DANC 241 - Dancing Latinx America

This course is an introduction to Latinx American dance studies. This course takes a hemispheric perspective and considers a wide range of social, concert, and popular dance practices from the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. From a disciplinary perspective, this course explores the intersection of three fields: dance studies, Latin American studies, and Latinx studies. At this intersection, it engages the methods used by scholars working from historical, ethnographic, queer, feminist, and ethnic studies standpoints to ask: What is the relationship between dance and Latinx American identity (national, personal, and/or transnational)? How do dance practices reinforce and/or deconstruct racialized, gendered, and classed stereotypes? How do movement forms and performance styles mobilize, remember, or reimagine Latinx identities and histories?

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): CRES 261
Notes: No previous dance experience necessary. This course may be applied toward the dance studies requirements.
Not offered: 2023-24
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).