Theory Into Practice: (Re)reading Span Amer Contemp Narratives Through the Lens of Recent Theories

3 units

Guided and inspired by the premise of the inherent synergy between theory and analytical practice, this seminar will provide graduate students with hands-on opportunities to (re)read major 20th and 21st century Spanish American narratives-both fictional and non-fictional-through the applied lens of select methodological approaches, most of them cross-disciplinary, such as social discourse (Angenot, Ducrot), various perspectives on ecocriticism, decoloniality (Mignolo), memory and trauma studies (Jelin and others), semiotics of spaces (Lotman, Lefebvre, Foucault) as well performance and visual studies. Throughout this course we will strive to achieve critically productive uses of theory while attempting to avoid mechanical applications and abuses. Works under analysis will include, among others: selected short stories by Juan Rulfo and Amparo Dávila (México), Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo and Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina), Ana Lydia Vega Serova, Aida Bahr and Marilyn Bobes (Cuba), along with selections from canonical testimonies (Barnet/Montejo, Cuba; Burgos/Menchú, Guatemala), essays (La fiesta vigilada by Ponte, Cuba), and novels and/or novellas by Carpentier, Fuentes, and García Márquez.