The Production of Culture: Jose Maria Arguedas and the Migrating Andes

3 units

Taking the oeuvre of writer, folklorist, and anthropologist José María Arguedas as a case study, this graduate seminar will examine the way 20th-century intellectuals dealt with material transformations in the production and circulation of cultures in the Andean region. Through the analysis of literary texts, ethnographies, journalism, practices of cultural promotion and recordings, we will explore the role of orality, writing and other, more recent technologies (such as the voice recorder, the radio, and music records), as well as that of capitalist markets and cultural commodification, in the configuration of public spheres in the Andes. Similarly, we will analyze the impact of the emergence of said public spheres on the imaginaries and materialities of nation, ethnicity, and the political dimension of culture. Conceptualizing immigration and urbanization as the key historical processes for our case study, the seminar will offer a historical and theoretical framework for understanding the transformations. rural and urban cultures in the Andean region region underwent during the past century, paying close attention to the classical debates these transformation generated in the field of Andean studies. This seminar will have a strong interdisciplinary appproach, combining topics such as cultural production, intellectual and cultural history, media studies, culture history, and public sphere. Readings in English and Spanish; course taught in Spanish. Prereq: Graduate standing.