The Gulf of América/America

(4 Credits)

America/América and its hemisphere are extraordinarily malleable ideas. From artists to laborers, heads of state to theorists each have laid claim to this name and this space because of what it afforded them--liberation, unification, cooperation, and power. The politicization of America/América and the region continues, and the intersection and histories of race, indigeneity, resource extraction, sport, gender, migration, religion, and empire-building serve as essential tools to untangling and mapping the roots and routes of American development and mythmaking. Who is an American and who gets to claim its space? How have ideologies and political, economic and cultural institutions both propped up America's/América's currency on the world stage and revealed its internal contradictions and fissures? Through a diverse set of materials--primary documents, secondary readings, maps, films, music, plays and art--this course examines the evolution of this contentious contact zone.