SAN ANTONIO – If you think a college course about Selena Quintanilla is just about her music, think again. A professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is using the Tejano singer’s legacy to address complex issues like identity, race, and gender.
Dr. Sonya Alemán was a college student in San Antonio when Selena was taking the music scene by storm in the 1990s. While teaching a Mexican American studies course and discussing the Tejano icon in recent years, she realized a need for more on the need to better highlight the singer’s cultural impact after her death.
“I realized there’s an opportunity here for students to still engage what she means in a course dedicated to her,” Alemán said.
That realization led to the creation of the Selena course at UTSA — which goes beyond the famous “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” star’s musical career. It’s about creating a safe space to discuss sensitive topics like race, gender, and identity using Selena’s life as the lens.
“The experience that Selena herself went through as a young woman in the industry and look at those stories. And they usually allow students to talk about (the) connection to their personal experience,” Alemán said.
The course also includes guest speakers, such as Tejano legend Shelly Lares and Selena’s husband, Chris Perez. Alemán incorporates their stories and perspectives into the course material to help students better understand the singer’s influence and impact.
“I’ve been able to make room in the class for their stories, their perspective on who she was to them and tie that into the course material,” Alemán said.
Alemán’s goal is to help students see themselves as scholars who can contribute to Selena’s story and understand how some of the challenges Selena faced are still relevant today.
“To shift the class from ‘I’m going to tell you everything I know, and you’re going to absorb it’ to ‘You’re going to help me generate what we need to know and what we should know by talking to this community about who Selena was,’” Alemán said.
If you want to learn more about Alemán’s course, you can watch the full interview with her below.
Graphic courtesy: UTSA
