CHLS3352

The U.S.-Mexico border is shaped by narratives of migration, xenophobia, neoliberalism, violence, and militarization. This class examines the demographic realities, political and economic shifts, and the cultural exchanges that characterize the U.S.-Mexico borderland. The course will contextualize the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border within the upticks of xenophobia and anti-Mexican/anti-Latino sentiment that have happened throughout U.S. history. This course provides a structural understanding and analysis of the formation of the southern border as a geopolitical boundary maintained by U.S. interests domestically and through the flow of capital, labor, and trade. The course teaches the history of U.S. intervention in the Central American northern triangle and in Mexico to help students understand how U.S. influence in Latin America shapes migration waves to our southern border. The course treats the U.S.-Mexico border as a living entity rather than as a stagnant boundary that is surveilled and patrolled. Latine subjectivity and agency are interrogated through engagement with Latine thought and cultural production as they emerge from the borderlands. The borderlands have been a fecund space from which Chicane and Latine artists and intellectuals have documented the Chicane and Latine experience and theorized Latine identities. Students will learn about the emergence of a hybrid-rascuache form within Chicane artistic and literary responses to the racialization and dehumanization of Mexicans and Latinos in the U.S. Students will also engage with Central American artistic and theoretical responses to the disposability of brown bodies that perish along the border. The course critically examines the contradiction between neoliberal policies that promote open borders for the flow of goods while forbidding "illegal" entry to undocumented people. The course is designed so that students gain a strong grounding in Chicano-Latino borderland theory and other theories of Chicane Latine intersectionality and hybridity; this course should be considered an introductory-yet-advanced course in Chicane Latine transnational theory and borderland theory, which will provide students the theoretical foundation they will need to advance in Chicano and Latino Studies at the graduate level and/or to work with borderland Latine communities in the future.

Social Sciences, Global Perspectives

Fall Even Year