From Columbus to Corridos: Thirty-Plus Years of Bringing Hispanic and Latinx Writing to the Early American Literature Classroom

An important element of E. Thomson Shields, Jr.’s teaching from the late 1980s until his retirement in Spring 2022, especially in American literature survey courses, was including Hispanic American and Latinx texts throughout the semester alongside texts from Anglo-American and other cultural/linguistic traditions. A good example of this inclusion is the approach he used in his department’s undergraduate survey course on American literature from its beginnings to 1900, a class designed for English majors. These majors had a variety of focuses to their studies—creative writing, cultural studies, English education, folklore, linguistics, literature, rhetoric and composition, and technical and professional communications. Hispanic and Latinx writings served well as touchstones alongside more traditional Anglo-American writings, and they showed how a single text could be usefully examined from several different academic perspectives. Drawing from a wide range of historical sources, anthologies, and bibliographies, Shields ensured that students had free access to electronic texts.