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Anthropology
of Latin America
A survey of current issues in the anthropological
study of culture, politics, and change across contemporary
Latin American and the Caribbean. Topics include
machismo and feminismo, the drug war, race and mestizaje,
yuppies and revolutionaries, ethnic movements, pop
culture, violence, multinational business, and the
cultural politics of U.S.-Latin American relations.
Attention will be given to the ways that anthropology
is used to uderstand complex cultural and social
processes in a region thoroughly shaped by globalization.
Latin
America in the 20th Century
An examination of Latin America in the 20th century,
with special emphasis on revolutionary nationalism,
industrialization and urbanization, mass participation
in politics, and the role of the United States
in the area.
Intro
to the Study of Hispanic Literature
Intended for students with little or no previous
background in literary analysis. Intro to and
methods for analysis of the major literary genres:
theatre, poetry, essay, novel, and short story.
Selections from a variety of Spanish and Spanish
American writers.
Spanish
American Literature I
A survey of major figures and literary trends
in Spanish America from 1492 to Modernismo (1880).
Emphasis on the writings of Colón, Cortés,
Bernal Díaz, Las Casas, Inca Garcilaso
de la Vega and Aztec reactions to the Conquest
in the early period and on Sor Juana in colonial
times. After the period of independence from Spain
(1810-24), the focus will be on the literary representation
of the making of the new nations, and cultural
autonomy. Readings include chapters of a picaresque
novel, the representation of dictatorship, civilization
vs. barbarism, the gaucho epic, and 19th-century
fiction. Lectures and class discussions of the
readings; exams, papers, and short reports.
Spanish
American Literature II
A survey of major Spanish American literary works
from the end of the 19th century to the contemporary
period. Examination of various genres (poetry,
narrative and essay), and literary trends. Works
by male and female authors (Darío, Martí,
Agustini, Storni, Quiroga, Neruda, Guillén,
Vallejo, Borges, Rulfo, Fuentes, García
Márquez, Ferré, Poniatowska, Valenzuela,
and others). Emphasis on writing strategies, cultural
perspectives, and gender representation.
Mass
Media and Nation Building in Latin America
This course examines the historical and social
structures of Latin America from the perspective
of media, both old and new, in the region. We
will consider, more specifically, the role of
the media in nation building in some of the most
important media producers and more dynamic media
markets of the last fifty years: Mexico, Argentina
and Brazil, among others. Our focus will be on
textual and visual culture including serial novels
and newspapers, comic books, films, televisual
melodramas and the internet.
Latin
American Theater
Survey of dramatic and theatrical currents from
the late 19th-century to the present. The course
will focus on tracing the themes of nationalism,
cultural identity, immigration, class displacement
and the effects of consumerism in representative
plays from the Rio de la Plata, Chile, Colombia
and Mexico. The course will study manifestations
of the sainete, the grotesco criollo, theater
of the absurd, as well as the popular independent
theater movements of the 60's and 70's. Theoretical
works studied include those of Brecht, Piscator,
Esslin. Authors studied: Dragún, Payró,
Cossa, Wolff, Sánchez, Díaz, Carballido,
Gambaro, Buenaventura.
Indigenous
Peoples and Movements in Latin America
An overview of Amerindian peoples, cultures, and
contemporary socio-political movements in core
indigenous regions of Latin America (the Maya
highlands of Mexico and Guatemala, and the Andes,
Chaco, and Amazon of South America). Expressions
of indigenous cultural, linguistic, and social
difference are considered in relation to histories
of European colonialism and modern Latin American
nation-building. Emphasis is placed on current
dimensions of indigenous demands for territorial,
political, and cultural rights in the context
of global economic development, natural resource
exploitation, military violence, and legal recognition
of ethnic pluralism in some Latin American nation-states.
Hispanic
Culture and Civilization II
Study of aspects of the political, social, and
cultural life of contemporary Latin America and
their historical development. Class discussion;
readings with compositions. Conducted in Spanish.
Latin
America: From Colonialism to Neocolonialism, 1492
– 1890
A survey of Latin American history from the discovery
of the New World in 1492 to the Spanish-American-Cuban
War in 1898. Topics covered include the period
of discovery, conquest, and settlement, the establishment
of colonial control, the wars of independence,
and the attempts to establish modern nation states
in the nineteenth century.
