Violence and Its Afterlives: Memory, Repression, and Dictatorship in the Hispanic World

Catalog description

This course examines the historical trajectories, memorial practices, and material legacies associated with twentieth-century dictatorships in Spain and Latin America. It adopts a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the study of authoritarian regimes, focusing on their origins, mechanisms of repression, social consequences, and long-term impacts on democratic cultures and memory politics. The course examines the significance of legal and institutional frameworks in shaping memory politics, particularly in relation to the exhumation of mass graves, the recognition of victims, and the regulation and protection of sites of memory. It analyzes how memory is embodied in museums, former sites of repression transformed into memorial spaces, and other locations that are recovered through archaeological research. It also addresses contested monuments originating in dictatorial contexts, as well as cultural expressions of memory, including literature, visual art, and other artistic practices that engage with the legacies of political violence and repression.