WGSS 52.04 Arts Against Empire: Fictions of Revolution and Solidarity in the Americas
Anticolonial struggle and movements for social justice have always been accompanied by a range of cultural practices, including fiction, art, music, film, murals, theater, graffitti and theory. This course explores that tradition of cultural activism considering attempts to narrate revolutionary formation, imagine solidarity, and write decolonial history. We will begin by examining revolutionary nationalist and anti-imperialist culture in the Americas—ranging from the memoirs of Che Guevara and Malcolm X to Nuyorican and Chicano Movement literature—in order to consider the formation of revolutionary subjects, and how 20th century ideas of revolution were raced and gendered. We will then consider how novelists, artists, photographers, filmmakers, and activists attempted to imagine solidarity with revolutionary movements and suffering others in the Americas, from Central America solidarity photography to performance art in solidarity with Guantanamo Bay prisoners. We will pay special attention to the work of feminist and queer solidarity artists, writers, and performers. Finally, we will examine contemporary activist cultural projects, such as PanAmerican public art road trips and hashtag-activism. Students will have the opportunity to produce a creative or multimedia final project.
Cross Listed Courses
ENGL 63.04