UCOP A-G Approved: Section B – English – Grades 9 (4.5 GPA Weighted Scale)

In this ninth grade honors literature course, we will take a critical journey through Chican@ Literature in the United States. We will explore a rigorous analysis of how this literature affects, documents, and creates Chican@ identities, politics, and the epistemologies/subjectivities of Chican@s in America. We will also use critical performance pedagogy to engage particular problems in the literature and in the community. Through group/team work, community service, and interactive lectures and discussions we will delve into the analysis, accessibility, and application of Chican@ literature. This course will explore critical questions around the issues of--and intersections between--gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, language, religion, tradition, colonization, access, citizenship, migration, culture, ideology, epistemology, politics, and love. The main questions that we try to tackle in this course are: How does Chican@ literature represent, challenge, and/or change traditional notions of the Chican@ experience? How can literature be used to activate the possibilities of decolonization, activism, and social justice? The course will also consider key literary concepts that shape and define Chicano literary production. By the end of the class, students will have a comprehensive understanding of the literary and historical formation of Chican@ identity and the complex, even contradictory, experiences that characterize Chican@ culture.