AML 4680 Fall 2018 Ribo

US popular culture is obsessed with what lies just beyond its southern borders. Television shows such as Breaking Bad, Dexter, Weeds, The Bridge all depict white, Anglo-American protagonists who enter a world of drugs, violence, and crime along the borderlands connecting the US to the global south. While the border crossings of Walter White, Dexter Morgan, Nancy Botwin, and Sonya Cross prove treacherous, it's all too often the bodies of Latinx characters that bear the brunt of the violence these antiheroes 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 works by contemporary Latinx artists, writers, and intellectuals.