UTSA offers Selena course. Selena was murdered 25 years ago and her legacy is still so strong that it will now be honored in a new college course. Starting in the fall of 2020, students at the University of Texas at San Antonio will be able to sign up for a new class that will focus on the life of Selena Quintanilla, formerly the “Queen of Tejano music”.
The murder of Selena was a tragic event and many fans across America did not take the devastating news well. Selena died as a gunshot victim. The woman who shot her, Yolanda Saldivar was actually the president of the Selena fan club that was established in 1991. After many reports about Saldivar’s management style, Selena’s father began to investigate the business and realized that Yolanda had embezzled $60,000 from her fan club and boutiques selling Selena swag with a forged check. After the family confronted her, Saldivar lured Selena to a hotel room and shot her in the back. Unfortunately, paramedics were not able to revive her.
The new course that UTSA is offering is titled Selena: A Mexican American Identity and Experience. The course will center on diving deep into Selena’s star image, the use of language in music, and the ways media coverage of her popularity and death affected the trajectory of what being a Mexican-American in Texas looks like.
The course will be taught by Sonya Aleman who is a professor of Mexican American studies. Aleman plans to frame the course around being not only bilingual but also bicultural. The Selena course is going to be a part of UTSA’s newly established Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department.
As UTSA offers a Selena course, they continue to highlight and study the ins and outs of what being Mexican-American looks like. UTSA is hopeful that the Selena course will be a strong contribution.
