Legacy Course Catalog
ENGL 396B - Latina/Latino Literatures of The United States
| Effectivity: | 01/07/2008 - 05/03/2008 @ Purdue West Lafayette Traditional |
|---|---|
| Credits: | 3 |
| Instructional Types: | Lec |
| Usually Offered: | fal spr |
| Short Title: | Latina/o Lit Of The US |
| Description: | This course is about Latino/a narratives that emphasize the experience of migration and the subsequent transformation or dislocation of Mexican and Caribbean subjects into Latina/o subjectivities. We will spend time examining literatures across of geographical cultural backgrounds and locations, and the course will focus on both the specific histories of the groups we'll be reading about (Chicana/o, Cuban-American, and so on) and on their shared experience of migration as a collective event that impacts both the immigrant and the U.S. cultural pot into which they fail to melt. More specifically, I'm interested in questions of identity formation: how on the one hand migration impacts the immigrants' national, racial, cultural, etc. sense of themselves as subjects, and on the other how the new "home country" is itself changed by the influx of putatively "alien" cultures. We might begin with this question: what constitutes "Latin-ness" and/or "American-ness" for U.S. Latinos/as, and how does these groups' literary output help us gauge the tensions between these two subject positions? One possible answer, which we will explore, is that reading migration and exile as integral parts of the U.S. Latino experience brings us closer to a fuller understanding of what it might mean to be a hyphenated-American. We will rely primarily on Eduardo del Rio's textbook The Prentice Hall Anthology of Latino Literature, but will also read at least one longer representative selection from each geographical/cultural group. These will include Junot Diaz's new novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima; Cristina Garcia's The Aguero Sisters; poetry by Miguel Algarin and other Nuyorican writers; and other texts. Students will write two analytical essays (midterm and final) and be responsible for an oral presentation at some point during the course. |
| School: | College Of Liberal Arts |
| Department: | English |
| Credit By Exam: | NO |
| Repeatable Flag: | YES |
| Temporary Flag: | YES |
| Full Time Privilege Flag: | NO |
| Honors Flag: | NO |
| Variable Title Flag: | NO |
Fall 2007 *** indicates the course was still an active course and was transferred to the Banner Catalog effective Spring 2008. This course was not expired Fall 2007.
