Latin American Body Genres

Catalog description

In her seminal analysis of contemporary cinema, Linda Williams introduced the term “body genres” to study melodrama, horror and porn, genres usually dismissed as low brow and that go to extremes in their representation of the body in states of distress and elation. This course deploys her insights to probe and interrogate the artistic genres that have dominated, and shaped, the cultural representation of key moments of Latin American history. Starting with the long cycle initiated by the conquest and closed with political independence (in which the dominant genres are the Epic and the War Film), we will move to a critical assessment of Revolutionary Porn, Latin Melodrama and State Horror as cultural forms that have not only spawned novels, films, paintings and performance, but also affected our understanding of complex social processes, historical conflicts and political trajectories.