English/Women’s Studies 363H: Latina Feminisms
Professor Laura Halperin
Spring 2013
MWF 12-12:50
Greenlaw 319
This honors course will introduce students to feminist literary theories,
with a focus on (U.S.) Latina feminist theories, and with a concentration on
texts by Chicana, Cuban American, Dominican American, and Puerto Rican
writers. We will explore how literary theory can present itself in myriad
ways-hence the attention to plural “theories,” rather than singular
“theory.” Building on Chicana feminist and U.S. Third World feminist
platforms that advance the idea that the personal is political and that
theory can be found in praxis, the Latina writers whose works we will
analyze present their theories across an array of literary genres,
including: theory (in the strict, narrow sense of the term), essays,
memoirs, novels, vignettes, and films. In our attention to the many ways in
which theory can be, and is, conceptualized, we also will examine the
multiplicity of Latina feminisms and will challenge the idea of a monolithic
and static Latina feminism. We will begin the semester by delving into the
historical formations of Latina feminisms and by reading texts that ask what
it means to be a Latina writer. We also will read texts considered
foundational in the development of a Latina feminist literary “canon.”
Following Latina/o-centered movements of the 1960s and 1970s that relied on
a platform of unified oppositionality and racial and ethnic pride, Latina
feminisms thereafter shifted the rhetoric to one that did not shy away from
examining both inter-group and intra-group tensions. Given this differential
focus, we will read texts that explore the tremendous harm many Latinas
experience (from outside their communities and within them). We then will
turn to texts that explore what it means to come of age Latina. We will
conclude the semester by analyzing literary and filmic texts that rely on
humor, levity, and female solidarity in their formulation of Latina
subjectivities. Throughout the semester, we continually will question what
it means for a text or writer to be classified as theoretical, Latina,
and/or feminist.
