Dr. Lydia Saravia has taught many courses for the College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences and WRD, including WRD 542 Urban Literacies and others dealing with culture and literacy. This quarter, she’s been teaching LSP 200 Border Cultures, a class dedicated to examining the U.S. Mexico and the communities along its line. With the recent celebration of Dia de los Muertos, we got in touch with her to talk about the course’s goals and what students are learning in it.
Explain the class a little. What is its goal?
LSP 200 is a sophomore seminar class, a seminar on multiculturalism in the United States. The goal of all LSP 200s is to examine an aspect of multiculturalism in the United States, with an emphasis on investigating “the historical roots of inequalities.” Our LSP 200 looks at the U.S. Mexico Border. Ideally, we are introduced to issues such as gender, economy, politics, environment, ecology, etc.
What parts of border cultures are you having your students study? Does linguistics factor into it?
Because it’s a seminar in a 10-week quarter, we look at various topics that are impacted or shaped or influenced by the physical and imagined U.S.-Mexico border. For example, we look at how the environment is impacted by the construction of a border wall and by migration. We look at the role of activists and environmentalists and artists at the border and through the United States. Of course, we also talk about the militarization and privatization along the border. We look at migration and gender and gender identity. We look at language, specifically how language operates along the border. We do study the impact language can have on those migrating: border rhetoric.
Being in WRD, how does writing, particularly writing practices, fit into the subject?
We practice critical reading and writing. In addition to responses to the texts we are reading, students are engaged in a larger research project. They enter into an investigation about our topic. They begin with an inquiry, gather sources, and write about and share their research.
We also spend some time considering the ways in which stories about the border and/or migration are told, examining qualitative versus quantitative research. We engage in critical reading and thinking about the information we come across.
As we know, Dia de los Muertos just passed. What is its celebration like along the US-Mexico border?
We do not necessarily look at celebration of Día de los Muertos along the border. Autumn 2019 was the first time I taught LSP 200. Día de los Muertos coincides with our Autumn quarter. In 2019, we participated in Tepeyac’s Day of the Dead festivities at DePaul, partnering with Latinx Cultural Center to create an ofrenda dedicated to the people we read about in our class. We created crosses, inspired by an artist we read about in class who creates crosses and leaves them along the border where bodies have been found. We also create papel picado, cempasuchil flowers out of tissue paper, etc. This quarter, I had hoped to also do the same and participate, somehow, virtually. It did not work out. Maybe because we were online, I don’t know. But it just did not work out.
What are you hoping for your students walk away with at the class’s end?
Ten weeks is not a long time, and it’s impossible to fully look at the long historical and political impact of the U.S.-Mexico border. What I hope is that students walk away with new information, different from what popular media might discuss. But mostly, I want us to humanize the people we read about. Often, the research can erase the humanity of people in order to transmit a set of data or results. So for me, it is important we think of the people as people.