Fall 2006

E 379S • Senior Seminar--Mexican American Modernism (ADDED)

Course Description

Between 1900 and 1960, Mexican American writers wrestled with enormous changes in Mexican American communities, including changing gender roles, wage labor, formal segregation, and the emergence of class society. This course will consider the emergence of modernist Mexican American literature through a variety of literary genres, including the historical romance, the bildungsroman, the short story, autobiography, folklore, and history. By examining how Mexican American writers engaged these literary genres during the Jim Crow era, this course prompts a close analysis of the various aesthetic strategies employed by these authors in encountering modernism and modernity. Situated uncomfortably as both the racialized objects of modernity and as writerly interlocutors of modernism, these texts highlight the widely divergent ideological and formal responses of Mexican American writers to the shock of the new. The reading list includes works by Americo Paredes, Jovita González, Maria Cristina Mena, Daniel Venegas, Leonor Villegas de Magnon and Cleofas Jaramillo. Grading will be based upon class participation and attendance, an oral presentation, and a substantial term paper.

Grading Policy

Class participation and attendance 10%
Oral presentation 20%
Writing 70%

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