Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Prerequisite: HISP-S 328.

This course studies representations of dictatorship, post-dictatorship, democracy and efforts to democratize, and revolutions and their institutionalization in Spanish American and Latinx literature and film from the 1960s through the present.  We will explore the goals of the Cuban Revolution of 1959, how it sparked hopes of establishing political and cultural autonomy throughout Spanish America, and how it also was repressive.  We will also examine social(ist) movements, democratization efforts, and dictatorships elsewhere in the Caribbean, the Southern Cone, Mexico, and Central America in the 1960s and 1970s. We will, additionally, examine how the revolutionary activism and democratizing efforts of the 1960s and 1970s were entwined in broader, transnational movements, including student movements, anti-establishment protests and counterculture, as well as swayed by official U.S. Cold War support of dictatorships and efforts to “modernize” in order to contain the spread of Communism.

Focusing on literary and film texts as well as political and historical works, we will examine representations and critiques of: the Cuban Revolution, its goals, impact, repression, and long-term trajectory; the dictatorships in and counterrevolutionary measures of the Spanish American states (often supported by U.S. Cold War policies) in their efforts to stem the spread of Communism; the collusion of U.S.-style democracy with dictatorships throughout the region; protest movements and other efforts to democratize; the violence of dictatorship movements; and more. We will also analyze how gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity affect and are affected by these phenomena. We will examine texts within their national contexts and also focus our attention on their transnational dimension, that is, their relationships to other nations and their struggles in the Caribbean, Spanish America, and the U.S., and the diasporas that they prompted. We will examine the ways that content and structure/techniques work together in artistic texts to convey themes, and we will explore how texts engage with—reflect, respond to, and, often, seek to change—their historical, cultural, social, and/or political contexts.

HISP-S 472     #28827        9:35A-10:50A    TR         GA 0013       Prof. Deborah Cohn

Note: Above class meets with HISP-S 498, section #28832

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