FWS: Writing AfroLatinidad: Race, Gender, and Transnationalism

Catalog description

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Latino/a/x communities are the fastest-growing population of residents. Yet how do we define “Latino/a/x”? Who is (or is not) included in such terminology? This course complicates the stability of race, ethnicity, and nationality by focusing on the lives of African descendants across the Americas. Through weekly discussion posts, short creative writing sketches, and a final research paper, each class presents the possibilities and limitations of "Afro-Latinidad" as a concept and social identification. Drawing from key texts such as The Afro-latin@ Reader (2010) and AfroLatin@s in Movement (2016), we will learn how factory workers, politicians, and artists use writing as a vehicle not simply to understand themselves but also to contend with injustices on a local and global level. The course's purpose is to consider what writing reveals to us about ourselves and others.