Narrative Power Things & Places

Catalog description

This course explores how everyday objects and the places around us tell stories. By examining the relationship between objects, places, and language in fictional and non-fictional works, students will learn to “read” objects (clothing, household items, monuments, and photographs) and spaces (cities, neighborhoods, and rural landscapes) as meaningful parts of culture in diverse Hispanic contexts. Focusing on a range of literary and cultural traditions across Hispanic regions and communities, we will study literature and other cultural texts in which objects and places are not just background details, but central to understanding identity, memory, power, and social change. We will also consider how these same objects and spaces shape everyday experiences across different regions and time periods. Drawing form literary studies, material culture, and cultural geography, this course combines close readings, discussion, critical writing, and creative projects. By the end of the semester, students will have new tools for analyzing how things and places around them carry cultural meaning and help tell the story of human experience. Satisfies Histpanic Studies major and minor requirement. Satisfies Global Literary Theory major and minor requirement. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing & Rhetoric requirement Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.