Latin
American Politics
This course is an introduction to the politics
in Latin America, focusing on the trend toward
the establishment of democracy. We examine the
impact of political culture, economic development,
and the legacy of authoritarian regimes on contemporary
politics. The course also reviews many of the
most pressing challenges confronting governments
Latin American governments: the role of the military
in politics, the reform of political institutions,
threats from radical guerrillas and drug traffickers,
debt and economic restructuring, and relations
with the United States. Country studies focus
on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and
Nicaragua.
Latin
American Poetry I
Survey of the major figures of Latin American
poetry from the colonial period to modernism.
Poets to be studied include Sor Juana, Caviedes,
Avellaneda, Marti, Dario, Silva, Najera.
Advanced
Seminar: Latin America and the US in the 20th
Century
Social, economic, and political relations between
Latin America and the United States in the 20th
century. Emphasis on internal developments which
help to explain international interaction. Topics
include: United States expansionism; Latin American
nationalism; the Good Neighbor Policy; revolution
in Mexico and Cuba; intervention in Central America;
and issues involving drugs and free trade.
Contemporary
Issues in Latin America
This course assumes some background knowledge
about the region. Each week, we will read and
discuss original research on the politics of Latin
America. We will examine both the performance
and reform of democratic institutions, and the
status of non-democratic regimes. Topics will
include democratization in Mexico, revolutionary
government in Cuba, reform of the state in Brazil,
the impact of international lending institutions
on domestic politics, the role of militaries in
post-Cold War politics, judicial independence
and the rule of law, and U.S.-Latin American relations.
Anthropology
and Development
Anthropological perspectives on international
aid and development. Topics include: meanings
and paradigms of development; the ethnographic
study of development aid and effects; development
knowledge production; natural resource extraction;
gender and race; resistance movements; culture
and development; and roles played by anthropologists
as critics, activists, and practitioners of development.
Narratives
of Fear: Violence in Latin American Literature
This course analyzes different representations
of violence in Latin American literature. Based
on a critical analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
texts, we will study how the recognition and legitimization
of violence occurs in the context of hierarchical
relationships in the society. Also we will study
how the literary images of bandits, pirates, thieves,
and assassins become the counter discourse of
the views of progress sustained by the hegemonic
powers. The role of power and ideology will be
discussed in texts that define different levels
of violence as a cultural manifestation.
Survey
of Latin American Culture
The goal of this course is twofold: first, to
introduce students to some of the most important
theories, critical concepts, and debates that
have contributed to shaping the field of Latin
American Studies during the 20th century (e.g.
colonialism, nation formation, miscegenation,
dependency, transculturation, hibridity, etc.).
Second, to analyze some specific approaches to
Latin American cultures from the perspectives
of cultural anthropology, theology of liberation,
studies in ethnicity, gender, popular/mass culture,
communications, film studies, etc. Students will
be encouraged to reflect on topics such as modernization,
Occidentalism, globalization and the like in order
to connect Latin American Studies to a broader
international context.
A
View from the Cone: Perspectives on Art, Literature
and Culture
This course will deal with current issues of cultural,
social, political and literary importance related
to the Southern Cone. We shall study selected
texts from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay as well
as contemporary films and drama productions. This
course will seek to determine what specifically
can be expressed about national identity, globalization
and the environment as these countries face the
twenty-first century. Course requirements include
four short essays and a final exam. This course
is taught in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Washington
University Chile Program. May be repeated for
credit.
Spanish
American "Traditional" Novel
This class will focus on a selection of aesthetically
and socially representative nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century Spanish American novels. Integrating
a wide range of sources (critical essays, paintings,
film), we will explore abolitionist issues in
SAB (Cuba), the reinvention of Amerindian legacies
in Aves sin Nido (Peru), and the different
facets of modernization and nation-building in
Los de Abajo (Mexico), La Voragine
(Colombia).You should finish the course with
a broader knowledge of Spanish American literary
history, a deeper understanding of textual representations
of gender, class and multiethnic identities, and
a sharper awareness of your potential as a reader
and critic. Significant selections of pertinent
criticism and theory will be required of graduate
students.
