SHUM 4620 - Undocumentation

(crosslisted) AMST 4620 , COML 4616 , FGSS 4620 , LATA 4620 , LSP 4621 , ROMS 4625 , VISST 4620

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to: 15 students. Intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

A. Carroll.

In this seminar we will sustain a particular reading of post-1984 Mexico-US border cultural production as “undocumentation.” Specifically, we will focus on performance, conceptual, and cinematic practices that corrupt the spreadsheet and the exposé; that reflect their makers’ commitments to portraying extreme labor situations in a period of greater Mexican neoliberal transition now synonymous with NAFTA, culture and drug wars, and border militarization and maquilization. Assigned texts will include artwork by the Border Art Workshop and Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, and David Avalos; writing by Gloria Anzaldúa, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Sara Uribe, and Sergio González Rodríguez; contributions to the Tijuana-San Diego installation festival inSITE; and “undocumentaries” like Alex Rivera’s Borders Trilogy, Sergio De La Torre and Vicki Funari’s Maquilapolis, and Natalia Almada’s El Velador.

For longer description and instructor bio please visit http://sochum.as.cornell.edu/courses.html.