Sandra Ruiz
Visiting Asst. Prof. of English
Spring 2012
Date/Time: Friday, 1:10-4:00PM
English 362-01
Room: SQU 110
Office: Room 210 (285 Court Street)
Office hours: Friday, 4:30-5:30PM &
by Skype (TBA)
sruiz@wesleyan.edu
The Body as Text in Latina/o Theater and Performance
Course Description:
How does one read a body and a body of work? This course will take as its basic premise
that all bodies ask to be read, whether these bodies are socially, culturally, racially, and
sexually coded or bodies of work. In this course we will trace the historical
underpinnings of Latina/o theater movements and performances, from the 1960s to the
present in order to underscore the relationship between exercises of everyday life and acts
on stage. The Latina/o body is not only marked by modalities of difference, but is an
essential instrument of the subject—oftentimes unheard, unsayable, and unnoticed.
Therefore, in this course a double gesture in bodily reading will occur: one that brings to
the fore a particular type of theater and performance as an intellectual corpus, and the
other that highlights specific enduring bodies in time. To that end, we will critically
engage with plays, performance scripts, media works of performances, theorizations of
Latinidad and the body.
Required Books:
Yolanda Broyles-González, El Teatro Campesino: Theatre in the Chicano Movement.
Nilo Cruz, Ana in the Tropics
Cherríe L. Moraga, Heroes and Saints and Other Plays: Giving Up the Ghost
José E. Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers Of Color And The Performance Of Politics
Miguel Piñero, Short Eyes: A Play
José Rivera, Marisol and Other Plays
Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit and Other Plays
Antonio Viego, Towards a Politics of Loss in Latino Studies
*Additional readings will be made into PDF and placed online. Please print these
materials before attending each class.
*Please note that the syllabus is subject to change.
Course Requirements
Critical Response Papers (25%): You will each write 8 critical response papers (2
pages in length). All critical response papers should engage with the literature, theory,
and /or performances on the syllabus. They should not read like journal entries!
Presentation (20%): You will each choose a reading from our syllabus and give a 15-20
minute presentation. You will want to create a 3-5 page paper and perhaps use an object
(image, performance, etc.) to anchor your presentation.
Blog entries (15%): You will each submit 2 blog entries on our class website. This is
your moment to expose us to current issues in Latina/o theater and performance.
Attendance and Participation (15%): Because this is an advanced seminar course,
more than one unjustified absence will lower your grade (e.g. an A- to a B+). You are
required to participate during class discussion and are highly advised to attend office
hours.
Final Essay (25%): You will each write a critical essay on a topic of your choice (12-15
pages).
Grading:
The following scale will be used for writing assignments: idea/argument; structure;
evidence/close reading/analysis; and mechanics of writing (each equaling 25 points).
Course Schedule
I. Grounds for Reading the Corporeal
Week 1
1/27/2012
Introduction
Reading: selections from Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality, & Theatricality in
Latin/o America (eds. Diana Taylor and Juan Villegas).
Screening: The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey (Coco Fusco & Guillermo
Gómez-Peña) and other works by Guillermo Gómez-Peña.
Week 2
2/3/2012

Foucault, Michel. “Docile Bodies” and “Means of Correct Training” in Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.



Grosz, Elizabeth. “Notes Towards a Corporeal Feminism,” Australian Feminist
Studies.
Butler, Judith. “Introduction” and “Bodies That Matter” in Bodies that Matter: On
The Discursive Limits of Sex.
Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire (selections).
III. The “Worker’s” Body
Week 3
2/10/2012


Broyles-González, Yolanda. El Teatro Campesino: Theatre in the Chicano
Movement.
Screening: Los Vendidos (The Sellouts).
Week 4
2/17/2012
CRP #1 due
 Valdez, Luis. Zoot Suit and Other Plays.
 Yabro-Bejerano, Yvonne. “The Female Subject in Chicano Theatre: Sexuality,
‘Race,’ and Class.”
 Huerta, Jorge. “The Legacy of El Teatro Campesino.”
 Screening: Scenes from Zoot Suit.
III. Queer Bodily Inceptions
Week 5
2/24/2012
CRP #2
 Arrizón, Alicia. “Conquest of Space: The Construction of Chicano Subjectivity in
Performance Art” in Latinas on Stage.
 Moraga, Cherríe. Heroes and Saints and Other Plays: Giving Up the Ghost.
 Moraga, Cherríe. “Queer Aztlan: The Reformation of the Chicano Tribe.”
 Screening: Chicanismo by Luis Alfaro.
IV. Ricanness: Enduring Bodies
Week 6
3/2/2012
CRP #3




Piñero, Miguel. Short Eyes: A Play.
Mills, Fiona. “Seeing Ethnicity: The Impact of Race and Class on the Critical
Reception of Miguel Piñero’s Short Eyes.”
Cruz-Malavé, Arnaldo. “What a Tangled Web!: Masculinity, Abjection and the
Foundations of Puerto Rican Literature in the United States.”
Screening: Short Eyes (selected scenes).
V. The Body in (Dis)order
Week 7
3/9/2012
CRP #4



Pietri, Pedro. The Masses are Asses.
Gherovici, Patricia, The Puerto Rican Syndrome (selections)
Screenings: Superman ’51 & Jumping Fences by Papo Colo; Sustain by Ryan
Rivera; historical footage of Dolores “Lolita” Sotomayor-Lebrón.
Week 8
3/30/2012
CRP #5
 Rivera, José. Marisol and Other Plays.
 Lima, Lázaro. “Practices of Freedom: The Body Re-membered in Contemporary
Latino Writing” in The Latino Body: Crisis Identities In American Literary and
Cultural Memory.
VI. The Disidentifying Body
Week 9
4/6/2012
CRP #6 due
 Muñoz, José E. Disidentifications: Queers Of Color And The Performance Of
Politics (Introduction & “Sister Acts: Ela Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana”).
 Aparicio, Frances and Susana Chávez-Silverman, Introduction to
Tropicalizations.
 Troyano, Alina. I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures.
 Screening: Milk of Amnesia by Carmelita Tropicana.
VII. The Body in Loss and Exile
Week 10
4/13/2012
CRP#7 due
 Viego, Antonio. Towards a Politics of Loss in Latino Studies.
 Blocker, Jane. Where Is Ana Mendieta?:Identity, Performativity, and Exile
(selections).
Week 11
4/20/2012



Cruz, Nilo. Ana in the Tropics.
Muñoz, José E. "The Onus of Seeing Cuba: Nilo Cruz's Cubania." The South
Atlantic Quarterly (2000).
Flores, Juan. “Life off the Hyphen: Latino Literature and Nuyorican Traditions,”
Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York.
V. “Feeling” the Brown Body
Week 12
4/27/2012
CRP#8 due
 Muñoz, José E. “Feeling Brown: Ethnicity and Affect in Ricardo Bracho's "The
Sweetest Hangover (And Other STDs)."
 Muñoz, José E. "Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts."
Queer Acts (A Special Issue of Women and Performance).
 Chambers-Letson, Joshua. The Politics of Failure: Nao Bustamante's Hero
TDR:
The Drama Review.
 Screening: Indigurrito, Sans Gravity by Nao Bustamante.
Week 13
5/4/2012
 Baez, Josefina. Dominicanish.
 Arrizón, Alicia. “Borders of Latinidad and its Links to Mestizaje” and
“Epistemologies of “Browness”: Deployments of the Queer Mestiza Body.”
Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance.
 Screening: Dominicanish.