Latinx Aesthetics in the Mainstream

Catalog description

In this course, we will be examining issues related to class, gender, sexuality, and race as they play out within the diverse political, social, and cultural formations that together constitute Latinidad. We will take stock of the complex “big picture”—for example, how national aesthetic conventions color Latinx attitudes towards self-expression. We will also proceed on more intimate, interpersonal terms, turning our attention to the everyday practices and imaginaries by which Latinx subjects negotiate their subjectivities within an American national project that demands assimilation without civic inclusion. The course will draw on an array of materials, bringing academic scholarship and pop culture commentaries to bear on music albums, lyrics, short stories, novels, and more.