English C136

Topics in American Studies: The Wall: Art, Literature, Performance on and about the U.S.-Mexican Border

Description

This will be a course in which we will think about the emergence of a distinct border aesthetic, one in which form is often torqued by dispiriting content but which, simultaneously, also finds beauty in the cultural and natural ecologies that trace the border.

We will read The Devil's Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea, view documentaries like Rebecca Cammisa's Which Way Home? and Daffodil Altan's Kids Caught in the Crackdown, and read the poetry of Javier Zamorra, Emmy Perez, Michelle Otero, and Juan Felipe Herrera, among other poets/essayists, and we will consider art as border performance in the work of Ana Teresa Fernandez, Alberto Caro, and Guillermo Gomez Pena.

This class is cross-listed with American Studies C111E.

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