Cultural Approaches to Latinx Geographies

3 units

This graduate seminar invites students to explore key themes and methods in Latinx cultural studies from a geographical perspective. Focusing on how Latinx communities produce, contest, and navigate space, we will examine how these spatial practices are represented in literature, visual art, digital media and other forms of cultural production. Through a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, we will consider how hemispheric processes of colonization, imperial expansion, and forced migration have shaped Latinx placemaking practices. Centering the intersection of race, class, gender, and citizenship, students will analyze a wide range of Latinx geographies: from liminal Latinx spaces to key Latinx cities and everyday places. We will also study how ecological landscapes inform Latinx poetics and politics of space. Readings pair foundational texts in Latinx studies, race and ethnicity studies, and critical geography with contemporary cultural production and aesthetic practices.