Latin American Feminism, Women Writers, and the Feminist Novel in the Twentieth Century

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The twentieth century was the century of women, feminism, and the feminist novel in Latin America. The history of Latin American feminism presents three milestones: first, the women's movements that demanded political and civil equality at the beginning of the century and culminated in the 1950s with what Julieta Kirkwood called "the years of silence"; second, the violent decades of the 1970s and 1980s, when women challenged their historic exclusion from political life, showed how authoritarian regimes replicated patriarchal oppression, and developed feminist theories and practices; and third, the 1990s, when women focused on the damaging effects of neoliberalism, which impacted the activism of women and the development of feminist ideas. This course, designed as a seminar for advanced students in Spanish, will focus on the feminist novel since the 1950s, when women ventured into a genre they had barely published in the past, and will trace its course through the multiple positions that Latin American feminism took during the twentieth century. This course will be taught in Spanish and requires the active participation of all students.