This course is designed as an occasion for students to ponder the relation between literary and cultural forms and interdisciplinary intellectual practices. In doing so, this course will seek to understand the utility of literary and cultural forms for launching inquiries that disrupt the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and the social sciences. In these terms, we will work through a number of ‘literary’ and ‘critical’ texts that integrate the disciplinary concerns of English, sociology, geography, anthropology, and history.

With the focus on interdisciplinary knowledge production and literary forms in mind, our course readings will engage in the following questions: What is the relationship between history writing and narrative? How do literary forms negotiate and portray historical transformation? How can we approach questions of mapping and spatial representation through literary forms? How are certain literary forms linked to questions of social identity and difference?

Course Texts:
The Squatter and the Don by María Ruíz Amparo de Burton
The House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt
Dark Princess by W.E.B. Du Bois
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera by Norma Elia Cantú