SPAN 329 Latino Popular Culture and the Arts
This course introduces students to popular Latino culture and art and prepares them to critically analyze areas of popular Latino culture including: music, film, television, performance, sports, media, art, food, and varied subcultures. Key topics include the relationship of contemporary Latino artists to the mainstream art world; debates about visual art as a vehicle for the expression of cultural identity; the role of gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity in creative expression; the diversity of the Latino community; and an examination of "Latinidad" as an affirmative cultural construction for people of Latin American descent in the United States. The course concentrates mainly on the period of the early 60s, with special emphasis on the contemporary times.