Debating Cultures: Mediated Politics in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay

3 units

This course explores the intertwined history of media, culture and political struggle in the region known as the Southern Cone, which encompasses Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. We will discuss the role that media have had in shaping the experience of modernity as well as fostering nation formation in these countries. The course will address the political uses of different types of media, covering a wide spectrum of cultural production (literature, music, comic, political cinema, television, internet) and following a long-term chronological approach, from 19th-century print media to recent YouTube production. In doing so, the course engages with questions of technology, identity, memory, gender, indigenous, and working-class cultures, and it draws special attention to the possibilities and limits that grassroots movements found in different types of media. Course materials may include the Argentine comic Mafalda, the Afro-Uruguayan newspaper Nuestra Raza, and Rodolfo Walsh's non-fiction literature, as well as telenovelas and indigenous radio. As part of the course, students will engage in active research on the interplay of media and political struggle in the region. This course will have a strong, mandatory and graded oral communications component, and it is taught in Spanish. Prior or concurrent enrollment in Spanish 303 is required. Students who have taken more than two Spanish culture or literature classes are not allowed in this course and must proceed to a Researching Cultures class.