Racial and Ethnic Others in Spanish American Culture

Catalog description

This course will examine the concepts of race, “caste,” and ethnicity as they developed in Latin American Literature, starting in the nineteenth century during independence. We will start with both poetry and prose from the 1800s, primarily from Argentina (El matadero and Martín Fierro Iand II), Colombia (María), Cuba (Sab), and the Dominican Republic (Del Monte’s poetry). We will also study precursors such as El Inca Garcilaso’s “tipos de hombres Americanos” and Las Casas’s 'defense of the Indians'. Finally, we will examine contemporary texts to appreciate modern views of these concepts: De donde son los cantantes (Cuba), Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Colombia), Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (Guatemala), and La lengua del malón (Argentina). Among the theoretical texts that will be analyzed areSugar’s Secrets (Kutzinski), The Invention of Argentina. (Shumway), “Purity, Impurity, Separation” (Lugones), and Imagined Communities (Anderson). The course will be taught in Spanish.