Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

Advanced

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of four semesters (or six quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

1. Literature and Social Transformation in Latin America
"Amor de ciudad grande" (Jose Martí) and "Hay cadáveres" (Nestor Perlongher): transformation of sensibility and persistence of violence

From the unequal modernization of Latin America to the ALCA project: transformations in the organization of work and the effects in the cultural field: from the professionalization of the writer to "Eloisa Cartonera"

Politicalization of writing and its contradictions:
A. The modern writer: aesthetic autonomy and the critique of the bourgeoise order
B. The avant garde rupture: from the war against the poetic code to the war against facism
C. The 1960's: projects of continental revolution and debates concerning the compromise of literature
D. After the collapse of the great projects: the political view before the dissolution of social bonds
Reference text: Eduardo Galeano. "Las venas abiertas de América Latina"

2. Mid-Century Narrative Renovation
A. The experience of the new urban subject; anguish and exploration of narrative mechanisms: Juan Carlos Onetti. "El pozo"
B. The Fantastic Narrative: narrative paradoxes and the deconstruction of realism. Jorge Luis Borges. "Ficciones"; Julio Cortázar. "Final del juego"
C. Transcultural Realism and the metaphor of Latin American history. Gabriel García Márquez. "Cien años de soledad"

3. The Narrative and Political Violence in the second half of the Century
Peak and defeat of the continental revolution and writings of political repression and economic exclusion
A. The new revolutionary subject: a new moral paradigm for a new society; violence as a founder of a new order. Ernesto Che Guevara. "Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria". Alejo Carpentier. "La consagración de la primavera"
B. Testimony of the survivors of violence: towards a new ethic in writing. Hernán Valdés. "Tejas Verdes: Diario de un campo de concentración en Chile"
C. Elaborating narrative violence; the prison dynamic between testimony and massive culture. Manuel Puig "El beso de la mujer araña"
D. The new subjects of social exclusion and molecular violence; thinking and writing from the dissolution of social bonds. Fernando Vallejo "La virgen de los sicarios"