MAS 315 latina performance: celia-selena

MWF 11-12 pm #40255 BUR 216 Laura Gutierrez

While this course’s title suggest that the span of the class material covered will begin with a visual cultural analysis of Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa, and will end with Selena, the Queen of Tejano, these two figures only conceptually bookend the ideas that will be explored during the semester. This class will begin by sampling a number of performances of Latinas in popular cultural texts to get lay the ground for the analytical and conceptual frameworks that we will be exploring during the semester. First of all, in a workshop format, we will learn to analyze cultural texts that are visual and movement-based. We will, for example, learn to write performance and visual analysis by collectively learning and putting into practice vocabulary connected to the body in movement, space(s), and visual references (from color to specific ethnic tropes). Second, we will begin to explore the ways in which Latinas have been hypervisible and invisible at the same time, both in culture and in society at large. The class asks the following: how can we reconcile that the notion of Queen, as signaled by these two figures, or, in general, the notion of Diva, used to signal a performance of virtuosity and excellence, which merited adoration, can co-exist in a society where Latinas are devalued?

By combining methods from Latinx Studies and Performance Studies, where embodied practices and representations of race and ethnicity are conjoined in our analysis, we will have a wider understanding of Latinas in popular culture in the United States beginning in the early 20th Century. To that end, this class will examine figures in US 20th and 21st centuries popular culture that have enriched some cultural industries, specifically Hollywood and the music industry, yet have been exceedingly exoticized, discriminated because of race and gender, and marginalized or rendered invisible. By being attendant to the conventions that have manufactured certain representations, that is, by learning to analyze performance texts in popular culture, the students will come to understand not only questions of gender and race and ethnicity as important analytics, but will also become conversant in the theories and practices of performance. Some of the figures that we will study include: Carmen Miranda, Lupe Vélez, Dolores del Río, María Montez, Rita Moreno, Celia Cruz, La Lupe, La India, Jennifer López, Selena, Shakira, Cardi B.