Hispanic & European Studies Program 2009/10
| Lecturer: Maria Antonia Oliver |
| email: mantonia@upf.edu |
| Office: 20.2E64 Campus Ciutadella |
This course provides an introduction to the social and cultural reality of Latinos and Latinas in the United States with a particular emphasis on the largest demographic group, the population of Mexican descent. Although we will mainly focus on literary works from the 20th century, we will look at some of the early responses to the cultural encounters between Spaniards and Native Americans, and between Spanish-speaking peoples and Anglos. Autobiographies, chronicles, fiction, music, and visual arts will be used as documents testifying to the diverse backgrounds and experiences of Latinos in the United States. The concept of the borderlands will be introduced as a prism look at cultural identities within the United States as the products of complex negotiations both inside and outside its geographical borders.
SYLLABUS
Unit 1: Introduction and paradigms
Readings:
Suzanne Oboler, "The Politics of Labelling"
Gloria Anzaldúa, "The Homeland: Aztlán"
Recommended: Acosta-Belén and Carlos Santiago,"Merging Borders"
Unit 2: Early encounters
Readings:
Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, "The Account"
Francisco Palou, "From the Historic Account of the Life and Apostolic Work of the Venerable Fray Junípero Serra"
Film screening: Lourdes Portillo, "Columbus On Trial"
Unit 3: Occupation and resistance
Readings:
Pablo de la Guerra: "The Californios"
Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don (fragments)
Anonymous, El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez. (Original and translation included in course pack)
Americo Paredes With his Pistol in his Hand (7-32, 147-150)
Recommended: Carey McWilliams, "Californios"
Unit 4: Immigration and empire
Readings:
José Martí, Our America (fragments)
Bernardo Vega, Memoirs of Bernardo Vega (fragments)
Recommended: Edna Acosta Belén and Carlos Santiago "Merging Borders" (In Unit 1).
Unit 5: Latino/a validation and ethnic consolidation
Readings:
Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, We Fed them Cactus. Selections in course pack.
Recommended: Carey McWilliams, "The Fantasy Heritage", Carey McWilliams, "Heart of the Borderlands"
Unit 6: Cultural memory
Readings:
Richard Rodríguez, Hunger of Memory (selections)
Norma Cantú, Canícula (selections)
Unit 7: The politics of language and bilingual aesthetics.
Readings:
Gloria Anzaldúa "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"
Poems by Tato Laviera, Gina Valdés, Gustavo Pérez Firmat.
Unit 8: Gender, race, and class in contemporary Latino/a fiction
Sandra Cisneros, (short stories from Woman Hollering Creek)
"Eleven", "Salvador", "Barbie-Q", "Mericans", "My Tocaya", "Woman Hollering Creek", "La Fabulosa", "Never Marry" "Remember the Alamo", "Bread", "Little Miracles; Kept Promises", "Bien Pretty"
Film: John Sayles, Lone Star.
REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS
•Course reader
•Richard Rodríguez, Hunger of Memory (1981)
•Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek (1989)
METHODOLOGY & ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
The course will be taught in English and will consist of lectures, discussions, student presentations, and one or two film screenings. The readings and films will be in English, although some of the texts may be bilingual or incorporate code switching.
Students are expected to have read the readings assigned for each week before coming to class and to be ready to discuss them. Students will be asked to lead the discussion of one or more weekly readings. In addition to the readings in the syllabus students will do a group project on a book assigned by the instructor.
There are no flexible deadlines for readings, papers, presentations, and exams. The final exam is cumulative.
ASSESSMENT
•Student participation (20%)
•A term paper (25%)
•A midterm exam (25 %)
•A final exam (30%)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Edna Acosta-Belen and Carlos E. Santiago, "Merging Borders: The Remapping of America. Latino Review of Books, Vol. 1 No.1 Spring 1995.
Andreu Iglesias, César, ed. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega. Trans. Juan Flores. New York: Monthly Review, 1984.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: La Frontera. S. Francisco: Spinsters/aunt lute, 1987.
Baron, Dennis. The English-Only Question: An Official Language for Americans. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.
Cabeza de Baca, Fabiola. We Fed them Cactus (1954). Alburquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1994.
Calderón, Héctor, and José David Saldívar, eds. Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies on Chicano Literature, Culture, and Ideology. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Cantú, Norma Elia. Canícula: Snapshots of a girlhood en la Frontera. Alburquerque: University of Mexico Press, 1995.
Elliott, Emory, Louis Freitas Caton, and Jeffrey Rhyne, eds. Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2002.
De la Torre Adela and Beatriz M. Pesquera eds. Building with Our Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies, eds. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.
Flores, Juan ed. Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1992.
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo. The New World Border. San Francisco: City Lights, 1996.
González, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. London: Penguin, 2000.
Fregoso, Rosalinda. The Bronze Screen: Chicano and Chicana Film Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.
Hall, Stuart. "Ethnicity, Identity and Difference." Radical America 23, no. 4 (1995): 9-20.
Kanellos, Nicolás. Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States. Houston: Arte Publico, 1994.
Kanellos, Nicolás. Chronology of Hispanic-American history from pre-Columbian times to the present Nicolás Kanellos with Cristelia Pérez. Detroit. Gale Research Cop., 1995.
Kanellos, Nicolás. Herencia: The Anthology of Hispanic Literature of the United States. London: Oxford, 2002.
Kanellos, Nicolás. Hispanic Literature of the United States. A Comprehensive Reference. Westport: Greenwood P, 2003.
Kaplan, Amy, and Donald E. Pease, eds. Cultures of United States Imperialism. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.
Laviera, Tato. Amerícan. Houston: Arte Público Press, 1984.
Lomelí, Francisco and Carl Shirley ed. Chicano Writers First Series (and Second Series) A Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volumes 82 and 122.
Martínez, Rubén. The Other Side: Notes from New L.A., Mexico City, and Beyond. New York, Vintage, 1992.
Oboler, Suzanne. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: Univesity of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Paredes, Américo. "With His Pistol in His Hand:" A Border Ballad and Its Hero. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1958.
Rodríguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory. The Education of Richard Rodriguez. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.
Saldívar-Hull, Sonia. Feminism on the Border: Chicana Gender Politics and Literature. Berkeley/ Los Angeles/ London: University of California Press, 2000.
Ramon Saldivar, "Race, Class and Gender in the Southwest: Foundations of an American Resistance Literature and Its Literary History," Chicano Narrative: the Dialectics of Difference. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1990. pp. 10-25.
Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American ethnicity, culture, and identity in Chicano, Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Virginia E. Sanchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of PuertoRicans in New York City, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Stavans, Ilan. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language. New York: RAYO, 2003.
Suro, Roberto. Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America. New York:Vintage, 1998.
Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.
Viramontes, Helena. The Moths and Other Stories. Second ed. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1985.