research findings into strong scholarly arguments.  The goal of the course is to encourage students to craft compelling questions and arguments that will grow into papers supported by student research.