Latinx, 1492-2022

The 530 years since Christopher Columbus's arrival in Hispaniola have paid witness to the fall and rise of empires, the perseverance of colonial structures of power, and the construction and (re)creation of racial, sexual, and gendered identities. In the midst of such change and continuity, this course sets out to ask what place does Latinx occupy in this long history? What does Latinidad look like when we trace it back 530 years, when we take 1492 to be its starting point instead of the twentieth century? How might this look backwards help us understand the current Latinx politics of gender (Latino versus Latina versus Latinx), sexuality (the place of queerness and transness in Latinx studies), and race (Latinidad's penchant for disavowing blackness and erasing indigeneity)? We answer these questions as we move through different historical and literary periods in dialogue with writing by, for example, colonial Spanish historian Bartolomé de las Casas, nineteenth-century Cuban intellect José Martí from exile in New York, twentieth-century queer Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, and contemporary Honduran-Garifuna writer Janel Martínez.