Advanced
Seminar in History: Latin America and the US in
the 20th Century
Social, economic, and political relations between
Latin America and the United States in the 20th
century. Emphasis on internal developments which
help to explain international interaction. Topics
include: United States expansionism; Latin American
nationalism; the Good Neighbor Policy; revolution
in Mexico and Cuba; intervention in Central America;
and issues involving drugs and free trade.
Latin
American Cultural Studies: Critical and Theoretical
Approaches
The goal of the course is to provide students
with critical and theoretical tools that could
be used for the analysis of Latin American cultural
history from a transdisciplinary perspective,
from colonial times to the present. Some of the
concepts to be discussed in class are: colonialism
and coloniality, national culture, dependency
theory, cultural antropofagia, lettered city,
miscegenation, heterogeneity, hybridity, transculturation,
peripheral modernity, media and mediation, postmodernity,
postcoloniality, and collective memory.
Urban
Cultures in Latin America
The course will focus on the key role urban development
and urban cultures have had in Latin America with
particular emphasis on contemporary times. The
goal of the course is to discuss the connections
between the formation and expansion of cities,
the definitions of citizenship, and the role of
modernity in the development of "high"
and "popular" cultures within different
historical and geo-cultural contexts. Particular
attention will be paid to the issues of race,
class and gender. The course, which will utilize
interdisciplinary and comparative approaches,
will also focus on the phenomena of marginality,
cultural resistance, nationalism, and consumerism,
as well as on the role played by the media in
contemporary Latin American societies. Some of
the cultural expressions to be analyzed in the
course are music (rock, pop, rap), sports, film
and video.
Latin
America and the West
From the perspective of postcolonial theory, the
course will cover different aspects related to
Latin America’s cultural history, from the
Discovery to the present. Some of the issues to
be discussed in class are: the colonial encounter;
Baroque culture and the emergence of Creole societies
in the “New World,” the connections
between Enlightenment and nationalism, as well
as the interweaving of “coloniality”
and modernity.
Exile
in Contemporary Latin American Literature
Authors studied include Cortazar, Garcia Marquez,
Benedetti, Monterroso, Cristina Garcia, Diaz,
Franz, Skarmeta, Arenas, Zoe Valdes, Soriano.
Subalternity
and Illegality: An Approximation to the Limits
of the Latin American Subject
This seminar will explore the relationship between
the subaltern and illegal practices, or the survival
at the border of illegality, through a selection
of novels and films from Latin America. By focusing
on the relationships between centers and margins,
we will study subalternity as a social production
and as a recurrent feature in Latin America's
literature and film.
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Tales
of Magic, Marvel and Fantasy in Contemporary Spanish
American Narrative
This course studies the world of the fantastic, the
marvelous and the extraordinary through textual analysis
of selected narratives by the following writers from
Spanish America: Horacio Quiroga, María Luisa
Bombal, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel
García Márquez, Armonia Sommers, Rosario
Ferré, Luisa Valenzuela, Antonio Benítez
Rojo. Integrating a wide range of sources (theoretical
essays, paintings, film) we will undertake an exploration
of texts that evolve around obsession, metamorphosis,
dream, magic and ritual.
Captivity
and its Consequences: Horror, Desire and Nostalgia in
Colonial Narratives
The objective of this course is to examine the formation
and evolution of narratives of captivity in Latin American
texts and their visual representations from the first
indigenous and European contacts to the end of the colonial
period.
Urban
Myths: Latin American Cities in Contemporary Literature
Latin American cities have historically played a crucial
role in the construction of culture. In this course,
we will explore how the idea of the Ctiy is imagined
within different cultural contexts. Such an exploration
will involve careful attention to, among other concerns,
how the City has been mapped with regard to boundaries
of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. We will study
important critical and literary works by Vargas Llosa,
Onetti, Puig, Fernando Vallejo and Bryce Echenique.
