Literature and Visual Culture in Latin America

Although film obviously entertains, it also, and more importantly, contributes to the understanding of culture as well as national identities. In this era where communication is evolving to become increasingly more visual, filmic images and soundtracks offer an immediacy that goes beyond literature, making film one of the most accessible forms of cultural diffusion. This interdisciplinary course seeks to study the connection that has always linked literature and film in contemporary Latin America Visual Culture mostly in the Twentieth Century to the present. 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. By examining film and literature together, we will also discuss the role of the arts in today's society, and the social forces shaping the Latin American Societies and their audiences. The corpus of films selected will not only provide the framework to study the social, and historical, but also we will examine the technique of each format and consider 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 and the analyzes of social issues. We will also consider transnational aspects in the film industry: Does it make a difference if a short story such as Blow Up, written by Argentine author Cortazar, is filmed in London by the Italian director Antonioni? 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.