Reading the BorderLands: Geography and Identity Along the U.S.-Mexico Border

Catalog description

This course examines representations of the U.S.-Mexico border in relation to the actual geographic space. SPAN 326 Reading the Border/Lands (3) (GH;US) This class will center on discussions of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in cultural theory and practice. "Borderlands" is understood as a transcultural space filled with physical, cultural, economic, political, and mythical elements. The aim is to view how different artists from the Borderlands, both northern Mexican and Chicano, mediate their borderlands reality. That is to say, the goal of the class is to examine the different imaginative geographies in the borderlands. We examine a wide-ranging mix of cultural texts that includes prose, poetry, essays, and performance art, as well as film and video art. We explore how writers have historically rethought notions of citizenship, identity, and culture to create more fluid spaces of representation in cultural contact zones. We will in particular, pay close attention to the relationship between national geography and the shaping of regional identities and popular cultures and relationships between the maps that nations draw and the cultural forms that cut across them.