MAS 219 - Mexican American Culture

1. Define some of the principal historiographic issues, perspectives and problems of Chicana/o/x studies and be able to name some of the major Chicana/o/x scholars.
2. Delineate the chronology, and identify the main social, economic, political, cultural and intellectual patterns for each period of Chicana/o/x history.
3. Discuss the emergence of the Mexican Americans in the 19^th century in each of their homelands, Texas, California, New Mexico-Arizona, their resistance to U.S. aggression and the construction of Mexicans as “foreigners.” 
4. Describe the complexity (ies) of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, its economic basis, laboring class movements, the impact on Mexican Americans and Mexicans, and the border as nationalistic/racial barrier.
5. Discuss the totality of Chicana/o/x experiences in the 20^th century as the laboring class of the U.S. West, the Mexican diaspora and the expected challenges of the 21^st century in face of demographic changes, economic globalization and the communications revolution.

1. Intensive Writing and Critical Inquiry
   1. Producing written discourse in more than one assignment through papers, reports, quizzes, tests, etc., which includes a minimum word standard of 3000 words.
   2. Written assignments emphasize critical inquiry which includes the gathering, interpreting, and evaluating of evidence.
   3. Includes a formal out of class paper of at least 1,500 words which requires critical inquiry and where the writer develops and supports a main idea.  
   4. Explicit writing instruction with timely feedback to help students improve their writing and critical inquiry skills is part of the course’s content.
   5. The evaluation of written assignments must include the overall quality of written work and critical inquiry, as measured by a rubric.
   6. At least 50% of the student’s grade must be based on the written work and critical inquiry assignments.
2. Chicano(a) Historiography
   1. Vocabulary, Identities, Geographic and chronology
   2. History of Chicana/o/x studies and major thinkers
   3. Chicana/o/x roots I:indigenous worlds
   4. Chicana/o/x roots II: imperial Spain
   5. Chicana/o/x roots III: invasion, conquest, Africa and colonialism
3. Movements North Under Spain and Mexico
   1. Explorations, conquests and settlement patterns in northern New Spain
   2. Society and political economy of the frontier north in Bourbon New Spain
   3. Earliest contacts of New Spain/Mexico and the United States
   4. Mexicanidad and the War of independence in the Northern Territories
   5. Fight for Texas: Why were there Mexicanos in the Alamo?
4. Nineteenth Century to 1880: Repression and Resistance
   1. United Sates and its “Manifest Destiny” : War with Mexico, 1846-48
   2. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: the rights of the first class citizenship
   3. California
   4. New Mexico-Arizona
   5. Texas
5. Making of the Chicana/o/x Worker to WWII
   1. Political and economic dynamics in the development of the West
   2. From the coming of railroads to WWI
   3. Mexican Revolution and the Chicana(o)(x)s
   4. Chicana(o)(x)s in their worlds: urban barrios and rural colonias
   5. From the great depression to WWII: deportations and military service
6. Toward the 21^st Century: Struggles
   1. War generations demand equal rights: voting, jobs, unions, education
   2. Chicana/o/x movement: “Liberation Now!”
   3. “Decade of the Hispanic”: the middle class and brokering to power
   4. Mexican diaspora, the border and neoliberalism: the laboring classes and their movements for social change
   5. Chicana/o/x culture, art ideas: el rasquachismo versus conformity
   6. Remaining questions for the Chicana(o)(x)s into the 21^st century