Latin American Cultures & Civilizations

Universidad de Belgrano

Course Description

  • Course Name

    Latin American Cultures & Civilizations

  • Host University

    Universidad de Belgrano

  • Location

    Buenos Aires, Argentina

  • Area of Study

    Anthropology, Communication Studies, Latin American Studies, Sociology

  • Language Level

    Taught In English

  • Course Level Recommendations

    Upper

    ISA offers course level recommendations in an effort to facilitate the determination of course levels by credential evaluators.We advice each institution to have their own credentials evaluator make the final decision regrading course levels.

    Hours & Credits

  • Contact Hours

    60
  • Recommended U.S. Semester Credits
    4
  • Recommended U.S. Quarter Units
    6
  • Overview

    Since its discovery until the present, Latin America has been imagined and conceived as the "New Continent", a place for utopia, but also as a space of uneven modernity and extreme forms of violence. The course explores distinctive cultural aspects of Latin America by looking at the ways it has been represented in readings spanning from the diaries written by Christopher Columbus to the texts of the Cuban Revolution, the iconography of Peronismo, or the recent debates on Neoliberalism, Globalization and Populism. Drawing on essays, but also on short-stories, paintings, photographs, murals and film, the course addresses a set of questions that lie at the heart of how one thinks about Latin America. What is expected from "Latin America"? What where the different "ideas" that Latin America embodied? What are the forms of "Latin American" culture? How are the different "cultures" connected?
    ---------------

    (PALAS 362) Latin American Cultures and Civilizations

    MA Edgardo Dieleke (ABD)
    Universidad de Belgrano
    Program in Argentine and Latin American Studies

    Instruction in English

    Course description

    Since its discovery until the present, Latin America has been imagined
    and conceived as the ?New Continent?, a place for utopia, but also as a
    space of uneven modernity and extreme forms of violence. The course
    explores distinctive cultural aspects of Latin America by looking at the
    ways it has been represented in readings spanning from the diaries
    written by Christopher Columbus to the texts of the Cuban Revolution,
    the iconography of Peronismo, or the recent debates on Neoliberalism,
    Globalization and Populism. Drawing on essays, but also on shortstories,
    paintings, photographs, and films, the course addresses a set
    of questions that lie at the heart of how one thinks about Latin
    America. What is expected from ?Latin America?? What were the
    different ?ideas? that Latin America embodied? What are the forms of
    ?Latin American? culture? How are the different ?cultures?
    connected? The purpose of the course is threefold: to introduce
    students to problems central to Latin America, to familiarize students
    with a variety of non-fictional writings in Spanish, such as essay,
    chronicle, journalism and documentary films, and to sharpen student?s
    skills as analytical readers.

    Course requirements

    Following UB policies, students need a minimum of 75% of attendance
    to be in good standing for the final exam. Sliding the ID card is the
    only way to track attendance. Students are expected to do close
    readings, participate in class, and do one oral presentations in pairs or
    in groups of three. During the semester, students will write two short
    (2-3 pages) papers. They will also conduct research on a specific topic,
    the nature and scope of which should be determined in consultation
    with the professor. By the end of the semester, students will present
    to the class the outcome of this research, and write a 5-6 page final
    paper due the week before the final exam. The requirements also
    include a midterm and a final comprehensive exam. As part of the
    course requirements, the students will have to visit on their own the
    Evita and the ESMA museums (see academic calendar below). In
    addition to this, each student will be expected to make a significant
    contribution to the classroom dialogue. Any student caught plagiarizing
    will be given a ?no credit? for all courses taken in the semester.

    Grading Policy

    Participation 10 %
    Oral Presentation (1) 10 %
    Midterm 20 %
    Final Exam 20 %
    Short Essay (2) (2 pages) 20 %
    Final Paper (6-8 pages) 20 %

    Unit 1. ?Discovering the New Continent?: Early Images of Latin
    America

    Week 1:
    Course introduction: The ideas of America
    Amerigo Vespucci: ?The New World?

    Great pre-Columbian civilizations (chapters from the Popol Vuh: The
    Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya)

    Week 2. The ?New World?: Tales from the Discovery and the Conquest

    Christopher Columbus. ?Letter to Luis de Santangel?/ Excerpts from
    Columbus Diary
    ?A description of Tupinambá?, Anonymous.

