FYS 28 Latinx Media Cultures: Gender, Resistance, and Representation
This course explores Latinx popular culture as both a site of creative expression and a battleground for power, gender, and representation. Through music, television, film, memes, fashion, and digital platforms, we’ll examine how Latinx communities in the U.S. have navigated, resisted, and redefined dominant narratives about race, gender, class, and nation. We’ll dive into the politics of Spanglish, the symbolic resonance of La Virgen de Guadalupe, diasporic aesthetics, and the role of pop culture in shaping identity, community, and protest. Drawing on frameworks from Chicana feminism, queer theory, Afro-Latinx critique, and cultural studies, we’ll interrogate questions of visibility, voice, and authenticity. Through critical readings, multimedia analysis, and hands-on creative projects, students will sharpen media literacy skills that enable critical consumption and production of cultural content. Open only to first-year frosh.