COML 4369 - Performing Latinidades

(crosslisted)
(also LSP 4369, LATA 4369)(GB) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Co-meets with COML 6349/LSP 6349.

D. Castillo.

This seminar focuses on Latino/a performance within a variety of genres, including drama, film, music, and performance art. The “new global condition” between US Latino/as and Latin America guides our inquiry into local, national and transnational cultural practices. We begin by looking at theoretical work by scholars like Augusto Boal, Bertolt Brecht, and Diana Taylor that help us to better understand the political and social dimensions of performance. Using these frameworks as a point of departure, we examine a range of particular issues that connect diasporic Latino communities around specific cultural practices, including the politics of claiming space, the making of a Latina/o public sphere, transnational and multilingual imaginaries, cultural production and consumption, and alternative/subversive performance practices. Texts may include works by authors like Carmelita Tropicana, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Victor Hugo Rascón Banda, Nilo Cruz, Miguel Piñero, and Cristina Michaus.