Since the beginning of film as an industry, cinematic representations of Latino communities were for the most part made from an outside perspective. This meant that characterizations of Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Dominican-Americans, and Cuban-Americans were unidimensional, often stereotypical, and sometimes, outright racist.
Through a constant struggle to gain positions at all levels of the film industry from actors, to directors, cameramen, screen writers, and film executives, since the 1960’s, Latinos have carved a particular niche in film history. Little by little self-representations of the spaces and struggles specific to the Latin@ experience, have started to change the way images of their own cultures are shaped and distributed.
In the last decades, with the expansion of the tv and film industry towards an independent model of production, more films rooted in the history and experiences of civil struggle and progress have enhanced the chances to have a better representation of the social compacts proper to Latin@ populations.
Along with a careful analysis of some iconic productions of the Latin@ history of film, we will also read journalistic accounts, novels and short stories that enter in dialogue and further contrast the social experiences of contemporary Latino populations in the U.S.
Native Lowland South American people have been portrayed as "animistic," "totemic," "shamanic," "mythologic," "Dreauduan," "slash and burn horticulturalists," "stateless," "gentle," "fierce," and much more. What do these anthropological portraits mean and what do they contribute to the collective body of Western intellectual thought? Is there any relation between such thinking and the experience of being "Indian" in Amazonian societies? Are there any other ways of understanding Amazonian social experiences? This course addresses these questions through a reading of the ethnography of the region. Satisfies College's Non-Western Perspectives Requirement.
This is a course on the historical connections and tensions between material and ideological forces, between capitalism and Liberalism, in four Central American countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) from the late colonial period to the near present. It traces the struggles of local, national, and international (United States) élites to construct societies based on private property and individual liberty through the peaceful and forceful integration of indigenous people into the market economy and the participation of agrarian, mono-exporting economies in the world system. We will ask how these elites seek to build consensus, a semblance of order and legitimacy, in the midst of conflict and violence.
The reading, which is extensive, often lively, and diverse, is drawn from historical monographs, testimonials, and fiction. Students will keep a detailed journal, and write a final interpretive essay of twenty pages that will emerge from that journal. Students will come prepared each day to discuss the readings and the themes of the course.
Surveys patterns of government and politics in non-Western political systems. Topics include political elites, sources of political power, national integration, economic developmet, and foreign penetration.
This seminar is designed as a challenging introduction to academic life for first year students at The University of Virginia. It is an intensive experience in reading and writing, and in listening and participating in collective discussions. It is also an introduction to history and to forms of historical understanding that the instructor refers to as “soft thinking:” In the public relationships, the conflicts and compromises, between, say, men and women, Indians and Spaniards, the middle class and the lower class, workers and owners, the conjunction “AND” is often more meaningful and revealing than is the word “OR.” And this course is also an advanced introduction to the history of Latin America. Students in this seminar will work harder, and at a more demanding level, than in many courses at the 200 and 300 levels, including those taught by this instructor.
As participants in this seminar you will read eight complicated historical monographs (history books); write four interpretative essays of five pages each and one final essay of six pages, all on themes and subjects that emerge from the readings and the discussions, and are of your own making (not assigned by the instructor); and lead and contribute to class discussions. The quality of our conversations will emerge from your open and engaged attitudes, your willingness to appreciate and question the readings, your own thoughts, and those of others, as well as your ability to listen to others and to help them along when they are having trouble formulating a thought. Our class conversations will be an example of cooperation rather than of competition.
Grading
Essays 1-4: 10% each; Final essay, 20%; Class participation, 40%. There are no examinations in this course. Your work will have been completed on December 6.
Texts
Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570
R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720
Linda Curcio-Nagy, The Great Festivals of Colonial Mexico City: Performing Power and Identity
Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America
Sarah Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1480-1854
James Sanders, Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia
Brian Owensby, Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle Class Lives in Brazil
David Goldstein, The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia
This course will explore major developments and issues in the study of Latin American history, including Indigenous societies on the eve of Spanish conquest, the struggles over the shape of a conquest society, the emergence of a distinctive world culture up to the 18th century, and the pressures and disputes that led to wars of national independence in the early 19th century. We will seek to understand the dynamics of the colonial relationship in a global historical context.
How do Latin Americans navigate their ways, collectively and also individually, through their hierarchical social orders? Why is there so often so much stability and order to their societies? Surveys inform us that Latin Americans are among the happiest people in the world? Why might this be? Why do so many Latin Americans across time appear to be so proud of their nations? Why do they look at one another so often? Why is there so little hatred in Latin America? Why do poor people in Latin America seem to know more about rich people than rich people know about them? Why do traditions matter so? Why are there so many good novelists there? These and other questions, answerable and not, about life and the human condition in Latin America are what will be about in this course.
