Please feel free to email me since this is the best and most effective way to contact me. I check it frequently, so email me whenever you have questions or concerns. I also strongly encourage you to talk to me during office hours, before or after class, or make an appointment with me if you have any questions, comments, or other issues.

In my experience, students who stop by to talk, email, or communicate frequently, attend class regularly, participate in the classroom discussion, and complete the assigned readings, and all assignments tend to be more successful in the class. Similarly, I will email you regularly with reminders, instructions, and late breaking information. Last, if I ever cancel class, Canvas and email is how you will know it, so please check both daily.

ENG 239 serves as an introduction to contemporary Chicana/o literature, emphasizing historical and cultural contexts. This class will focus on a body of work that emerges from the Chicana/o movement in the 1960s and that continues to evolve as an expression of artistic and socio-political self-determination.  

This course offers a general overview of Chicano literary production in which we will explore different genres: essay, poetry, novel, short-story, visual art, film, and music. The definition of, and interrelationships among key concepts or terms such as community, border, culture, ethnicity, class, race, patriarchy, family, gender, identity, and assimilation will be discussed. 

1. Engage in close reading: interpret textual details and ambiguities, employing a vocabulary of literary terms, theories and/or critical methods.

2. Advance a proposition or thesis, supporting claims with explicit reasoning and textual evidence.

3. Conduct research: find, evaluate and cite secondary sources, using accurate MLA style conventions.

4. Place an argument in conversation with the ideas of other critics and theorists.

5. Formulate a research question and locate it within an interpretive context, such as aesthetic, cultural, ethico-political, historical, intertextual, or social.

6. Compose analytical papers in cogent and coherent prose.

This course uses the principle of collaborative learning or seminar format. In other words, I believe the classroom is a place of mutual respect and shared learning. In addition, it is a place where everyone’s informed or well-thought comments will be valued. This means we are here to learn from each other. I expect you to participate by listening, making comments, responding to your classmates, and asking questions. In turn, I will facilitate, direct, summarize, and clarify the discussion. Participation means more than just coming to class and hoping that you can get the answers from the instructor or the students who talk a lot. Collaborative learning means that it is your responsibility to share your own considered perspective on the assigned reading, assignment, or topic. In turn, the class will be structured to make sure that your views will enhance our understanding of the purpose of each class discussion.