Sor
Juana Ines de la Cruz: Gendering the Spanish American
Baroque
This course will explore the life and writings of the
Mexican poet, intellectual, and cloistered nun, Sor
Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695). We will study
her poetry, her dramatic works as well as her autobiographical
and theological writings. Special emphasis will be given
to the cultural, literary and historical moment in which
Sor Juana wrote, specifically as it pertained to her
role as a woman writer. We will examine seventeenth
century Mexican convent culture and its role within
the Church hierarchy, using it as a backdrop from which
to study Sor Juana's polemical relationship with the
ecclesiastical authorities. Also studied will be the
viceregal society of which Sor Juana, although a cloistered
nun, was an active part. In addition, we will discuss
the importance of the so-called Barroco de Indias and
its relationship to the Spanish Baroque.
The Works of Gabriel García Márquez
This course will allow students to make an in-depth
study of the leading contemporary Spanish-American novelist
and Nobel Prize winner. Emphasis will be placed on an
examination of García Márquez as a novelist
of the Caribbean and the creator of a particular literary
world that has had an overwhelming influence on his
contemporaries and the younger generations that followed.
Through a chronological selection of his works, which
include One Hundred Years of Solitude and also his short
novels and short stories, we will reflect on his development
as a writer and the impact this Colombian writer has
had on Latin American literature.
Melodrama,
Intimacy And Humor In Latin American Literature And
Culture
How do lyrics of tango and bolero impact literary production?
How do film and literature intersect in contemporary
representations of hoaxes, violence and love in Latin
America? These and other questions will be addressed
through readings, music and film. Among the authors
to be considered are Augusto Monterroso, Manuel Puig,
Angeles Mastretta and Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
Science
and Latin American Literary Imagination
This course explores the manner in which Latin American
literature has incorporated science as a theme and as
a textual model throughout the twentieth century. We
will examine specifically the various ways in which
science is interpreted and expressed as a cultural discourse
in narrative, poetry, and film. We will also emphasize
the dynamic through which literature appropriates the
cultural authority science wields in society. Texts
include works by Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Gorodischer,
Ernesto Cardenal, and Mempo Giardinelli, among others.
Saints
and Sinners: Women's Writing in the Colonial Latin American
Convent
In this course we will examine the phenomenon of women's
writing in the Latin American colonial convent. We will
study different types of texts--mystical, autobiographical,
penitential, literary and theological. Themes we will
analyze in this class will include the constraints placed
on women writers of the period, the problematic relationship
between nun author and male confessor, as well as the
intersection of convent culture and intellectual expression.
We will also consider theoretical implications such
as the centrality of the female body and sexuality in
nuns' writings, as well as concepts of power and subversion.
Protest
and Pleasure: The Politics of Latin American Cinema
Latin American Cinema has been an important vehicle
for the discussion and fostering of social change in
this continent. Revisiting the main creative currents
and theoretical formulations about the social role of
cinema will help us understand the ways in which the
cinematic image can address the revolution, confront
authoritarianism and criticize neo-liberal "democracies."
This graduate seminar emphasizes the acquisition of
the concepts and tools for cinematographic analysis
as well as the reflection on the historical evolution,
production, distribution, and consumption of cinema
during key periods in Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil.
Urban
Myths: The City in Colonial Latin American Literature
In this course we will study the Colonial Latin American
city in four key moments: the pre-conquest city, the
foundational city, the Baroque city, and the 18th-century
city. Among some of the themes we will examine are issues
of race, class and gender in the city, urban practices,
urban planning, and the dialectic between the urban
and the rural. We will focus predominately on how the
city was portrayed in different genres of writing in
the various time periods. We will study such authors
as Cortés, Bernal Díaz, El Inca Garcilaso,
Guaman Poma, Balbuena, Gage, Humboldt, and others. Through
close readings of these texts we will look at the centrality
of the city to empire building and how, throughout time,
it became a contested space for an emerging American
identity, separate from Spain. The course will also
examine other urban images as represented in art and
architecture of the period in urban centers such as
Mexico-Tenochitlan, Lima, Cuzco, Antigua, and Potosí.
The
'Eyes' Have It: Storytelling Through The Image And The
Word In Contemporary Spanish American Narrative
This course will examine Latin American stories where
image and word share a contested space, either through
insertion of real images into narrative or the literary
creation of meta-images that exist only in the narrative
realm. The image centered texts (works of art, photographs,
films, graffiti) tell stories where popular culture,
political events, and digital technologies intersect
and call each other into question. The use of images
in these readings challenges conventional gaze and facilitates
different ways of seeing. The list of authors includes
Sábato, Cortázar, Poniatowska, Peri Rossi,
Puig, Gorodischer, Eltit, Ferré, Paz Soldán.
