Literatura y escuela

Undergraduate / Graduate

Today, institutions of education have become one of the most intense sites of the so-called "culture wars," both in Latin America and the United States. This situation, of course, is part of a longer history. In this course, we will explore the complex relations between literature and institutions of learning in twentieth-century Latin America in order to understand (or try to understand) the institutional, cultural and political present we now face. On the one hand, we will read essays on the subject by important Latin American pedagogues, who were most times in charge of developing their countries' educational systems. On the other, we will read works of fiction (short stories, novels, memoirs) that formulate concrete images of the 'school experience.' We'll pay attention to the ways in which the school distributed cultural capital (knowledges, skills, tastes) and produced cultural difference (nationality, gender, race, class) amongst subjects. In this sense, the objective of the class is to provide students with historical, linguistic and analytic tools they can use to understand and shape their institutional present.