LALS 387 - Latin American Seminar

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as HISP 387) A seminar offering in-depth study of topics related to the literary and cultural history of Latin America. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic changes.

Topic for 2020/21a: New Argentine Cinema. The seminar follows the appearance and development of the Argentine New Wave, from the mid-1990s to the present. These films have initiated a new direction in Argentine and Latin American film, as they try to find new narrative forms that symbolically articulate and transform the radical crises–cultural, national and economic–that neoliberalism and its aftermath brought to the Argentine landscape. In the process, new voices, ethnic communities, sexualities and social sensibilities emerge, questioning established ways of thinking and looking at the nation and its uneasy fragments. The emerging result has been a boom in production that publics and film festivals worldwide have recognized through accolade, prizes, worldwide distribution and critical praise. Films by auteurs such as Adrián Caetano, Martín Rejtman, Pablo Trapero, and Lucrecia Martel are discussed, bearing on themes such as the circulation of bodies and labor, nation, migration and globalization, memory and subjectivity, the eye vs. the gaze, the spheres and politics of social space, and the political unconscious of melodrama and allegory within the context of subalternity and the Third World. In Spanish. Mario Cesareo.

Topic for 2020/21a: Detective Fiction in Latin America. This seminar examines the unique literary origins and development of detective fiction in Latin America in different national, political, and cultural contexts to inquire how specific genres of detective fiction and film correspond to particular issues of organized crime, class and ethnic difference, governability, corruption, quotidian violence, urbanization, and the media across Latin America. In Spanish. Michael Aronna.

Topic for 2020/21b: Art, Film, Literature and Climate Change in Latin America. This seminar addresses the toll climate change is taking on Latin America through its expression in art, film, and literature. Melting glaciers, coral bleaching, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea levels, water, and food insecurity are among the topics addressed eloquently through the arts in the region. The course examines the central role artists, filmmakers, and writers have played as key environmental activists throughout Latin America, focusing on literary work by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Pedro Cabiya (Dominican Republic), and Homero Aridjis (Mexico), artists like Tomás Sánchez (Cuba), Alejandro Durán (Mexico), and Ruby Rumié (Colombia), and films like Even the Rain (2011), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), A Place in the World (1992), The Naked Jungle (1954), and The Towrope (2012). Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert.

Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 and one course above 216.

One 2-hour period.