Latin American Studies: Critical and Theoretical Approaches

3 units

The course constitutes an advanced introduction to Latin American Studies and focuses on basic concepts, theories and debates that are crucial to the understanding of the field, its connections to other areas of study and its projections into global scenarios. Some of the issues that will be analyzed in this course are the historical and cultural circumstances that surrounded the emergence of area studies in general and Latin American Studies in particular, the academic, intellectual and political elements that became part of the Latin American field from its inception, the evolution of the field during and after the Cold War, and the connection of the field to theoretical approaches such as those provided by Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, postmodern theories, trans-Atlantic studies, Border Studies, and the like. From a methodological perspective, the course will introduce students to the understanding of inter/multi/post-disciplinary perspectives and to debates surrounding the notions of humanism, national cultures, Third-World, Occidentalism, lettered city, cultural diversity, cultural difference, collective memory, etc. Finally, the concepts of syncretism, heterogeneity, hybridity, anthropofagia, transculturation, peripheral modernity, will studied as key concepts for the understanding of Latin American cultural history, from colonial times to the present. Through the critical study of these topics, students will get acquainted with the critical works of some of the most important scholarship produced in/about Latin America by authors such as Enrique Dussel, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Antonio Cornejo Polar, Beatriz Sarlo, Nelly Richard, Jesús Martín Barbero, Néstor García Canclini, Angel Rama, Walter Mignolo, Martín Lienhard, Aníbal Quijano, among others.