FLAGS:   Wr  |  CD  |  II

FLAGS:   CD

See syllabus.

Bilingualism is a complex phenomenon that refers to the capacity to speak and communicate indistinctly in two or more different languages. Then, it is not a semantic feature of the natural language; it is a pragmatic characteristic of its use. Since language is a property of groups of speakers, bilingualism is a skill showed and belonging to certain individuals. Because of the nature of our contemporary society, this phenomenon is a lived reality for a number of individuals in several communities inside and outside the US. This is to say, the fact that several communities in the Américas conserve a native language besides the official one extends between the members of these communities the knowledge and use of different ways to communicate.

The main purpose of this course is to analyze the linguistic, cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of this complex phenomenon. To do so, the course supposes that the main characteristics of the (different variables of the different) languages are independent of the origin of these communities. The course will primarily focus on the relationship that is established between English (as the vernacular language) and the second co-existent language, especially the binomial with Spanish (approximately 70% of course material) and other common US bilingual language experiences as well. The idea is to analyze the bilingual speaker in context within the community to which she belongs, especially relating to Mexican American and US-Latino communities.

TEXT:

Multiple Voices. An Introduction to Bilingualism, by Carol Myers-Scotton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). Additional texts will be available on the Blackboard.

GRADING:

25% Final Paper

25% Two Short Essays (12.5% each)

10% Peer-Review Sessions

10% Oral Presentation

30% Attendance and Participation

(5% additional extra-credit short essay)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Among the many catalysts that centralized the narratives of Chicanas into the discourse the U.S. Southwest/Mexican Borderlands, the 1971 La Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza in Houston inspired how Chicanas/Xicanas, xicanindias, mestizas, indigenous, Mexican American, and brown women defined themselves, asserted their roles and identities, and shared their stories. This course privileges the stories, struggles, contestations, imaginations, writings, and accomplishments of Chicanas in the United States in the mid-twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries. Through a close examination of literature, and attention to historical and theoretical materials, we will create a growing understanding of the significance of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, language, spirituality, and citizenship in affecting the daily lives and social worlds of Chicanas. By end of the semester, we will also gain a complex insight into the importance of how Chicana feminism, Xicanisma, intersectionality, migration, borders, and community are formative in the Chicana experience(s).

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students will improve their analytical abilities through reading, writing, presenting, and discussing class materials and related literature. As a course within the curriculum of MALS, students will learn about the complexities of the experiences of Chicanas/Xicanas, xicanindias, mestizas, indigenous, Mexican American, and brown women. Ultimately, they will learn to think critically, and develop and defend original arguments, investigate topics within of the scope of Chicana Studies and they will be able to:

Course Goals:

1. Achieve a basic understanding of key concepts, theories, and methods in Chicana feminist thought(s).

2. Analyze a diverse range of texts that portray the experiences, perspectives, and expressions of Chicanas or Mexican American women.

3. Identify and discuss the significance of these diverse experiences, perspectives, and expressions that exist among Chicanas.

4. Use and prioritize the analytical lenses of gender and sexuality, along with race, ethnicity, class, religion, region, language, and so on, to understand the identity formations, subjectivities, and the multiple oppressions confronted by Chicanas or Mexican American women.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Among the many catalysts that centralized the narratives of Chicanas into the discourse the U.S. Southwest/Mexican Borderlands, the 1971 La Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza in Houston inspired how Chicanas/Xicanas, xicanindias, mestizas, indigenous, Mexican American, and brown women defined themselves, asserted their roles and identities, and shared their stories. This course privileges the stories, struggles, contestations, imaginations, writings, and accomplishments of Chicanas in the United States in the mid-twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries. Through a close examination of literature, and attention to historical and theoretical materials, we will create a growing understanding of the significance of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, language, spirituality, and citizenship in affecting the daily lives and social worlds of Chicanas. By end of the semester, we will also gain a complex insight into the importance of how Chicana feminism, Xicanisma, intersectionality, migration, borders, and community are formative in the Chicana experience(s).

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students will improve their analytical abilities through reading, writing, presenting, and discussing class materials and related literature. As a course within the curriculum of MALS, students will learn about the complexities of the experiences of Chicanas/Xicanas, xicanindias, mestizas, indigenous, Mexican American, and brown women. Ultimately, they will learn to think critically, and develop and defend original arguments, investigate topics within of the scope of Chicana Studies and they will be able to:

Course Goals:

1. Achieve a basic understanding of key concepts, theories, and methods in Chicana feminist thought(s).

2. Analyze a diverse range of texts that portray the experiences, perspectives, and expressions of Chicanas or Mexican American women.

3. Identify and discuss the significance of these diverse experiences, perspectives, and expressions that exist among Chicanas.

