Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Hispanophone Caribbean Literature

Catalog description

The Hispanophone Caribbean has created a vibrant literary and more broadly artistic catalogue through which to think formations of race, gender, and sexuality in the afterlife of racial slavery and under duress of colonial structures. In this course, we focus on 20th- and 21st-century Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban literary, poetic, and cinematic material within a series of historical contexts and theoretical frameworks. We ask how Hispanophone Caribbean literature and art portray and theorize racial, gendered, and sexual life in relation to historical and contemporary structures of power. What linguistic and artistic techniques do Hispanophone Caribbean literature and art use to reflect on and render queer and trans life more livable? What are the possibilities and limits of these linguistic and artistic techniques? All readings are in English translation. A playlist featuring queer and trans Caribbean artists complements the course.