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Radical Arts in the Americas

ENGL 1261.401
also offered as: ARTH 2990 / CIMS 1261 / COML 1261 / LALS 1261 / THAR 1261
instructor(s):
MW 5:15-6:44pm

This course examines intersections of artistic production and left politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. It examines art from across a wide array of media: street art, film, theater, poetry, performance art, fiction, graphic arts, digital media, and urban interventions. We will study artistic movements and artists from across the Americas, including revolutionary Latin American theater, film, and literature; the art of Black and Chicano Liberation in the U.S.; street performance and protest produced in the context of dictatorship; anticolonial performance art and alternative reality gaming; and activist art, political theater, and cinema from the 21st century. Through its focus on the relationship between art and politics, this course also introduces students to foundational concepts related to the relationship between culture and power more broadly.

English Major Requirements
  • Sector 1 Theory and Poetics (AETP)
  • Sector 2 Difference and Diaspora (AEDD)
  • Sector 6 20th & 21st Centuries (AE20)
English Concentration Attributes
  • 20th-21st Century Concentration (AE21)
  • Gender/Sexuality Concentration (AEGS)
College Attributes
  • Foundational Approach: Cultural Diversity in US (AUCD)