AML 4680 Spring 2023 Ribo

Contemporary US popular culture is obsessed with what lies just beyond its southern borders. Television shows such as Breaking Bad, Narcos, The Bridge, and Weeds depict white, Anglo-American protagonists who enter a world of drugs, violence, and crime along the borderlands connecting the U.S. and the global south. While these border crossings often prove treacherous, it is all too often the bodies of Latinx characters that bear the brunt of the violence these anti-heroes unleash. In this course we will trace the genealogies of such contemporary depictions of whiteness and Latinidad by comparing films and popular television series with the work of contemporary Latinx artists, writers, and intellectuals.