Hispanic Caribbean Identity in Literature and Performance

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course invites the students to explore the issue of identity as it is lived and thought by a number of Hispanic Caribbean thinkers and artists (essayists, playwrights, film makers, poets, and performance artists). We will pose the following questions: Is "identity" a useful concept for thinking about the culture of a nation, territory, region or community? How are the following factors used in identity politics or in the project of thinking identity: landscape and place, history (heroic history, the histories of suffering), the body, sacrifice? We will consider essays by Fernando Ortiz, Antonio Benítez Rojo and José Esteban Muñoz; poetry by Virgilio Piñera, Nicolás Guillén and Reinaldo Arenas; performances by Ana Mendieta, Carmelita Tropicana, Tania Bruguera and Carlos Martiel. All class discussions in Spanish. This course satisfies the modern Spanish-American area requirement.