    Hernán Cortés. Letters from Mexico (selection)
    Bernal Díaz del Castillo. The conquest of New Spain (selection).
    J.H. Elliott. ?The Uncertain Impact? (1-27)
    Oral presentations will be assigned

    Week 3. Tales of Conquest, Colonial Encounters and its Consequences

    Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The Royal Commentaries of the Incas
    selection).
    Bartolomé de las Casas. A short account of the destruction of the
    indies (selection).

    Eduardo Galeano. The open veins of Latin America (selection)
    Oral presentations: Eduardo Galeano. The open veins of Latin America
    (selection)

    Week 4. Revisiting the Conquest

    Werner Herzog. Aguirre, the wrath of God
    Students have to write the first short paper

    Unit 2. Founding New Nations and the Idea of Latin America

    Week 5.

    Homi K. Bhabha. Nation and Narration. ?Introduction?.
    Benedict Anderson. Imagined communities. (Selection)
    Short Paper is due

    Simón Bolivar. ?Letter of Jamaica?
    José Martí ?Our America?

    Oral presentations

    Week 6. Imagining a Nation/ Civilization and Barbarism

    Domingo F. Sarmiento. Facundo (Selection)
    José Enrique Rodó. Ariel
    Oral presentations

    Doris Summer. Foundational Fictions (excerpts)
    María Luisa Bemberg. Camila (screening in class)

    Week 7. Re-writing the Foundational Fictions

    José Hernández. Martín Fierro (Selection)
    Jorge Luis Borges, ?Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden?

    Octavio Paz. ?The sons of La Malinche?
    José Carlos Mariategui. ?The problem of the Indian?
    Oral presentations

    Unit 3. The Arrival of Masses into Public Life

    Week 8. The Mexican Revolution and the Cuban Revolution

    Vasconcelos, José. The cosmic race (selection)
    Juan Rulfo. ?We?re very poor?
    John Reed. ?Pancho Villa? (364-71)
    Carlos Fuentes. ?Land and Freedom: The Mexican Revolution?
    Desmond Rochfort. Mexican Muralists
    Oral presentation on Mexican Muralists

    Week 9. Discourses of the Cuban Revolution

    Ernesto Guevara. ?Socialism and man in Cuba?
    Fidel Castro. ?History will absolve me? (Selection)
    ?Cuba: Historical exception or vanguard in the anticolonial struggle??
    Oral presentation on Che Guevara

    Senel Paz. ?Don?t tell her that you love me?
    Walter Salles, Motorcycle Diaries

    Week 10. The Peronist Movement and the Workers

    James, Daniel. ?Peronism and the Argentine Working-class?
    J.M. Taylor. ?The Myth of the Myth (1-9); ?The Power of a Woman?
    (10-19)

    Julio Cortázar, ?House Taken Over?
    Rodolfo Walsh, ?That Woman?
    Oral presentation on Rodolfo Walsh

    Week 11. The Political Aesthetics of Peronism

    Students have to Visit the Evita Museum and write a short paper
    Fernando Solanas. The hour of the Furnaces (screening in class)
    Oral presentation on Solanas

    Daniel Santoro. Selection of his paintings
    Short paper on Evita is due

    Unit 4. From Dictatorships to Neoliberalism

    Week 12. Dictatorships in the Southern Cone

    Richard Gillespie. ?Montoneros: Soldiers of Perón? (377-385)
    Andres Di Tella. Montoneros (excerpts)
    Oral presentation on Montoneros.

    The Madwomen at the Plaza de Mayo / Hebe de Bonafini and Matilde
    Sanchez
    Visit to the ESMA Museum
    Patricio Guzmán. The Battle of Chie (film excerpts in class)
    Oral presentation on Madres de Plaza de Mayo

    Week 13. Subaltern Identities and New Political Organizations

    Rigoberta Menchú. I, Rigoberta Menchú (Selection)
    Ejército Zapatista. ?Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle?
    Oral Presentation on Subcomandante Marcos

    Cocacolero by Alejandro Landes (screening in class)

