ENGL 050D. Literature and Art on the US-Mexico Border

This course will examine the shifting expressions of the U.S.-Mexico Border in the US-American literary and cultural imagination from 1848 to the present. We will begin by considering Chicanx theorist Mary Pat Brady’s suggestion that “the border might be understood more fully as a state-sponsored aesthetic project” (Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies 52). If the border is to be understood as an aesthetic project, what are its formal elements, and how have they shifted over time? Which narratives of belonging has this national project made hyper-visible and which has it occluded? How have treaties, maps, novels, pamphlets, poems, and films figured into the production of the border as a dividing line and a contact zone, a site of violence and of solidarity, a material place and a metaphor?

In order to answer these questions and to generate more along the way, we will consider a range of legal, literary, and cultural texts. These may include The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854), George Washington Gomez (c. 1930s), science-fiction, migrant testimonies, contemporary films, as well as recent interventions by digital artists and activists in the border zone.

Limited to 30 students. For English Literature majors and minors, this course will count towards the historical distribution requirements as either an 18th/19th century course or as a 20th/21st century course, based upon the student’s final project and the recommendation of the professor.
GATEWAY English Literature; no prerequisites, suitable for any student.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Eligible for LALS, ESCH
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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