LALS 387 - Latin American Seminar

Semester Offered: Fall
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 2024/25a: 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 subgenres 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. Michael Aronna.

Topic in 2024/25b: Narratives of Racial Capitalism in Mexico and Central America. In modern-day Mexico and Central America, the most precarious populations are descendants of enslaved people, the colonized, or the dispossessed. Yet while the fact of race and class intersecting is evident, why and how they have evolved together, is not. Central American and Mexican cultural objects offer a microcosm through which to better understand the relationship between race formation and economic dispossession. By analyzing works spanning the colonial period to the present, we will meditate on Cedric Robinson’s conception of “racial capitalism,” which holds that capitalism evolved out of the feudal order to produce an economic world order dependent on slavery, imperialism, genocide, violence, and exploitation. The Central American and Mexican works studied both critique and obfuscate the intersection of race and class. In doing so, they offer important cultural and historical insights into the region today, particularly around issues of whiteness, mestizaje, and multiculturalism; resource extraction; policing, counterinsurgency, and criminality; labor power; migration and borders; identity and ethno-politics; and memory and reconciliation. Authors studied include Bartolomé de las Casas, José Vasconcelos, Rosario Castellanos, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Roque Dalton, Quince Duncan, Rigoberta Menchú, Berta Cáceres, Claudia Hernández, and others. Michael Aronna.

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

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS