Department of English

This course examines intersections of artistic production and radical politics in the Americas from the 1930s to our present. It addresses literary, visual, and performing arts in a wide array of media and genres, including novels, testimonio, essays, manifestoes, theater, street art, poetry, song lyrics, graphic arts, murals, and documentary and experimental films. It examines cultural productions in relation to the sociohistorical contexts from which they emerged, including, in many cases, the social and political movements with which they were explicitly aligned. Topics addressed include: revolutionary politics and culture in Latin America, liberation movements in the U.S. and their aesthetic dimensions, socialist feminism, anticolonial critique, representations of state violence and counterrevolution, radical pedagogy and its influence on the arts, and dystopian aesthetics. Through its focus on the relationship between politics and the arts, this course also introduces students to foundational concepts related to the relationship between culture and power more broadly. Students will have the opportunity to develop their own creative project as part of the course assignments.