LACS 22.12 Speculative Pasts: Latinx Fantasy
In this course we will explore how the genres of speculative fiction envision alternative racial pasts and futures. If science fiction is the genre associated with speculative futures then fantasy is the genre associated with speculative pasts, and so we will ask how these books, television shows, films, and musicians employ the genre of fantasy to ask racial questions about hybridity, historical power structures, and migration. How does Latinx high fantasy re-imagine the colonial encounter and resistance to it? How does Latinx low fantasy employ artifacts, mythologies, and folklore to revisit and reframe the stories that shape identity? In this course, you will be learning how to use close textual analysis as a form of evidence for literary arguments, although not all assignments will require this style of argument.