4. Use and prioritize the analytical lenses of gender and sexuality, along with race, ethnicity, class, religion, region, language, and so on, to understand the identity formations, subjectivities, and the multiple oppressions confronted by Chicanas or Mexican American women.

E 314V  l  3-Mexican American Literature and Culture

Instructor:  Allison, A

Unique #:  34450

Semester:  Fall 2019

Cross-lists:  MAS 314

Prerequisites:  One of the following: E 303C (or 603A), RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 303C (or 603A).

Description: This course will focus on the relationship between Mexican-American literature and culture as imagined by a variety of authors and genre, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays, historical documents, internet posts, and film.  Through these diverse media, we will examine the development of individual and cultural identity from both historical and contemporary perspectives.  Some issues we will examine include cultural nationalism during the Chicano Movement; post-movement critiques of nationalist aesthetics; the intersection of ethnicity, class, and gender in the formulation of identity; and the impact of immigration in the shaping of the Mexican-American experience.  With a sharp focus on critical reading, writing skills, and historical context, we will discuss a legacy of Mexican American literature which extends far past the Civil Rights Movement, Age of the “Hispanic,” or “Latin Boom” in order to reveal a deep and rich history of Mexican Americans both from within and beyond the borders of the United States.

The primary aim of this course is to help students develop and improve the critical reading, writing, and thinking skills needed for success in upper-division courses in English and other disciplines.  They will also gain practice in using the Oxford English Dictionary and other online research tools and print resources that support studies in the humanities.  Students will learn basic information literacy skills and models for approaching literature with various historical, generic, and cultural contexts in mind.

Preliminary texts:  George Washington Gómezby Américo Paredes, …And the Earth Did Not Devour Himby Tomás Rivera, The House on Mango Streetby Sandra Cisneros, and How to Be a Chicana Role Model by Michele Serros.

Requirements & Grading: Essay 1 10%; Essay 1 Revision 15%; Essay 2 20%; Research Project 15%; Reading Responses 10%; Reading Quizzes 10%; Writing Workshop 10%; Project Proposal 5%; Oral Presentation 5%.

Guided by the idea that the human body is a “mobile canvas” (Santos 2009), this course examines the social, emotional, economic, and commercial contexts influencing the production, display and circulation of Latinx body art. We will investigate how people tell personal stories to public audiences through their bodies.  Class topics include: Nail Art & Artists, Cholafied and the Arch of the Eyebrow, My Tía’s Gold Tacones, Latinx-Butch Style, Cholo-Goth Aesthetics, TransForming Latinx Bodies, and many more.  Students will be graded on weekly reading quizzes, personal style-journals, and a final project.

Please check back for updates.

Course Description

Sociolinguistics is the study of both language and society, or how social phenomena affect and re-create linguistic patterns. In this course, students will learn general sociolinguistic topics while focusing in a narrow analysis of the sociolinguistic phenomena forging Latinx communities.

“Sociolinguistics in MALS” examines the presence and use of English, Spanish, Portuguese, and other “indigenous” languages in the US, focusing particularly on those aspects that characterize Latinx communities, such as language acquisition, language maintenance, language change and loss, language contact phenomena such as code-switching or lexical borrowing, linguistic identity and ideology, linguistic attitudes, and the interaction between language, gender, race, ethnicity, politeness, and social class.

Students will explore the different linguistic aspects that help shaping identity, identify and illustrate historical developments relevant to the presence of Latinx populations in the US, discuss the diversity of US Latinx communities and its linguistics implications, and explain and analyze important language policy challenges posed by the presence of other language-speaking communities in the US (mainly those involving Hispanic and Latinx populations). 

Maledicta: (Latin. n., pl. maledictum, sg.), curse words, insults; profane language of all kinds.

When is a word “bad”? Why can one person use a “bad” word with impunity, and another cannot? What marks such usage as acceptable or not?  How do race, socioeconomic class, and gender play into the use of “bad” language in the US? This course undertakes the examination of modern usage of language that has been designated as “bad” through social convention. Usage of forms of obscenities and profanity in popular usage will be examined in an attempt to come to an understanding of how the products of US popular culture portray maledicta in situational contexts. Through an examination of various texts culled from print, film, and music, participants will study the context and use of “bad” language and attempt to determine the underlying principles that dictate its affect and determine its impact on the audience. Though the majority of texts and usage will be taken from English-language sources, several non-English examples of maledicta from Mexican Spanish and Russian will also be examined for contrast and comparison.

NB: This course examines texts that contain usage of obscenities, profanity, and offensive language. Students who do not wish to be exposed to such language in use should not sign up for this course.

Texts:

• Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others? Edwin Battistella. Oxford UP, 2007.

• Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language. Ruth Wajnryb. Free press, 2005.

