SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Selena Quintanilla is a Texas treasure, so to offer a class that explores the Queen of Tejano’s life and career is only fitting.
The class, created by Sonya Alemán, will be called Selena: A Mexican American Identity and Experience and will examine “how the life and career of Selena Quintanilla-la Reina de Tejano music-embodies the historical trajectory of the Mexican American identity and experience in Texas,” according to the University of Texas at San Antonio class description.
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“This has been a dream for me for a long time because it engages the things that I already am interested in and have spent time studying, researching, writing and talking about,” Alemán told UTSA. “… I can’t believe that it hasn’t been done yet in San Antonio. It’s almost a no-brainer that it would be about her and we would be here.”
The class will be offered starting in the fall 2020 semester.
You can read the full class description below:
“This course examines how the life and career of Selena Quintanilla-la Reina de Tejano music-embodies the historical trajectory of the Mexican American identity and experience in Texas. As exemplified by a line from the biopic about her life, “We gotta prove to the Mexicans how Mexican we are, and we gotta prove to the Americans how American we are. We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time.” Selena’s rise to fame will be contextualized by addressing how systemic oppression and intersectionality impact the Mexican American experience. In particular, the course will emphasize how race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship function as axes of marginalization, as well as how sociohistorical, economic, and political factors converge to shape a Mexican American group identity in Texas, the Southwest and the United States.”
Visit the UTSA website for more information on the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexualilty Studies and the new Selena course.