Marcelo Montavo 
Monday/Wednesday 4:30 PM – 5:45 PM 

In this seminar course we will trace the contours of decolonial theory and practice through the literary, visual and performing arts. We will read cultural and theoretical texts from Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color artists, scholars and social movements. Weaving Ethnic Studies theory and expressive arts practice, we will study the works of Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Frantz Fanon, Residente, Leslie Marmon Silko, Nezahualcoyotl, Ana Tijoux, Jimi Hendrix, Café Tacuba, Fred Ho, Kendrick Lamar, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and others. These hemispheric and inter-cultural cross-pollinations will help us bridge creative approaches to knowledge production, social movement activism and critical pedagogy. Students will learn Ethnic Studies methods in close reading and critical analysis of historical and contemporary cultural production through oral presentations, essay writing and creative projects. Following what decolonial thinker Walter Mignolo has termed “shifting the geo- and body politics of knowledge and power”, we will “de-link” aesthetics and poetics from their conventional Eurocentric lineages as we study the past, present and future of decolonial expressive arts and culture.