AMST 353L: Borderlands, Diasporas, & Transnational Identities

This course focuses on the issues relating to migration, imperialism, state formation, human rights, and the performance of citizenship and national belonging among Latina/o/xs. The courses bring together historical essays, news media, music, poetry, and other forms of expressive culture in an exploration of the specific geographic, political, and economic conditions that produce geopolitical borders; the formation of diasporic and transnational identities in relation to ancestral homelands; the contradictions posed by using geography to define Latina/o/xs; and the racial, gendered, and sexual hierarchies within Latinidad. The course pays particular attention to these questions in relation to the border between the US and Mexico; the Dominican Republic and Haiti; Mexico and Central America; and Puerto Rico and the United States.