    Unit 5. Latin America in the 21 Century: The Problems of Globalization

    Week 14. The year of 2001 in Argentina / Social unrest and Violence

    Ernesto Livon Grossman. Cartoneros
    Noemi Klein. The Take.
    Final Paper consultations

    Fernando Meirelles. City of God.
    Lourdes Portillo. Señorita extraviada
    Final Paper is due

    Week 15

    Final Exam

    Bibliography (in progress)

    Brennan, Timothy. ?The Nation Longing For Form.? Nation and
    Narration. Homi K. Bhabha, ed. London: Routledge, 1990. 44-70.
    Chomsky Aviva et al. The Cuba Reader. Durham: Duke University
    Press, 2003)
    Cortázar, Julio. ?The Gates of Heaven? (comic).
    Elliott, J.H. ?The Uncertain Impact? The Old World and the New (1429-1650)
    Cambridge UP, 1970. 1-27
    Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the
    Pillage of a Continent. New York: monthly Review Press, 1977.
    Gené, Marcela. Un mundo feliz. Imágenes de los trabajadores en el
    primer peronismo. BA: Fondo/Universidad San Andrés, 2005.
    Gilbert, Joseph and Timothy Henderson, ed. The Mexico Reader.
    Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
    Halperín Donghi, Tulio. Contemporary History of Latin America
    Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
    James, Daniel. ?Perón and the People.? Resistance and Integration: Peronism
    and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-1976. Cambridge UP, 1988.
    273-95.
    Kraniauskas, John. ?Rodolfo Walsh y Eva Perón: ?Esa mujer?. Nuevo
    Texto Crítico 12: (1993): 105-19.
    Levine, Robert M & John Crocitti, ed. The Brazil Reader. Durham:Duke
    University Press, 2003.
    Martínez, Tomás Eloy. Santa Evita. Trad. Helen Lane. New York:
    Vintage, 1996.
    Marysa Navarro. ?Evita, una de las primeras desaparecidas políticas
    de Argentina.? (JSTOR)
    - - -. ?Wonderwoman was Argentine and her Real name was Evita.?
    Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies 24. London:
    1999. 133.
    Navarro, Marysa, ?Evita and the Crisis of 17 October 1945.? Journal
    of Latin American Studies, 12: 1 (Feb. 1980).
    Perlongher, Néstor. ?Evita Live? My deep dark pain is love. Ed.
    Winston Leyland. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1983.
    53-57.
    Perón, Eva. In My Own Words (La razón de mi vida).
    (PALAS 362) Latin American Cultures and Civilizations
    7
    Plotkin, Mariano. ?May Day and 17 of October: Political Rituals and
    Peron´s charisma? and The Fundacion Eva Peron, in Mañana es San
    Perón: A Cultural History of Peron's Argentina. Delaware: Scholarly
    Resources, año. 39-82.
    Plotkin, Viviana. Cuerpo femenino, duelo y nación. Un estudio de Eva
    Perón como personaje literario. BA: Corregidor, 2003.
    Rochfort, Desmond. Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros. San
    Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993.
    Rosano, Susana. Rostros y máscaras de Eva Perón. Imaginario
    populista y representación. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2006.
    - - -. ?Apuntes para pensar la obra de Daniel Santoro.? Políticas del
    sentimiento. 241-54.
    Santoro Daniel. Manual del niño peronista. BA: La Marca, 2002.
    Sarlo, Beatriz. La pasión y la excepción. BA: Siglo XXI, 2003.
    Savigliano, Marta. ?Evita: The Globalization of a National Myth?
    (Jstor)
    Soria, Claudia. Los cuerpos de Eva: anatomía del deseo femenino.
    Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2005.
    Soria, Claudia, Paola Cortés Rocca, and Edgardo Dieleke ed. Políticas del
    sentimiento: el peronismo y la construcción de la Argentina moderna.
    BA: Prometeo, 2010.
    Starn, Orin et al. The Peru Reader . Durham: Duke University Press,
    2005.
    Summer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin
    America. Berlekeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1991.
    Taylor, J.M. ?The Myth of the Myth? and ?The Power of a Woman.? Eva Peron:
    The Myths of a Woman. Oxford: U of Chicago P, 1979. 1-19.

Course Disclaimer

Courses and course hours of instruction are subject to change.

Eligibility for courses may be subject to a placement exam and/or pre-requisites.

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