Peasant-Boom-Slum: The Latin American Novel

Catalog description

Despite being associated with peasants and agricultural goods, Latin America has become the most urbanized region in the world. In this course, we will analyze novels that attempt to make sense of Latin American society in relation to this chaotic and rapid historical transformation. Beginning with nineteenth-century writers who called on civilization to conquer the barbaric countryside, we move to the so-called “Boom” novels of the twentieth century that ambiguously questioned the authoritarian and destructive impulses of this modernizing project, and conclude with contemporary authors who reflect on the utter collapse of modernization. In these novels, we will see that the topic of the city and the countryside becomes a powerful framework for imagining and thinking through issues of indigeneity, gender, industrialization, memory and dictatorship. Authors: Borges, Arlt, Galvão, Rulfo, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa, Arguedas, Lispector, Bolaño and Aira.