CORE C171   FSEM: Mexico

Faculty Profile for Professor Sandoval Leon

Offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the history, people, art, and cultures of Mexico, a country of diverse ethnic, sexual, gendered, class, and political identities that shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States. Students are presented the ways in which identities and communities are socially constructed, imposed, resisted, negotiated, dismantled, and reconstituted through an in-depth study of Mexico, both past and present. How does Mexico’s colonial past inform the present? On what terms has a Mexican national identity been defined and who is included or excluded from rights and citizenship? Objectives are to examine Mexico’s complex history and social fabric; to study Mexican identities, politics, and cultural expressions with relation to this history; and to gain a general understanding of contemporary Mexico in the context of current events and Mexico’s relationship to the United States. While focus is on Mexico, the ultimate goal is for students to gain a broader understanding of the constructed nature of identity, the process of nation-building, and the ways in which power and inequality shape the world we observe today. Students who successfully complete this seminar satisfy the Core Communities requirement.

Osvaldo Sandoval Leon teaches Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. His research focuses on contemporary Latin American literature and cultural studies, including trans-Atlantic theater and performance studies in the Southern Cone and Spain.