Latina/o Literature and
Literature of the Americas at the
University of Northern Colorado

ENG 497.005
Senior Seminar: Border Matters
3 Credit Hours
Prerequisites: Completion of at least twenty-four hours of English course work exclusive of ENG 122, 123, 223, 225, and 227.
Fall, 1999
Professor Marcus Embry
L-30 Michener Library
351-2111
membry@unco.edu
http://asweb.unco.edu/latina/
Office Hours:
MW 12:30-1:30, Th 6:00-7:00


Course Description
Detailed investigation of a specific author, period, text, or topic in literary studies, composition and rhetoric, or linguistics. Substantial research and at least one oral presentation required.


Course Objectives
This course is designed to create an intellectual and pedagogical atmosphere in which English majors will examine and interrogate a common theme or set of issues, but because this course is designed for English majors who have fulfilled their departmental requirements, each major will develop a reading and research methodology individually suited to each student's interests and particular experience of fulfilling his or her English major and university course requirements. In other words, this course is designed to present a theme or issues around and through which all students will participate idiosyncratically so that, ideally, the students will perceive both the diversity and common bonds of the discipline of English.
Thus, this course will posit various problems and theories of borders and transculturation. Students will be asked to engage these issues using their individual foci and emphases developed during their fulfillment of the English major. Students will be expected to display proficient knowledge of the following:

Outline of Course Content
As an overall theoretical issue, we will begin by considering Fernando Ortiz's Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (1940), a seminal text of the Americas "recognized as one of the most important books of Latin American and Caribbean intellectual history" (C.L.R. James) that sought to illustrate both in practice and theory the imbricated symbolic orders and socioeconomic exigencies of the Americas.
The first three weeks, we will examine Ortiz's articulation, and we will historicize the massive changes in global and regional identity that were heralded by the Mexican Revolution, the growth of Hollywood and the movie industry, Modernism and Modernismo, and the emergence of Fascism and the responses from ideologies of both Capitalism and Communism. As we proceed carefully and methodically through this text and the issues of theory and praxis it develops, students will compile an annotated bibliography of ten references that explore borders and transculturation in their particular fields and/or areas of interest (creative writing, pedagogy, theory, American lit., English lit., gender issues, sexuality issues, etc.).


Then, we will move on to a series of border issues that will include the following:

As we examine each issue, students will be required to make class presentations of their individual response to and interpolation of the issue into their fields or areas of interest. Students will be required to give a twenty-minute presentation or lead discussion at least once in each of the three sections. Students will further be required to provide relevant articles or other materials to facilitate discussion. Ideally, the annotated bibliography will provide each student with a resource base which he or she can then employ for presentations.


This class is designed to provoke discussion among our students and to strengthen and refine their abilities to clearly articulate their interests among peers. Issues of borders and transculturation are broad and contemporary enough for all English students to interpolate their interests into a discussion. For example, the students with the following emphases could develop their individual study along the following guidelines:

Teaching students -- issues of translation involving culture and acculturation; to what extent does the field of teaching require a pedagogy of cultural translation, and to what extent is that translated culture one of class (literacy) and/or ideology (nationalism, good citizenship);

Creative writing students -- issues involving the borders between genres; is there a borderland between prose and poetry? Is flash fiction that borderland? What is the border between creative writing and critical writing? Is Performance Studies a replacement for the long tradition of critics/poets from 1798 - 1978?

Theory inclined students -- borderland issues themselves; is this hermeneutic an adequate response to the contingency-based (some claim neo-pragmatist) inclinations of contemporary "American" criticism? Is this hermeneutic an adequate response to the problematic essentialisms that dominate identity politics based on gender and sexuality?

Literature students -- borderlands of the discipline; what constitutes the boundaries of periods and genres? What is the importance of maintaining or disrupting these groupings? What are the strategies of maintenance and transgression? How do periods of past centuries, such as Elizabethan, invoke or resist contemporary borderland hermeneutics?



Required Texts (Available at The Book Stop, 931 16th Street):

Gomez-Peña, Guillermo. Warrior for Gringostroika.
Moraga, Cherri. The Last Generation.
Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar.
Romero, Lora.  Home Fronts:  Nineteenth Century Domesticity and its Critics.

