Instructor: Maylei Blackwell

Spring Quarter 1999

MW 5:00-6:45 Cowell 131

Course Description

This survey course is an introduction to issues and themes surrounding sexualities and genders within Latin American and Latina/o Studies with an overview of the literature, basic theoretical frameworks, and a historical grounding of gendered processes and their relationship to sexuality. Our interdisciplinary study will examine how gender and sexuality are structured and experienced historically through other social categories--such as race, class, and region--and how they circumscribe national and political identities, social movements, migration and diasporas, film and popular culture. While the main focus of this course will address Latin American histories, theories, politics and cultural formations, we will also study the implications of these topics within diasporas emerging from Latin America and within more established Latino communities in the US, including cross border perspectives, comparative frameworks on the sex/gender systems, and attention to transnational processes.

(General Education Code: E.)

Required Texts

• Sex and Sexuality in Latin America Daniel Balderstorm and Donna Guy. New York: New York University Press, 1997
• Sexual Politics in Latin America NACLA: Report on the Americas 31:4 (Jan/Feb 1998)
• Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas: Contesting the Power of Latin American Gender Imagery Marit Melhuus and Kristi Anne Stolen, eds. New York:Verso, 1996
• Course Reader Available at the UCSC Copy Center

Recommended Texts

• Living Chicana Theory Carla Trujillo, ed. Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 1998.
• Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina Donna J. Guy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
• The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico Steve J. Stern.
• The Gender and Sexuality Reader Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo, eds. New York: Routledge, 1997.
• Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua Roger N. Lancaster. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.
• Meanings of Macho Matthew Guttman.

Course Filmography

• Sex and the Sandinistas
• Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst is Your Waffen dir. Ela Troyano. (1994)
• Fresa y Chocolate
• Un Hombre cuando es Hombre
• La Operacion
• Brincando El Charco dir. Frances Negron-Muntaner (1994)

Course Requirements

• Regular attendance and participation in class discussions and film screenings
• Midterm Examination
• Critical Reading Response paper (3-5 pages)
• Take Home Final Examination (one essay)
• Class Presentation with written component (3 pages)

For more information, contact Latin American/Latino Studies by email or telephone (459-4284)