Trans* Latin American Literatures and Cultures

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will explore a representative corpus of Latin American cultural production from the 20th-21st centuries that questions the politics of representation of trans*-travestis subjectivities: how have trans*-travestis subjectivities and corporealities been represented in the Latin American cultural archive and how are they self-represented in the present? Through various cultural artifacts (short stories, poetry, short novels, graphic novels, films, performances, songs, and photography), the course will trace a journey from the external representations of trans*-travesti subjectivities -often constructed as a mere trope- to the self-representations that show us the current scene of trans* figurations produced in the continent. Some of the topics to be discussed are: construction of trans*-travesti subjectivity/identity, body and nominal politics, trans*-travesti motherhood and kinship, community, care, regimes of visibility/opacity, transnormativity and neoliberalism, migration, among others. These issues will be discussed and analyzed, based on a transhemispheric and localized dialogue between Latin American travesti theory and trans of color critique.