• Course packet

This course will investigate representations of Chicanos/as, both on-screen and behind the scenes of U.S. films. We will begin with a brief overview of representations of Mexicans/Mexican-Americans in U.S. film from the silent era through the 1960s. The remainder of the class will focus on films made by, for, and about Chicanos/as and Mexican-Americans from the Chicano Movement of the 1960s/70s to the present day. Feature-length, short, experimental, narrative, and documentary films from the first, second, and third waves of Chicano cinema will be examined. While the majority of the texts we will be looking at were made by Chicano/a filmmakers, we will also examine key works by non-Chicano filmmakers who have made significant contributions to the representation of Chicanos/as on film. We will consider historical, economic, industrial, social, and political factors affecting Chicanos/as access to and participation in the film industry, as well as their representation on-screen. Manifestations of gender bias in the Chicano movement, film industry, and writing of film history will be of particular interest, as will the following themes: film as a tool for social change; the construction of individual, ethnic, and national identity; the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality; the politics of representation; the commodification of Latinidad; cultures of production; and issues of authorship and creative control.

Course Description

This upper-division undergraduate course is designed to shed light on Latina lives, on how Latinas have been represented in the U.S. entertainment media, and have countered those images and narratives through work as producers of films, television, and other media. Using a framework of analysis that combines media studies, Latina/o studies, and gender and women’s studies, we will begin with a focus on historical and contemporary issues that Chicanas and other U.S. Latinas have faced and on Latina activism and feminisms. In the last half of the semester we will study and explore Latina representation in U.S. mediated popular culture and strategies of resistance enacted through Latina film and media production. Weekly screenings that showcase the work of Latina screenwriters, filmmakers, and media producers and other notable work with respect to Latina representation also will be central to our discussions.

Please check back for updates.

This course will investigate the ways in which Latinx activists use mainstream, alternative, legacy and new media, as well as other visual and performing arts to effect social and political change. We will investigate where/how the creative practices of socially/politically engaged artists intersect with the strategies and tactics that social movements employ to mobilize support and achieve their goals. Various historical and contemporary examples of activism from the 1960s to the present day will illustrate the ways in which collective action can be facilitated through the use of media and the arts, and we will consider the ways in which the internet has provided new opportunities for connective action via social media networks that amplify the voices of underrepresented populations. Students will engage with scholarly literature and primary source materials such as newspaper articles that shape and reflect discourse around various contemporary issues, and texts by artists and activists who have effected/are effecting change “on the ground.” Students will also participate in critiques of various social movements’ utilization of activist media and art via personal blogs and the development of group projects. Some examples of topics we will explore throughout the semester include (but are not limited to): the Chicano civil rights movement, El Teatro Campesino, the Zapatistas, gentrification, documentary film, body positivity, Mujeres de Maiz, street art, Colectivo Moriviví, DREAMers and immigrant rights, storytelling for advocacy, protest music, neoliberalism, globalization, local and transnational community building, youth movements, radio activism, DIY activism, and zines.

Please check back for updates.

The word “radical” encompasses a wide variety of meanings, including being different, “other,” new, extreme, awesome, and even of the Left. Radical suggests a “black sheep” quality, or an inability to fit into standard operating procedure. This course will use the word “radical” to examine the social positioning and history of Latinas/os in the United States. Specifically, we will use this framework to analyze the histories of Latinas/os who have gone against mainstream expectations, or who have challenged or critiqued the status quo in provocative and unexpected ways. The class will examine a wide range of radical representations, from “radical” activists like Emma Tenayuca, Luisa Moreno, Lolita Lebron, and Reies López Tijerina, to radical social movements like the Brown Berets and the Young Lords, to radical films like Salt of the Earth, to radical artists like Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Asco, and Raphael Montañez Ortiz. In looking at what is considered extreme, out of the ordinary, or unusual, the class is equally invested in what is appropriate, ordinary, traditional, and everyday.

Please check back for updates.

Course Rationale

International migration patterns have become highly dynamic since the late twentieth century.  The UN Population Division estimates the number of international migrants grew from 156 million in 1990 to 214 million by 2010.  This seminar uses a sociological approach to focus on the social organization of international migration and effects (including social and policy reactions) this migration has on settlement areas and communities of origin.  

The seminar is intended to consider and review cases and issues of migration across different countries and world regions, and not just patterns that affect the United States.

Course Aims and Objectives

Aims

 This seminar is designed to survey social research conducted across various topics (gender/women, policies, labor market integration, restrictions, etc.) of international migration, and concerning different national populations.

Specific Learning Objectives

Become familiar with conceptual and theoretical perspectives in international migration research

Become familiar with leading research issues and questions in international migration research

Become familiar with research methods and findings in prominent topics of international migration research.

Format and Procedures

 The course will follow a format in which reading, writing, and group discussion compose the central ctivities of the seminar. Graduate student participation is essential for the operation of the seminar.  

