ENGL 200 C: Reading Literary Forms

Drugs on Demand: The Fiction, Film and Television of narcotráfico

At the heart of this course is the assertion that narco-cultura, the literature, music, fashion and film of narcos (drug traffickers), is not exclusively Mexican but is actually trans-American. Due in no small part to the increasing celebrity of narco-cultura as well as the intensification of nationalist rhetoric that collapses anti-Mexican and anti-narco to mean the same thing the U.S.-México border is both textually imagined and materially organized as a crucial threshold. This course compares narrativas del norte, texts produced in or thematically concerned with Northern México, with 21st century narco-themed U.S. film and television in order to conceptualize the border outside of binary North-South models. Reading across literary bestsellers, box-office leaders and hit series allows us to see how new articulations of la frontera emerge from sophisticated readerships and their shared interpretive vocabularies.

Texts include Elmer Mendoza’s Silver Bullets (Balas de plata); Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (Señales que precederán al fin del mundo); Paul Flores’s Along the Border Lies; the films Sicario by Denis Villeneuve as well as Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala; select episodes from Breaking Bad and The Bridge; and also a selection of critical works by authors such as Diana Palaversich; Rosa Linda Fregoso; Hermann Herlinghaus and Óscar Martínez. All texts are in English but students have the option of reading material in the original Spanish versions. The consistent focus on reading and writing in this course satisfies the University of Washington’s writing requirement (W).