US Latina Women’s Literature

LAC 260 examines the literature of US Latina authors since the 19th century, with a particular focus on texts published in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Students explore the diverse depictions of Latina identity and how Latina women authors have staged oppositional and differential figurations of gender, cultural, racial, and sexual identifications through writing. Primary readings are placed in conversation with each other and with critical writings on gender, feminism, race, sex, and ethnicity. Alongside conventional literary texts, students will consider poetry, memoir, short story, novel, other genres and forms of cultural production, including children’s fiction, performance text, graphic novel, film, photography, and performance art. Through their own creative and critical writing and class discussion, students analyze the relationship between this literature and multiple cultural movements and spaces in the light of contemporary theories of race, ethnicity, and gender developed by Latina feminists and other feminists of color.

011232