Probable Texts
Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
Carlos Fuentes, The Campaign, UVa Printing Services Packet
Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo or, Civilization and Barbarism
Daniel Levine, Vale of Tears: Revisiting the Canudos Massacre in Northeastern Brazil, 1893-1897
Carlos Fuentes, The Good Conscience
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat
Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies
Herbert Braun, Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia, 2nd ediition
David Goldstein, The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia
Grading
One journal, submitted as a work in progress during any day between November 1 and November 7, worth 30% of the grade, written continuously on Word, and sent as an email attachment. In the subject of the email message write “HILA311 Journal.”
Twenty page final essay on historical patterns in Latin America, worth 40% of the grade. This final essay will emerge organically from the journal. Hard copy.
How shall we understand the coming together of profoundly different cultures in America after 1492? How shall we think about violent conquest and its aftermath? What became of the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Maya? How did a Christianity that recognized only one God react in the face of religions which were willing to combine new and old, familiar and foreign practices? Where does witchcraft, cunning artistry, idolatry, and sex come into a discussion of how new human communities were made? What does any of this have to do with European modernity? These are the sorts of questions we will pursue.
The semester will be divided into two phases. During the first seven weeks we will read a series of books, articles, and chapters together, with the aim of confronting some of the challenges of thinking historically and gaining a sense of research possibilities. During the second half of the semester, students will take up individual research and write a 25-page paper on a topic of their choosing. There are plenty of primary materials in English, and those with Spanish, Portuguese, or Latin may want to consider working in one or more of those language.
When I was a child and a teenager growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, I would hear over and over again, on the streets, in buses, cafés, among friends and adults, that what we needed in our country above all else was “real men with pants,” “hombres de verdad, con pantalones.” When I was 11 years old, Fidel Castro came to power nearby, in Cuba, and I fell in love with him. My father was apalled, at Castro and at his young son living in his own home.
In high school I came to sense that I was somehow at odds with quite a few of those who would utter these words about “real” men. I came to identify them as people who were on the right of the political spectrum. I was not there. My father and I argued. And then he said something like the following: “But what about that dictator in Cuba? You like him because he is a real man with pants, a military man, a dictator. You are like all the rest of these authoritarians even if you say that you, and Castro, are on the left.” I did not pay attention to what my father had said.
Authoritarian desires run deep in Latin American history. Much else runs deeply too, of course. And these desires are profoundly felt in many, in all places at some times. I kept telling my German-Colombian, and deeply and Nazi father, that at least Fidel –that is what I called him, as though we were on personal terms- was not Hitler. My father agreed, of course, and got the better of the argument.
What are the well-springs of these desires in Latin American history? Is there much that is peculiarly Latin American about them? What do these authoritarians do with us? Are they exclusively male? What is it that we do with them? How do these attachments come about? Are we seducing our leaders into becoming these larger than life-like figures? How, when, and why do we turn away from these strong figures? What do historians do to explain these attractions, and rejections?
In this colloquium we will read about authority, and study many strong figures in Latin American history, and especially, the popular attractions to them. Students will keep a journal, and write a final, twenty page essay on the seductions of authority (mainly) in Latin American history.
This course provides a graduate level introduction to the field of Race and Ethnicity. As such, it attempts to cover a broad spectrum of topics, focusing on the theoretical and consequential aspects of conceptions of race and ethnicity. Of necessity, the course also has a historical focus, since modern-day debates over race are strongly conditioned by the past. Moreover, to really understand issues of race and ethnicity, we must take a cross-cultural perspective, since these debates have often been skewed by a focus on the wrenching problems produced by racial/ethnic conflict in the United States. By adopting these perspectives, the course seeks to provide insight into the complexities that surround issues of race and ethnicity
SPAN 3010, Grammar Review, must be completed before enrolling in SPAN 3300 or an AP Spanish Language score of 5
NB: Students with an AP Spanish Literature score of 4 or 5 may not take this course for credit.
PLEASE NOTE: SPANISH 3300, LITERARY ANALYSIS, IS A PREREQUISITE FOR ALL LITERATURE SURVEYS (3400, 3410, 3420, 3430) AND ALL LITERATURE AND CULTURE CLASSES. THIS IS A DEPARTMENT REQUIREMENT.
