Latinx Digital Cultures

Catalog description

This course introduces students to the shifting formations of Latinx culture by centering the question: How does thinking through the lens of the digital illuminate the past, present, and future of Latinx culture? The formulation “Latinx culture” includes cultures that communities and scholars have described using terms like Hispanic, Latino, Afro-Latino, Latina/o, Latin@, Chicana/o, and/or Xicana). Our first task will be to pool existing knowledge, among class members, of how different formations of Latinx culture have been understood and defined. Then, we will explore how digital tools enable the telling and re-telling of Latinx history, starting with the colonial period, and considering how the deterritorialization of indigenous peoples, settler colonialism, chattel slavery, white supremacist nationalist discourse, and language use (especially Spanish vs. English) set up the conditions and boundaries of what is considered “Latinx” today. Our foray into the nineteenth century will introduce a unit on “Testimonio and Technology” that will take us into the 20th century. Subsequent discussions of the role of media technology in the 1960s and 70s Chicano movement will culminate in an exploration of Chicanafuturism and Afrofuturism. In our final unit, we will explore how contemporary Latinx poets and cultural critics use social media to disseminate their decolonial, anti-racist work. We will analyze the role that language and code-switching plays in the dissemination of Latinx media online. The course focuses on the United States, but features significant forays into borderland and transnational areas of cultural encounter. Students will be asked to observe and reflect on how the digital projects and readings we study display the diverse methodologies of both cultural studies and the digital humanities. All course units center the analysis of the intersections of…