Celebrity Cultures: Divas, Queers, and Drags in Latin America

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course takes students on a journey into the dazzling world of divas, queers, and drag performers who reshaped Latin America's cultural, social, and political repertoires. From Eva Perón's iconic political mythology and María Félix's femme fatale allure to the radical defiance of Pedro Lemebel and the cosmic magnetism of Walter Mercado, we will explore how these larger-than-life figures resisted and undermined heteronormative and misogynistic regimes. Engaging critical theory, queer studies, and aesthetic analysis, the course invites students to engage with the commodification of celebrity in the culture industry, the performative dynamics of identity, and queer culture's fascination with camp, glamour, and abjection. Revisiting concepts like the society of the spectacle and hyperreal personas, students will uncover how these icons transformed the public sphere and disrupted hegemonic power structures. The course also examines celebrity labor as affective production and the participatory cultures that turn fandom into a consumer community, and into a nostalgic and repetitive ritual in the context of digital neoliberalism. Through discussions, close readings of critical texts, and multimedia explorations of films and performances, students will learn how divas, queers, and drag performers redefined aesthetic innovation and became fearless agents of political subversion in the region and beyond. The course will be taught in Spanish and English.