Latina Feminist Studies

SCA-UA 548-001
Tuesday 4:55 – 7:35pm
Meeting ID: 940 8787 3270

Cara Romero, "Miktlanziwalt"

Prof. Josefina Saldaña email: msp6@nyu.edu

Office Hrs.: Thurs. 11AM-1PM 20 Cooper Square, RM 444
& by Appointment Off Hrs. MTG ID: 946 0503 2566

Latina Feminist Studies

Course Description The first half of the course provides an introduction to
contemporary feminist theoretical and cultural production by Latina scholars, authors,
and artists. I have paired feminist theoretical or cultural criticism with its corresponding
object of study, i.e. a filmic or literary text. My purpose in arranging the syllabus thusly is
to model rigorous scholarship for you as burgeoning cultural critics, and it is my hope
that the interpretive skills you see demonstrated in this scholarship will provide a model
for feminist interpretation of the social and political contexts in which we live. While this
first half of the course is an introduction to contemporary Latina feminist studies, this is
an advanced seminar and some experience with theory would be beneficial, though not
required. Most of the theory and criticism comes from the field of literary/cultural studies
and is written by Latinas, however, course readings also include analysis from different
disciplines and by non-Latinas when appropriate. For example, in the first week we view
a documentary on the Juarez murders, read cultural critic Rosalinda Fregoso's analysis of
the filmic representation of these murders, and also read geographer Melissa Wright's
analysis of the murders in Juarez, for perspective on the maquiladora industry and the
insidious role of racism in feminicides. The second half consists mainly of films, poetry,
novels, and short stories written by Chilean-Americans, Chicanas, Puertoriqueñas,
Dominican-American, and Cuban-Americans. When engaging with this material, we
critically analyze recurrent tropes and themes—borderlands; the "mestiza/mulata" body;
revolution; political violence and the exile; la Malinche/la llorona/Virgen de Guadalupe;
afrolatinidad; the domestic/maquiladora worker—as explored in the literature, film, and
performance produced by Latinas, as well as by scholars in Latina cultural studies. By the
end of the class I hope that we all have a critical understanding of this representational
repertoire as used by Chicana/Latinas in their appropriation and re-mixing of these
dominant tropes, themes, and stereotypes from masculinist, Latino nationalist culture, as
well as from dominant U.S. culture and nationalism.
All films and available televisions shows are available for streaming though the
Course Reserve at the Bobst Library website for the entire semester. Please arrive to class
having seen the film or television show assigned for that day, with specific scenes (and
times) jotted down to discuss. This is an advanced class, and so the reading load is heavy,
with an average of 80 to 120 pages per week. If you do not believe you can devote the
proper energy and time to these readings and films, please consider another class.

Zooming It! We meet via zoom every Tuesday at class time. Attendance is
mandatory, and you are required to have your camera's on. I will be taking attendance. A
note on etiquette: while you are in seminar, all of your attention should be on the seminar.
I realize that it is particularly difficult while we are all participating over Zoom, but I ask
that you turn off email and all notifications while you are in seminar. You should never
even look at your cell phone during class — turn it off before seminar starts and leave it
off. (If you have a critical situation that requires you to leave your cell phone or other
notifications on, please ask my permission before seminar begins.) This demonstrates
respect to fellow seminar participants and offers an opportunity to practice focused,
undistracted intellectual engagement. If your bandwidth or other circumstances do not
allow for you to have your camera on during seminar, please let me know.

Latina Feminist Studies

Course requirements
Attendance and participation 40%: Attendance is mandatory. If you have more than one
unexcused absence, you fail the class. More than two excused absences, you cannot
receive better than a B in the course. As this course is a seminar and not a lecture, each of
you is expected to participate actively in class discussion every week. To assure that you
do so, you are required to keep a reading journal (RJ), in which you provide me with a
concise synthesis of the readings for each week. In the weeks when the assignments
include only films or novels, please pick a scene or a passage and provide a close
textual/filmic analysis of it. The RJ should be one full printed page, single-spaced, 1.25"
margin all the way around, with only your name, week number, and date on one line on
the top of the page: i.e. Saldaña, Josefina, Week 2, 2/9/21. Please see the "Formatting
Example-Reading Journal" in the Resources folder at the NYU Classes site before you
turn in your first reading journal. If you do not title your RJ in this exact fashion, I will
not grade it, and you will get a zero for that week. You will turn in your RJs by 40 on
Tuesdays, via the "Assignments" link in NYU Classes. Attendance is 10 percent of your
grade. Participation and RJs are 30 percent of your grade.

