Latin American Cultural Studies

Catalog description

The course is an intensive survey of Latin American cultural studies. Topics to be studied include: interactions among popular, erudite, and mass cultures; debates on modernity and postmodernity; relations between alphabetic and non-alphabetic writing systems in colonial and post colonial contexts; emergence and development of Latin American concepts such as mestizaje, hybridity, transculturation, heterogeneity; relations between culture and the state; issues of class, race, and gender in the study of Latin American culture. Theorists to be studies include Néstor García Canclini, José Martín Barbero, Beatriz Sarlo, Nelly Richard, Roberto Schwarz, Silviano Santiago.