Latin America Film,Literature & Visual Culture

Film and literature and their successful symbiosis have contributed to the understanding of culture as well as national identities. This interdisciplinary course seeks to study that strong connection mostly in the Twentieth Century. Drawing on novels, plays, and short stories and using a comparative perspective, we will review and analyze the complexity and richness of the Latin American Cultures. The corpus of films selected will not only provide the framework to study the social, and historical, but also we will examine what happens when short stories, novels, or plays are adapted into film language; if we approach film and literary texts differently; and how we view and read these texts in terms of representation. We will also consider national and transnational aspects in the film industry, the effects of globalization upon the cultural and economic aspects of film. By the end of the course, students will sharpen appreciation of major works of cinema and of literary narrative and broaden their knowledge about Latin America.