Five-page Midterm paper 30%: This paper should be a critical engagement with one
of the theoretical texts read from the first half of the course. This critical engagement may
take one of two forms. You may choose to challenge a particular aspect of the cultural
critic's theoretical take on an issue. As such you must first provide a clear, nuanced, and
generous reading of the author's overall argument, as well as of the particular aspect you
will subsequently challenge. You may then proceed to demonstrate the shortcomings or
limitations in the critic's argument. You may choose to do so on strictly theoretical
grounds, or you may choose to demonstrate these limitations through an alternate reading
of the text on which she bases her argument. In a second form of critical engagement, you
may be thoroughly convinced by an author's argument and choose to apply it to text or
film outside the syllabus. Once again, you would begin by providing a clear, nuanced,
and generous reading of the author's overall argument, as well as of the particular aspect
you will subsequently apply in a reading of an outside text. In either case, the synthesis of
the author's argument should be no more than one to two pages, with the remaining three
to four pages devoted to your challenge or application of the scholar's theoretical
argument. This paper is worth 30 percent of your grade.

Six-page Final Paper 30%: You are required to use at least two secondary
sources for your paper that are not from the syllabus to provide a critical reading of one
or more of the literary and filmic texts from the second half of the course. Your paper
must have a clear thesis that is informed by your research, and you should discuss this
thesis with me in extended, scheduled office hours Thursday, April 8th. You will bring a
preliminary draft of your introductory paragraph with you when you meet with me, in
order to discuss your thesis statement. A preliminary outline of your argument would be
appreciated as well. You need to make sure that your argument both connects the text to
its larger cultural and theoretical context, as well as respects the integrity of the text. In
other words, don't decide what you want to argue first and then hammer the text into it
your claims. Rather, make sure that your argument is generated from the text itself. By
secondary sources, I mean 1) literary criticism; 2) theory or theoretically informed

Latina Feminist Studies

cultural criticism; 3) historical analysis. I do not mean articles or websites that provide
either biographical criticism about the author, book reviews, or propaganda about the
author or book. Secondary sources must in all cases be scholarly sources that appear in
either academic journals or books. This paper is 30 percent of your grade.

Required Texts The following books are required. All but three are available at the
NYU Bookstore. Where indicated, books available on NYU online access.
Rosa Linda Fregoso. meXicana encounters: The Making of Identities on the Borderlands.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. NYU Online Access.
Melissa Wright. Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York:
Routledge, 2006.
Chela Sandoval. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2002.
NYU Online Access.
Nicolasa Mohr. El Bronx Remembered. New York: HarperCollins, 1975.
Alicia Achy Obejas. We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this? Pittsburgh, PA:
Cleis Press, Inc, 1994.
Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A. New York: Routledge, 2002. NYU Online Access.

articles and Chapters are available through NYU Classes. These must be printed out
and brought to class the day of discussion. Lap tops and phones are not allowed in class.
Tablets are allowed, but must be flat on the table at all times. If you are unable to print
for economic reasons, please contact me.

Disability Disclosure Statement: Academic accommodations are available for

students with disabilities. The Moses Center website is www.nyu.edu/csd. Please contact
the Moses Center for Student Accessibility (212-998-4980 or mosescsd@nyu.edu) for
further information. Students who are requesting academic accommodations are advised
to reach out to the Moses Center as early as possible in the semester for assistance.

Class Schedule
Week One Introductions
2/2 http://www.nataliaanciso.com/#!works-by-series/c6e5
https://www.instagram.com/nanibah/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgKqxLAhRKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btsfNW4zlwI

Week Two: Laboring Bodies

2/9 Discussion, Señorita Extraviada, directed by Lourdes Portillo, VCA 13013,
73mins. Accessible through Course Reserve site at Bobst.
https://nyu.kanopy.com/video/senorita-extraviada-missing-young-women
Fregoso, preface and “Toward a Planetary Civil Society." In meXicana
encounters (ME).
Wright, "Introduction" and "Dialectics of a Still Life: Murder, Women, and
Disposability." In Disposable Women (DW).

Latina Feminist Studies

Week Three: Laboring Bodies Pt. 2
2/16 Paulina, directed by Vicky Funari & Jennifer Maytorena-Taylor, DVD 7641, 90
mins.
Lone Star, directed by John Sayles, DVD 556, 135 mins.
Fregoso, “Cross-Border Feminist Solidarities” and “Gender and
Multiculturalism,” ME.

