Latin American Studies 201 - COLQ:LATIN AM & LATINO/A STUD

Topics course. Its centrality in cultural theories about post national spaces, -has transformed the contact zone of the U.S. Mexico borderlands into a provocative object of study. On one hand "la frontera" has become a dynamic theoretical abstraction, a metaphorical borderland that in some cases runs the risk of erasing its own geo-political specificity. On the other hand, critical perspectives that have privileged the U.S. gaze "southward" have often reproduced power relationships constructed on a North-South continuum that reinforce and solidify imperialist practices as well as nationalist discourses (on both sides of the border). In this course we will study texts, films and music produced in and about the U.S. Mexico borderlands that negotiate and challenge these issues of representation in the material as well as "imagined" space of the borderlands.

Topic: Negotiating the Borderlands: Text, Film, Music.