Topics in Hispanic Studies

Catalog description

This repeatable course explores Spanish-speaking cultures through a thematic or conceptual focus. Students critically analyze authentic documents through, for example, historical, biographical, filmic, artistic, literary, musical, and theoretical perspectives, while improving and expanding their language skills. SPRING 2017: Southern Cone Dictatorships in the Movies (1984-2016) This course explores the Southern Cone dictatorships during the period of the Cold War through their representation in films. The military-civilian dictatorships of the 1970s in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were a period of State terrorism. This violent period resulted in thousands of disappeared people, political prisoners and exiles. These experiences have had a lasting impact in the new democracies. There is still a debate over how to address violations of human rights and how to make sense of the past, so that these events don't happen again. There has been a rich production of movies focusing on this historical period that serves as a document of how the struggles over how to come to terms with a traumatic past have been dealt with by different countries. These films also provide a glimpse of how popular culture serves as a vehicle to construct a social memory of recent history. Through films new generations that did not experience these traumatic events learns about what happened and what it means for particular social actors. We will analyze films from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay in order to better understand how these countries have dealt with a contested past. The course will provide students with historical background, theoretical frameworks and analytic tools to approach these cultural productions as documents and discourses about the recent dictatorships. Prerequisite: 82-345