AFRC527 - MARKET WOMEN & MADAMES: Gender, Sexuality, and Racial Politics in the Caribbean & Latin America

FALL 2015: This course examines the lived and shared experiences and representations of Caribbean and Latin American women. We will discuss the relationship between gender, labor, sexuality, religion, and race in the Caribbean and the ways these concepts intersect with women's individual subjectivity and national identity. By examining primary sources-such as speeches and letters-alongside historical scholarship, literature, and popular media, we will study the impact of slave society and colonial pasts on representations of women and construction of womanhood in the modern Caribbean and Latin America and their diasporas through the 20th century. Beginning with late-18th century and ending with contemporary migration narratives of each country, we will study the local and regional political conditions that informed gender norms, social movements, and characterizations of Caribbean sexuality globally. In our historical examination, we will question some of the iconic representations of Caribbean and Latin American women-the racially mixed temptress, the pious matriarch, and the poor uneducated laborer-to understand the meaning, purpose and usages Caribbean women's bodies as objects of praise, possession, obsession and/or ridicule by communities, governments and religions within and outside of the Caribbean.


In our interrogation of gender meanings, we will consider the ways Caribbean women and men define themselves and each other, while considering the intersections of color, class, religion and culture on the political and social realities of the Caribbean and the region. The geographic scope of the course will extend to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Trinidad & Tobago. The following interrelated questions will anchor our exploration of each text: How have representations of Caribbean and Latin American women informed historical constructions and rhetoric of the region and national identity? What political and social strategies have Caribbean women and men used to define themselves in their countries and throughout the region? How do the history and contemporary conditions of a post-colonial nation impact the gender construction of Caribbean identities? What is the relationship between modern Caribbean gender identities and the regional racial and economic politics?