Literature and Modernity in 20th-Century Mexico

3 units

This class will develop a critical reading of the literary history of Mexico from the late Porfiriato to the year 2000. The course will focus on the way in which different genres (novel, short story, essay, chronicle, poetry) engage with four different moments of capitalist modernization in Mexico: The Porfirian reforms, the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican Miracle of the 1950s and 1960s and Neoliberalism. Each session will engage in the comparative study of representative texts of two and three authors, with key works of theory and criticism, in order to understand phenomena such as cultural mediation, ideology, urbanization, technology, national identity, cosmopolitanism and the construction of literary institutions. Authors and movements include late Modernismo, the stridentist movement, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, José Revueltas, the Casa de Lago movement, La Onda and the Crack group. In Spanish.