Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Prerequisite: HISP-S 328 or Consent of the Department

“Representation and Violence in Spanish America”

In this course we will look at how Spanish American cultural production responds to experiences of violence during the 20^th and early 21^st centuries. Cultural texts include poems, film, photography and visual art, and prose (short stories and possibly a novel or two). Our main goal will be to explore how different cultural forms seek to record, remember, transmit, and understand experiences of political repression, economic domination, and terror. Course material will be taken from three different historical contexts: the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920; revolutionary violence and military dictatorship/state terrorism in the Southern Cone (Argentina and Chile) of the 1970’s and 80’s; and the narco wars and gang violence in Mexico and Central America of the early 21^st century. We will pay close attention to the specific compositional nature of various cultural forms, asking how film, painting, music, poetry, and prose fiction each respond in their own ways to experiences that appear to exceed what ordinary language is capable of conveying. Evaluation based on class participation, short writing assignments, presentations, and a final research project.

HISP-S 412     #12128    9:45A-11:00A       MW      GY 4069        Prof. Patrick Dove

Note: Class meets with HISP-S 498 #12152

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