Language Crossing in Latin Carribean Cul

This course considers how language has traditionally shaped constructs of national identity in the Caribbean vis-à-vis the US. By focusing on language ‘crossings’ in Latinx Caribbean cultural production, we critically explore how various sorts of texts–narrative, drama, performance, poetry, animated TV series, and songs–contest conventional notions of mainstream American, US Latinx, and Caribbean discourses of politics and identities. Taking 20th-century social and historical context into account, we will analyze those contemporary styles and uses of language that challenge monolingual and monolithic visions of national and ethnolinguistic identities, examining societal attitudes, cultural imaginaries, and popular assumptions about the Spanish language in the Greater Caribbean and the US.