Assumptions

My assumptions of international migration are that it a) follows an historical course, b) flows from the interaction between human agency and social structures, c) takes normal paths of social division/tension and degrees of social incorporation, d) is affected by social constructions regarding different national-origin groups, and e) has a significance of being a resource for social reproduction within large social structures.

Religious Holidays

UT Austin policy requires that you notify course instructors at least 14 days in advance if you plan to be absent due to a religious holiday. You will be given an opportunity to make up activities (exams, assignments, etc.) that you miss because of your absence due to a religious holiday.  You will be given a reasonable time to make up an exam or assignment after your absence.

Seminar Books 

Castles, Stephen, Hein De Hass, & Mark J. Miller.  2014.  5th edition. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World.  New York: Guilford Press. 

Hernández-León, Rubén.  2008.  Metropolitan Migrants: The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States. Berkeley: UC Press.

United Nations.  2009.  Human Development Report: 2009, Overcoming Barriers:  Human Mobility and Development. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Palgrave Macmillian. (FREE on-line!)

http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/papers/

Zhang, Li.  2001.  Strangers in the City:  Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China’s Floating Population.  Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

Websites to keep in mind: 

UC-Davis, Migration News: http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/

Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/

Population Reference Bureau: http://www.prb.org/

Office of Immigration Statistics: http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/

Migration Policy Institute: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/

Pew Hispanic Center: http://pewhispanic.org/

United Nations: http://www.un.org/

International Organization for Migration: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/lang/en/pid/1

Seminar Requirements

Seminar attendance and participation policy:  Attendance is required at every seminar meeting; moreover, graduate students are expected to do the assigned weekly readings and come to the seminar prepared to engage in discussion about the topic covered for the week.  Seminar participation accounts for 10 percent of the final grade.  In addition, unexcused absences will reduce the grade average grade by three points for each absence. 

Graduate students will write a series of five short papers (3-5 pages) reacting to the assigned weekly readings. Each student will prepare a reaction paper to present in the seminar every other week. Each paper will be worth 20 points for a total of 100 points.

Finally, graduate students are required to write a seminar paper on a topic of international migration. The paper may take one of the following three forms:  a) a new research proposal draft for a thesis or dissertation, b) a critical annotated bibliography with an evaluative section to be used in preparation for a comprehensive examination, or c) a paper for submission to a conference or a journal. This assignment is worth 100 points. Students will present their paper assignments in the last weeks of the semester, but are strongly encouraged to update the seminar members regarding the progress of their papers. 

Reaction Paper

The goal of the reaction papers is to stimulate thought about international migration research. Various approaches can be taken to accomplish this. One approach is to focus on only one reading, and a second approach is to focus on more than one reading. If the first approach is taken, the student can critique the reading by addressing problems with conceptualization, research methods, or inconsistencies in the reading, or the student can elaborate on points covered in the reading by taking different perspectives into account (gender, different regional context, etc.).  When the second approach is taken, the student can compare two or more readings, or use more than one reading to elaborate on a topic.  Students can also use the reaction papers to elaborate, from the perspective of the readings, on their own ongoing interest or work in international migration or other research topic.  Please remember that a reaction paper is not suppose to be a summary of the readings. (Format: 3-5 pages double space; 1.0 – to 1.25-inch margins, 12-point font) 

Use of Canvas

I plan to use Canvas to make announcements, distribute information, communicate with students, and post grades.  Students are encouraged to use Canvas to communicate and share comments and information.  Please check your Canvas site regularly to look for communications from me or from other students in the class.  Support for using Canvas can be obtained from the ITS Help Desk at 475-9400, Monday through Thursday, 8-10pm and Friday, 8am to 6pm.  ITS has a walk-in help desk on the first floor of the Flawn Academic Center.

Grading

 a) Five reaction papers (100 points; 45% of total grade)

b) Seminar paper (100 points; 45% of total grade)

c) Seminar participation (22 points; 10% of total grade)

d) Unexcused absences reduce course grade by 3 point for each absence

Letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) based on percentage of total points: A = 90%-100%, B = 80%-89.5%, C = 70%-79.5%, D = 60%- 69.5%, F = less than 60%.

Grades will be assigned a plus or minus sign based on score in the usual decile point intervals, for example, 80 – 82 = B-, 83 – 86 = B, and 87 – 89 = B+.

Note:  I am authorized by the University to discuss grades only with students.

This graduate seminar offers a deep dive into the history and seminal texts of Chicana/o and Latina/o film and media studies and the films and television series that have been the focus of this scholarship. Topics will include Latinx cultural citizenship and the U.S. film and television industries; stereotyping and self-representation; intersections with media advocacy and activism; negotiations of race, gender, sexuality, language, citizenship, and generation; intersections with Chicana and Latina feminist studies; and the marketing of Latina/o identity.

Meets 12:30-3:15 Thursdays, with screenings 5-7:30 Mondays.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.