On Reserve in Michener Library:
Alarcón, Norma. "Conjugating Subjects: the Heteroglossia of Essence and Resistance."
Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. (Selections)
Benitez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island. (Selections)
Gutierrez-Jones, Carl. Rethinking the Borderlands. (Selections)
Jay, Paul. Contingency Blues: The Search for Foundations in American Criticism. (Selections)
Moreiras, Alberto. "A Storm Blowing from Paradise: Negative Globality and Latin American Cultural Studies."
Moreiras, Alberto. "The End of Magical Realism: José María Arguedas' Passionate Signifier."
Muñoz, José Esteban. "No es facíl: Notes on the Negotiation of Cubanidad and Exilic Memory in Carmelita Tropicana's
               Milk of Amnesia."
Nancy, Jean-Luc. "Cut Throat Sun."
Saldívar, José David. Border Matters. (Selections)
Saldívar, Ramón. "Narrative, Ideology, and the Reconstruction of American Literary History."
Saldívar-Hull, Sonia. "Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics."
Wordsworth, William. Preface to Lyrical Ballads.


Syllabus

Week 1: Benitez-Rojo

Week 2: Ortiz

Week 3: Ortiz

Week 4: Moreiras

Borders of Praxis

Week 5: Annotated Bibliography due
             Gomez-Peña

Week 6: Moraga

Week 7: Nancy, Alarcón

Geopolitical Borders

Week 8: Gutierrez-Jones, Benitez-Rojo

Week 9: José David Saldívar, Anzaldúa

Week 10: Saldívar-Hull, Muñoz

Disciplinary Borders

Week 11: Wordsworth

Week 12: Jay
               Paper Proposal Due

Week 13: Romero

Week 14: Ramón Saldívar

Week 15: Conclusion
Research Paper Due


Course Requirements
10% Annotated Bibiography 
30% (10% each) Assigned five-page essays or reaction papers covering specific readings;
20% (10% each) Two thirty-minute presentations or discussion facilitations;
30% Research paper or creative project (of equivalent length and quality);
10% Class attendance and participation.

Method of Evaluation
Letter grades, A-F

Annotated Bibliography:
This assignment is not as hard as it sounds. Using MLA format, list at least ten references related to borders and transculturation in your particular field and/or area of interest (creative writing, pedagogy, theory, American lit., English lit., gender issues, sexuality issues, etc.). Each bibliographical entry is followed by a three to four-sentence synopsis of the major points and/or argument of the article of book. Internet web sites, encyclopedias and dictionaries do not count toward the fifteen entry requirement. At least two thirds of entries must be dated after 1990.

Paper Proposal:
You must write a proposal identifying (either your creative project or) the text your choose and provide a brief bibliography of relevant criticism, and turn it in for me to sign. This proposal will be turned in as part of the research paper. If you omit the proposal when you submit the paper, then you will receive a grade of Incomplete for the class.

Research Paper:
Fifteen page research paper examining a text of your choice (or an equivalent creative project) with my signed approval. You must cite at least ten references in the form of articles or books with a maximum of two internet web sites counting toward the ten reference requirement; class texts, encyclopedias, and dictionaries do not count toward the ten reference requirement, although if you use information from these sources, they must be cited correctly. Your paper must be written in MLA format. Plagiarism will result in a failing grade.

Important Note:
If you cannot successfully write, reread and correct, and submit a research paper that merits a passing grade, you will fail this course.
I will deduct one point for each circled mistake, and these points will be deducted from the score your paper merits for content. Thus, even on the best possible fifteen page paper (A+, which is as rare as hen's teeth), if you average 2.7 mistakes per page, you will fail this course. UNC has extensive resources to assist students with writing. Use them.
Also note that I specify that you submit papers in MLA format. If you do not use MLA format, then I will deduct twelve points from your overall score immediately.
Read and remember this note. It is my experience that UNC students are good students who can successfully write in the English language. However, it is also my experience that often some students do not reread and correct their papers before submitting them. If this is your practice, change it. Now.
If you fail the research paper, you fail this course. Period.

Attendance and Participation:
Unfailing attendance 5%
Frequent relevant comments 5%

Frequent attendance 4%
Occasional pertinent comments 4%

Spotty attendance 3%
Couple, three-four good comments 3%

Crawling in bleeding 2%
Timid silence 2%

Name is mystery 1%
Outbursts, irrelevant comments -1%

Death in class 0%
Reading other texts or newspaper -2%

Rotting in class -1%
Chatting, disrupting neighbors -3%

Yes, Virginia, it is entirely possible to obtain negative points for your behavior. Don't.

Que le vaya muy bien.