Hauntings: Gothic Fictions, Banditry and the Supernatural in Latin America

A specter haunts Latin America. The constitution of the nation-state in the region after the Wars of Independence (1810-1830) entailed creating fictions to include (and, naturally, exclude) those who belonged to the community of the nation. Usually the left-outs were the ones who did not comply with the profile of the desired citizen:lettered, male, white and urban. This course will focus on narrations about those ‘left-outs’ after the constitution of the Nation-States in the region. We will read fictions about mad monster women, spectral slaves, bloodthirsty bandits, priests-turned-sorcerers, dwarfs, animal rebellions, and many other “exceptions to the norm.” In Spanish.