Anahuac's Ghosts: Literature of America

Anahuac's Ghosts: The Literature of America del
Norte, 1524-2018
This interdisciplinary course will take us through
a survey of fiction, poetry, theatre, film,
testimony, and theory haunted by the myth of
"Mexico." We will read texts from the period of
the "Conquest" all the way to Trump's presidency,
written north and south of the so-called
Mexican-American border to critically investigate
not just the history, but the historiography, of
Mexico. Particularly, our conversations will
return to the legacies of colonialism,
imperialism, revolt, and migration and their
effects on the formation of Mexico as a site of
belonging, and the Mexican as a subject. We will
ask: Who are the characters of Mexico's gendered
and racial imaginary? What can we learn from
Mexico's founding myths? How do terms like
mestizaje, indigenismo, criollo/a, la raza, lo
mexicano, or the "post-Mexican condition" clarify
and complicate our idea of what it means to be
"Mexican?" When answering these and other
questions, we will return to representations of
death, ghosts, and hauntings-a "Mexican" cliche,
if there ever was one-to analyze the
reverberations of historical trauma or
dispossession, and the fruits of living in/between
the borderlands.

Our readings will be varied and often in direct
conflict with one another. Their selection and
organization is meant to guide us through a broad
consideration of Mexican history, from the
colonial period to the Revolution, from the
massacre at Tlatelolco to the Zapatista movement.
While this class is primarily focused on reading
and discussing literature-by Carmen Boullosa,
Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora, Sor Juana Inez de la
Cruz, Juan Rulfo, Sandra Cisneros, Rudolfo Anaya,
Wendy Trevino, Sara Uribe, Dolores Dorantes,
Rosario Castellanos, and Fernanda Melchor-we will
also be engaging historical analysis and theory-by
Roger Barata, Octavio Paz, Matthew Restall,
Heriberto Yepez, Sergio Pitol, Gloria Anzaldua,
Elena Poniatowska, Sergio Gonzalez Rodríguez and
Subcomandante Marcos. All texts will be provided
or are available in English, although students who
can are encouraged to read the texts in their
original language.

The course will consist of weekly reading
assignments and seminar-based discussions. You
will be asked to produce weekly reading responses,
prepare an oral presentation, participate in class
discussion, and write a final paper.