It has become a commonplace that “race is a social construction.” However, just because race is a biological fiction doesn’t mean that racism isn’t real and, worse yet, that people don’t act out because of it. While this course falls under the broad umbrella of “Peoples of the Americas,” the focus of this course will be on different ways that notions of race have been produced over time and in different regions of North America and the Caribbean. Specifically, we will read literary depictions of Latina/o identity formation against the backdrop of the black-white color line.

Primary literary texts are likely to include such authors as Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Américo Paredes, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Jose Villareal, William Faulkner, James Weldon Johnson, and Ameen Rihani in addition to a course reader with contextual background readings