ENGL 4556 - [Decolonial Poetics and Aesthetics: Arts of Resistance in the Americas]

(crosslisted) AMST 4556, LSP 4556
(LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS)

Spring. Not offered: 2021-2022. Next offered: 2023-2024. 4 credits. Student option grading.

E. Diaz.

Exploring a genealogy of Latinx, Afro-Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and Chicana/o/x theorizations of modernity and identity, the course asks, what is the decolonial? Is it a space between the colonial and post-colonial? Is it a creative process, an intellectual theorization, or a historical period? Is it a performance, intervention, or embodied experience? Tracing a historical trajectory of the decolonial in poetry, performance, installation, and visual art, the course examines decolonial modes of making and being in the early and mid-twentieth century, as well as twenty-first century applications. Artists and authors include Gloria Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, Nao Bustamante, Luis Alfaro, Emma Pérez, José Saldívar, Rupert García, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Regina José Galindo, James Luna, Adál Maldonado, Coco Fusco, Nelson Maldonado Torres, and many other decolonial producers who are concerned with existence and resistance in the Américas.