SPA 378 - Beauty and Marginality in the Latinx Americas

In this course, we will examine the relationship between politics, aesthetics, and marginality in 20^th/21^st-century Latin America and its Latinx diasporas in the United States. Examining marginality in various Latin American and Latinx contexts-queer and trans stigma in Mexico and Argentina; racial and economic precarity in Special Period Cuba; and intersections of race, class, and language in Nuyorican and Chicanx diasporas-we will explore the role of stigmatizing forms of representation in enacting political exclusions. Subsequently, we will explore how Latin American and Latinx authors, artists, musicians, and filmmakers find beauty in stigmatized spaces and bodies, and how this beauty offers the promise of better worlds that we might create.

Satisfies Justice, Equality, and Community requirement.
Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.