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This course will investigate such issues as the legal and fictional formation of Chicana/o group identity in texts by Chicanos and Chicanas written against legal cases that view institutional discrimination as antagonism between particular individuals rather than part of a history of long-term discrimination of one group against another. Simultaneously, this class will explore both Chicanos as subject to the law as well as their attempts to engage in its power structure as detectives, police, jury members, lawyers, translators, etc. We will explore the evolution of images of Chicano/a criminality beginning in the 1940s through the examination of legal documents from the trial of the Sleepy Lagoon Case. Moving to the Chicano Movement of the 1960s/70s and its literary renaissance in the 1980s, we will continue our examination regarding the role of public stripping, spectacle, surveillance, and interrogation in the film ZOOT SUIT (1981) by Luis Valdez and Oscar Zeta Acosta's THE REVOLT OF THE COCKROACH PEOPLE (1973) as Chicanas and Chicanos attempt to gain legal, educational and political empowerment. We will then analyze critiques of Chicano resistance in the public sphere through Richard Rodriguez's DAYS OF OBLIGATION (1992) and Ana Castillo's SAPOGONIA (1990). Finally, we will examine gendered translations and deconstruct the relegation of Chicanas to the domestic sphere through THE MOTHS AND OTHER STORIES (1985) by Helena Maria Viramontes and Gregory Nava's film MY FAMILY (1995).
COURSE FORMAT: Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-19-2004
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459