Week Four: Family Romances

2/23 Mi Familia, directed by Gregory Nava, DVD 4609, 127 mins.
Mi Vida Loca, 1994. Directed by Alison Anders, VCA 6068, 100 mins.
Fregoso, "The Chicano Family Romance" and "Familia Matters," ME.

Week Five: Sexual Traitors, Virgins, Brujas, and Putas

3/2 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, A True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest
of Mexico and New Spain. (1568) Chps. 36-38. http://ww
w.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm
Octavio Paz, “The Sons of La Malinche.” From The Labyrinth of Solitude (1961),
excerpted in The Mexico Reader, Gilbert Joseph and Timothy Henderson, ed. Duke
UP, 2002. Available at NYU Classes.
Norma Alarcón, “Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision Through Malintzin/
or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back on the Object.” From Glora Anzaldúa and
Cherrie Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical
Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983. NYU Classes.
Cherríe Moraga, “From a long line of vendidas.” From Moraga, Loving in the
War Years. Boston: South End Press, 1983. NYU Classes.
Malinche Poems, multiple authors. From Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of
Chicana Literature., Tey Diana Rebolledo & Eliana S. Rivero eds. Tuscon:
University of Arizona Press, 1993: 195-215. NYU Classes.
In-class visit Noelle Liston, Workshop on engaging with theory in writing.

Week Six: Sexual Traitors, Pt. 2

3/9 Norma Alarcón, “Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana
Feminism.” From Dangerous Liaisans: Gender, Nation, & Postcolonial
Perspectives, Anne McClintock, Aamir Muft, & Ella Shohat eds.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997. NYU Classes.
Gloria Anzaldúa, “La conciencía de la mestiza.” From Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La
frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1987. NYU Classes.
Wright, "Maquiladora Mestizas and a Feminist Border Politics," DW.

Week Seven: Differential Consciousness

3/16 Sandoval, Introduction, and Chapters 2, 3, & 4 in Methodology of the Oppressed.

Week Eight: Spring Break

3/23 NO CLASS

Latina Feminist Studies

Week Nine: Differential Consciousness, Pt. 2
3/30 Julia Burgos, poetry selections: "Farewell in Welfare Island," "My Mother and
the River," "To Julia Burgos," "Poem for my death,""Contryside-1," "Canto
to Martí," "#184 The Voice of the Dead". NYU Classes.
Mohr, El Bronx Remembered (selections): "A Very Special Pet," "'Tell the
Truth,'" "Mr. Mendelsohn," "The Wrong Lunch Line," "Herman and Alice."
Raquel Rivera, "Butta Pecan Mamis," New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2003: 127-149.

******************4/2 Midterm Paper Due 5pm*******************

Week Ten: Latina Embodiment, in Black and White

4/6 Mohr, "A Matter of Pride" and "In Another Place in a Different Era." NYU
Classes.
Alicia Achy Obejas, We came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this?
Lorgia García-Peña, "Being Black Ain't So Bad…Dominican Immigrant Women
Negotiating Race in Contemporary Italy." In Caribbean Studies, 41.2
(2013): 137-161). NYU Classes.

Week Eleven: Latina Embodiment, Pt. 2

4/13 Obejas, continued.
Esteves, "My Name is Maria Christina" & Luz María Umpiene-Herrera, "In
Response." NYU Classes.
Agosín, "The Disenchanted Generation," "Once Again,'" "An Apology," "Fairy
Tales and Something More," "The Disappeared Ones." NYU Classes.

Week Twelve: Political Exile and Revolutionary Identities

4/20 Maria Full of Grace, 2004. Directed by Paul Mezey, 101 mins, DVD 2977.
Wright, "Manufacturing Bodies," from Disposable Women.

Week Thirteen: migration, gender & the drug economy

4/27 Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A., Chapters 1 through 5. NY: Routledge, 2002.
Maid in America, directed by Anayansi Prado, 57 mins, DVD 3295.
Devious Maids, created by Marc Cherry. Pilot. DVD 33019.

Week Fourteen: Laboring Bodies Pt.3: domestic Labor

5/4 Mosquita y Mari, directed by Aurora Guerrero, 85 minutes, DVD 30034.
Gayatri Gopinath, "Queer Disorientations, States of Suspension," Unruly Visions:
The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
(2018): 59-86. NYU Classes.

*******************5/10 FINAL PAPERS DUE 5 PM********************

Latina Feminist Studies