Critical Race & Political Econ 240LF - Intermediate Topics: 'Latinas in Film'

This course will examine Latinas as both subjects and creators of visual narratives and cultural representations. Students will view a range of films about and by Latinas in historical and cross-cultural perspective. Each film will be paired with selected readings and examined in class discussions from aesthetic, cultural, racial, gendered, historical and political dimensions. Latinas will be treated as a gender-inclusive category with trans representation present in the course films and readings selection. Central to the discussions will be the ways in which the Latina body, marked by race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality, is used to produce meaning about Latinidad in the United States, as well as how those conceptions have shifted over time. As we learn to critically examine visual narratives about and by Latinas from a theoretical standpoint, students will also learn visual anthropological methods and basic skills in photography/filmmaking to become authors of Latina representations via a final photoethnography or short film project.