HISP 321 - Puerto Rican Cultural Studies: Boriké’s Cultural Production

Credits: (3)
Prerequisite(s): HISP 240
College Curriculum: COLL 300
Puerto Rican cultural production is positioned at the crossroads of Caribbean, Latin American and American national culture; further knotted by its African, Indigenous, and Spanish cultural strands. Additionally, Puerto Rico or Borikén, its Indigenous name, has the longest ongoing history of colonization in the globe. How Borikén, Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans have expressed their cultural, national and ethnic process of ‘creolization’ or ‘marronage’ in visual art and literature? This course surveys and explores samples of Puerto Rican visual artworks and literature that showcases expressions of cultural creolization. Each semester we will review and examine illustrative Puerto Rican artworks from the 19^th century to the present from artists such as Francisco Oller, Francisco Rodón, Mirna Báez, Nidza Tufiño, Daniel Lind-Ramos and more. Similarly, we will engage with key literary texts, namely poems, short stories, essays and a play from authors such as José Luis González, Luisa Capetillo, Julia de Burgos, René Marquéz, Abelardo Díaz Alfaro, Eduardo Lalo, and more. Each Puerto Rican cultural text will provide us with a view of national culture that is beyond the confines of nationalism, traditional history, and politics.