ENGL 4635 - Art! Poetry! Power!

(crosslisted) AMST 4633, LSP 4635
(LA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

E. Diaz.

This course begins in the center of the poetry, politics, and art of the U.S. civil rights movements, but also makes connections with the poetic and visual cultures of twenty-first century activism. Our exploration commences through a set of questions to guide our critical inquiry: Does art produce political resistance? Does art produce political consciousness? How can we read poster art and murals as texts or narratives? How does poetry perform or visualize a collective movement and political moment? By centering our study on these questions, we will move through the poster art, murals, and poems of Chicanos/as, U.S. Latinos/as, and African Americans during the 1960s and 1970s. Reading visual image, political proclamations, and spoken word as cultural texts, we will examine art and poetry for their knowledges about community, ethnicity, and racial experience in the U.S.