| | 01 | M-W---- | 8:30A-9:50A | January Hall / 20 | Sánchez Prado | No final | 15 | 9 | 0 | | Desc: | Mexico City, Capital of a Modern World: This seminar explores the culture of Mexico City in relation to its rapid modernization and growth in the 20th and 21st century. One of the largest cities in the world, and a point of encounter of national and global forms of art and culture, Mexico City provides a key example of the ways in which modernization becomes experienced and represented in both the arts and popular culture. The course will explore this process from the explosion of the city beginning in the 1920s, all the way to the present. We will explore the way in which avant-garde artists sought to capture the sounds and images of the city in poetry and painting; the rise of cinema as a social practice and as a medium to capture the urban; the work of cronistas, the writers whose job is to write about the city; the influence of cultural movements such as estridentismo or rock en tu idioma, the rise of Mexico City as a culinary capital and the everyday life in a city that has at times been the largest in the world. Materials include iconic films such as Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros, chroniclers of urban life like Salvador Novo, Carlos Monsiváis and Elena Poniatowska, rock icons like Angélica María or Café Tacvba and visual artists from Diego Rivera to Gabriel Orozco. In Spanish. This course fulfills the Writing Intensive (WI) requirement for Arts and Sciences students. PreReq. At least two of the following classes: 341, 342, 343, 370 or 380, or the completion of at least one Researching Cultures class. |
| | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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| 04 | -T-R--- | 10:00A-11:20A | Seigle / L004 | Rivera Montes, Zorimar | No final | 15 | 5 | 0 | | Desc: | Labor and Laziness in Caribbean and Latinx Culture: Tired of the grind? It's not just you- recent events have many reckoning with a collective sense of burnout. What's at stake in our current cultural devotion to work? In this course, we explore the social, historical, political, and cultural meanings of work and not working. Historically, work has been associated with not only material but spiritual self-fulfillment by the Western world, and its flipside of laziness is demonized as sinful. Caribbean subjects have historically been characterized as lazy despite producing labor for global capitalist centers, making resistance to work a tool of resistance against colonial capitalism. In the US, on the other hand, Latinx migrants are rendered valuable because of the labor they provide. We will consider labor's relation to race, colonialism, gender, sexualities, and migration by looking at Caribbean and Latinx literature (poetry, essays and short stories), music (salsa, merengue and reggaeton music), and staged performances that tackle the topics of work and the imaginative possibilities- and limits- of leisure and laziness. We will explore themes such as migrant labor, domestic and care labor, the self-as-labor, alongside the concepts of 'welfare queens' and 'queer laziness.' When is laziness transgressive? When is it a luxury? During our neoliberal era when work is so closely tied to selfhood, reflecting on work and engaging with laziness as a concept that challenges its norms is as timely as ever. Readings in both Spanish and English. This course fulfills the Writing Intensive (WI) requirement for Arts and Sciences students. |
| | | Actions: | | Books | | Syllabus | | Syllabi are provided to students to support their course planning; refer to the syllabus for constraints on use. |
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