Special Topics Course

Spring 2011, the Department of Chicano Studies will be offering a special topics course taught by visiting scholar Yolanda Padilla. Check it out!

Chic 3900 - The Mexican Revolution in the Greater Mexican Imagination
2:30 - 3:45, TTh

The Mexican Revolution was one of a small number of monumental social, political, and cultural movements that shaped the twentieth century. While critics normally date the war between 1910-1920, it continues to be a key reference point for writers, artists, filmmakers, politicians, and cultural critics on both sides of the border into the present day.

This raises a number of questions: why and how does the Revolution continue to resonate roughly 100 years after its end? What accounts for its power as a symbol, and what does it symbolize? How have the Revolution's meanings evolved or been manipulated over time, and what do those changes tell us? How have Mexicans in the United States engaged the Revolution? How have the Revolution and its legacies influenced Mexican American understandings of their place north of the border? And how are concepts such as race, class, and gender constructed and deployed in representations of the war? To explore such questions, we will study a range of engagements with the war expressed in diverse cultural forms such as political manifestos, newspaper articles, historiographical treatments, novels, films, comic books, photography, and murals. The course is organized around key historical and cultural moments that sparked renewed interest in the Revolution as a means of understanding, promoting, and/or manipulating these newer contexts. Such moments include postrevolutionary Mexican nation-building, Mexican (im)migration to the United States, the Cuban Revolution and the Cold War, the Chicano Movement, La Noche de Tlaltelolco, the signing of NAFTA, and the Chiapas rebellion.
We will study the work of writers such as Mariano Azuela, Nellie Campobellos, Leonor Villegas de Magnon, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Americo Paredes, Jose Antonio Villareal, Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro, Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino, Sandra Cisneros, and Montserrat Fontes. Visual artists may include Jose Guadalupe Posada, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Lalo Alcaraz. Films may include Maria Candelaria, Viva Zapata, The Wild Bunch, and The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa.

Spring 2011 Chicano Studies Course Offerings

Spring registration begins November 9th!

This Spring, the Department of Chicano Studies is excited to offer the following courses:

Chic 1275/3275 - Service Learning in the Chicano/Latino Community (Civ)
Chic 3213 - Chicano Music and Art (Pending - AH, DSJ)
Chic 3223 - Chicana/o and Latina/o Representation in Film (AH, DSJ)
Chic 3374 - Migrant Farmworkers in the US: Families, Work, and Advocacy (Civ)
Chic 3446 - Chicana/o History II: WWII, El Movimiento, and the New Millennium (His, DSJ)
Chic 3452 - Xicana/Indigena Studies: History, Culture, and Politics (DSJ)
Chic 3507W - Intro to Chicana/o Literature (Lit, DSJ, WI)
Chic 3672 - Chicana/o Experience in the Midwest (DSJ)
Chic 3752 - Chicanas and Chicanos in Contemporary Society (DSJ)
Chic 3900 - CASA SOL Leadership
Chic 3900 - Mexican Revolution in the Greater Mexican Imagination

To learn more about our course offerings, including times and course descriptions, click here.

Also, learn more about the Chicano Studies major and minor here. Contact Department Adviser Nicole Clements at clem0078@umn.edu with any questions regarding course offerings or degree programs.