230369 Puerto Rican Cultural Expressions (BS) (SoSe 2015)

“Do as the bull in the face of adversity: charge …” Puerto Rican Cultural Expressions

Following the advice by the Nuyorican poet Jesus Colon—Jesús Colón, who writes “To deserve a people’s love, you must know them. You must learn to appreciate their history, their culture, their values, their aspirations for human advancement and freedom,” in this introductory course to Puerto Rican cultural expressions we will learn to appreciate the meaning of what it means to be a Boricua, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Hispanic, Latina@, Hispanic, Puerto Rican on the mainland, AmeRícan, asimila@, Puerto Riiiican! To this end, we will engage with poetry, journalism, theatre, essays, autobiography, music, film that tell us much about the Puerto Rican people, their history, identity dilemmas, self-understanding, anxieties, hopes, present day realities. The study of selected cultural expressions should help us value the remarkable journey of the Puerto Rican people, whose history has been most decisively shaped by conquest, colonialism, but also by the just as decisive and stubborn struggle, as the poet Tato Laviera states, not to be absorbed by any form of mythical melting pot or latinidad/mestizaje in the effort to define “the new america, humane america.”

Required Reading
Readings will be available on-line