Integrating a wide range of sources, we study works
that trace a trajectory from surrealism to "boom"
and "post-boom" Latin American narrative.
Cuba,
Politics, Culture, Literature, Art And Music
A course on contemporary Cuba, its transformation into
a Socialist state. Emphasis will be given to U.S.-Cuban
relations, especially from 1898 to the present. Readings
will include biographies of Castro and Ché, films
and documentaries, the socio-economic writing of Carmelo
Mesa Lago, the socio literary books of Gustavo Peréz
Firmat, and various literary creations by Pablo Juan
Gutiérrez José Kozer, Cristina García,
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, and others.
We will study Cuban architecture and art, as well as
its music.
Introduction
to Graduate Studies in Spanish
An introduction to the skills required for advanced
study in Spanish literature. Major concentration is
on critical methods, approaches, and schools, with an
important secondary emphasis on bibliography and research
methods.
Nation
Building: 19th-Century Spanish American Writers Confront
The Challenge
The writers of nineteenth-century Latin America collaborated
in the period's efforts of construction and reconstruction
by proposing new models for their newly independent
countries. This course will analyze the works of the
most prominent writers whose works deal with concepts
of nation, identity, class and race. Based on readings
of different genres, we will explore how these texts
prescribe, describe and carry out theories that contributed
to the building of the Latin American "Nation".
Authors include Bello, Heredia, Sarmiento, Martí,
Rodó and Isaacs, among others.
The
Worlds Of Julio Cortazar
Julio Cortázar once named a collection of his
essays, "Around the Day in Eighty Worlds,"
turning the title of Jules Verne's famous novel inside
out. Throughout his work, the 20th-Century Argentine
writer has created many literary worlds that similarly
help us explode our own notions of reality and how we
live in and contribute to them. Through a study of a
selection of his long and short fiction, we will accompany
Cortázar on his exploration of the "other
sides" of reality. We will also examine the effect
his work has had on other artists and reflect on all
that we find with essays, presentations, an exam, and
a video project.
When
Poetry Says What Philosophy Cannot Think: 20th-Century
Poetry In Latin America
What does it mean to read poetry today? In this course
we will deal with the place of the poem within the cultural,
political and philosophical tradition of Latin America.
Based on careful readings of 20th-Century Latin American
poetry by poets such as Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges,
Octavio Paz, we will organize our discussions around
the relationship between the poem and thought. We will
treat the poems as part of a larger cultural background
in which they interact with the political, with questions
of gender and with the realm of science and technology.
Women's
Writing In Latin America
In this course we will study the literary output of
Latin American women writers from the Colonial period
through to the present day. We will examine works from
different literary genres (narrative, poetry and essay)
of writers from throughout the region. Themes we will
focus on will include women's participation in the formation
of the canon and national literature, female authors'
engagement with a tradition of women's writing, gendered
issues of authorship and authority, as well as the representation
of the female body and sexuality. Theoretical and critical
texts will be read alongside primary texts to help interrogate
notions of gender and identity and to decipher the different
discursive practices that emerge in female-authored
texts. Authors to be studied include Sor Juana Inés
de la Cruz, Flora Tristán, Victoria Ocampo, Cristina
Peri Rossi and Diamela Eltit.
Globalism
And Technology in recent Latin American narrative
As Latin American countries have dealt with the impact
of the neoliberal regimes of the 1990s, we have seen
a marked increase in novels that explore the implications
of global business, culture, and technology in Latin
America. In this course we will examine a series of
novels by authors like Ricardo Piglia, Rafael Courtoisie,
Alberto Fuguet, Carmen Boullosa, Eugenia Prado, Alicia
Borinsky, and Edmundo Paz-Soldán among others
as we analyze the representation of technology, global
media, neoliberalism, and the arrival of a Latin American
posthuman body in contemporary narrative. We will include
a variety of theoretical approaches in our examination,
including works by García Canclini, Haraway,
Hayles, Hopenhayn, Richards, and Deleuze and Guattari. |
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