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This course locates Chicano Literature beyond the "American" of U.S. literary tradition in a limited sense, but rather within the literary tradition that has come to be called the "literatures of the Americas." Through the Mexican War of 1846 and the Mexican Revolution of 1910, this course traces the formation of a Chicano/a identity based on different theories of the transnational. Beginning with Mexican Americans living in California (the Californios), we will examine the formation of a mythical, Spanish-Mexican or "criollo" heritage during the Mexican War and its aftermath as an attempt to claim the rights of citizenship. Moving across the border, this course then locates the roots of the criollo myth and unites it with the beginnings of a nineteenth-century mixed race identity in the novel of Pizarro Suarez. This text looks backward at the Mexican War and Mexican Independence and connects them to an indigenous national identity, prefiguring the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and its connection in Chicano Literature with a mythic, indigenous past. In texts by Chicanos and Chicanas, the Mexican War represents the "criollo citizen" of the nineteenth century and the "hispanic outcast" of the twentieth while the Mexican Revolution is associated with the uncovering of Aztlan--a mythical mestizo community based on indigenous roots. Within this literature, we will examine such themes as migration/immigration, assimilation, alternative "Aztlans," and critiques of Chicano transnationalism from within. ALL TEXTS ARE IN ENGLISH.
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE
Last Updated on MAR-19-2004
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459