Paradigms of American Literature: Chicana Poetics - Detailseite

This course is dedicated to the exploration of works by Mexican American women who present themselves as chicanas: women whose artistic expressions oppose the long history of Othering and stereotyping of Mexican Americans in US culture and society. The term Chicana is used as a self-determined term that emphasizes these artists’ emancipatory politics. We will primarily deal with cultural texts that emerged during and after el movimiento, the organizing by Mexican Americans during the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. The variety of texts will range from the 1960s until the late 1990s and include, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and visual media. We will examine the position of chicanas in a society that is dominated by patriarchal structures, by whiteness, heteronormativity, wealth, nativism, Protestantism, and the English language; categories that have marginalized chicanas in myriad ways.

Please purchase the novella The House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros; additional reading will be made available on Moodle.