Drawing upon readings from different periods of both Spanish and Latin American literature, this course introduces the student to the fundamentals of analyzing narrative, lyric poetry, and drama. Through daily readings and discussions, as well as several exams and papers, the student will develop a critical vocabulary that will allow him or her to make convincing oral and written arguments about the relationship between what a literary text says and how it says it. All work will be conducted in Spanish. This course is a pre-requisite for all further work in literature and culture & civilization in the Spanish program. It is also a required course for Spanish majors.
Prerequisite: SPAN 3300
This is a survey course of Spanish American Literature designed to introduce students to the major authors and literary movements of Spanish America from 1492 to 1900. Students will read and discuss selections from important and influential texts, studied in their historical context; all readings and discussions are in Spanish. Grades will be based on class participation, several short papers in Spanish, an hour exam, and a final.
Prerequisite: SPAN 3300
This course is a survey of Spanish American literature. The objective of the course is to introduce students to major authors, works, and literary movements of Spanish America from 1900 to the present. Students will read poetry and short prose selections from an anthology (Voces de Hispanoamérica) as well as a play (Rodolfo Usigli’s El gesticulador). Written work will consist of reaction papers (250 words each), a midterm exam; and a two part exam: the first part will be taken in class and will deal will require recall of information, the second part will be an open-book, open-notebook, take-home essay exam covering all the reading of the course. All the writing in the course is in Spanish and you are grades equally for grammar and concepts.Prerequisites: Span 3300 Literary Analysis
Strongly recommended: Span 3430 or equivalent
In this course we will study diaries and accounts of travelers in Latin America since the first European got in contact with the continent for the first time. What did they see? What did they want to see? How did the describe it? How much influence their account had in the construction of continental imaginary. We will start with el Diario of Christopher Columbus, the trips of Cortés to Tenochtitlan, Pizarro in Peru, Cabeza de Vaca in North America, Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán in Chile, and other travelers in 17th, 18th and 19th Century: Humboldt, Darwin, Azara and others. We will continue with some travelers in the 20th Century: the transformative trip of Ernesto Che Guevara through the continent before he joined the Cuban revolution, Diarios de motocicleta.
Examines Spanish attempts to understand and figure the Americas, as well as American indigenous reactions to them. (Y) Prerequisites & Notes Prerequisite: SPAN 3010 and 3300, or departmental placement
Studies the major texts, authors, and literary trends of Spanish America up to 1800.
The Course is intended to accompany the Modern Spanish American M.A. reading list and will offer a rapid panorama of the modern period in Spanish American literature based on the texts in question. It is intended to fill in any possible gaps in knowledge and to touch on critical trends and problems. The course will be graded on a 20-24 page paper. Students must provide their own texts but a schedule of classes, a basic bibliography and some extra materials will be available for students to copy.
In this course we will study the very different roles that the frontier has played in shaping Latin American cultures. By reading works from different periods, we will be able to establish how the frontier, and the idea of frontier, changed over time, and along with it the concept of “self identity,” as well as the “Other” beyond the frontier line. Readings include chronicles, and travel books from 16th to 20th Century. Colón’s Diario, Francisco Nûñez de Pineda y Bascuñán’s Cautiverio Feliz, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios’s, Bernal Díaz del Castillo’ Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España, Lucio Mansilla’s Una excursión a los indios ranqueles; Santiago Avendaño’s Memorias del ex cautivo Santiago Avendaño; Ernesto Guevara’s Diarios de motocicleta, and Mempo Giardinelli’s Final de novela en Patagonia, among others.
The aim of this course is to study Cuban films in the context of Cuba’s history, literature and culture. The course will include the viewing of films outside the classroom (roughly one a week), readings about the films, history, and culture. Your evaluation will be based on presentations, one five-page review of a critical, theoretical, or historical book, and a critical essay (15-20 pages). Everyone will write a 250 word commentary on each film.
This seminar will study philosophical issues arising from the encounter and conflict between different cultures. It will focus on the Spanish conquest of the Americas in the 16th Century. The seminar will examine the opposing views of those who, at that time, argued against and in favor of the legitimacy of the conquest. It will address the general question of whether there is a just war, and it will relate this discussion to fundamental questions in contemporary ethics and political philosophy, placing the issues that arise in the historical debate (e.g., were native American societies legitimate and autonomous states? are the Indians slaves by nature, as Aristotle held that certain human beings are?) in a more general philosophical context (e.g., what constitutes a legitimate state? why do states have authority over individuals? in what sense are all human beings equal?). The seminar will approach this historical and philosophical discussion from the perspective of such contemporary issues as: the ethical significance of cultural identity, the role of cultural factors in determining political rights, the importance of cultural plurality in a global society, and multiculturalism in American society.