SPANISH 395 - Special Topics in Spanish American Literature and Culture

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

New Media Culture in Latin America Full course for one semester. What do we mean when we talk about new media In this class, we will take this question as a point of departure for examining a series of cross-media aesthetic practices in contemporary Latin America. One assumption of the course is that "new media" refers to an entire "media ecology" underlying all cultural production in the present. This assumption is subject to revision, and the cultural objects we examine will allow us to test it. We will read and view texts of many kinds: printed books, films, digital archives, e-poems, blogs, online games, and installations. We will read texts by theorists of media, literature and the visual arts. This aims at understanding how contemporary Latin American writers and artists contend with the possibilities opened up by new media technologies, how they articulate forms of subjectivity and collective life, and what aesthetic formulas emerge from their efforts. Most readings are in Spanish, with some in English. Others include a combination of the two, which is an increasingly common trait of new media objects in Latin America. Class discussions will be in Spanish. Prerequisite: Spanish 321 or equivalent with consent of the instructor. ConferencThe Avant-Garde Imaginary in Latin America Full course for one semester. This course traces a lineage of avant-garde aesthetics in twentieth-century Latin America. We will examine how the avant-garde imaginary is formative for Latin American literary culture, up to the present. We will begin with readings of the most canonical representatives of the Latin American historical avant-garde and move through a series of works growing out of this tradition. A central question in our discussions will be how writers reframe the political impulses of the avant-garde while articulating their own authorial positions. We will study collections of poetry, which is arguably the central literary genre of the avant-garde and its successors. A number of our texts are pictorial in nature, which also evinces a central characteristic of the avant-gardes: a focus on the visual and an orientation toward multimedia works. Readings are in Spanish, with some theoretical texts in English. Class discussions will be in Spanish. Prerequisite: Spanish 321 or equivalent with consent of the instructor. Conference. The Evolution of Mexican Drama: From Traditional Theatre to Transnational Performance Full course for one semester. The genre of theatre has allowed for ideological expression as well as reflected social reality. In the case of Mexico, theatre has also served as a tool in the process of nation-building, and as a critique of that same nationalistic discourse. In this course, theatre is analyzed primarily as a sociocultural phenomenon within specific sociohistorical contexts as we study different moments of the Mexican theatre from the 20th and 21st centuries. We will begin with marginal revue and "tent" theatre, continue with vanguard and feminist theatre, and finish with performance art that takes place on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. Our readings of the plays are supplemented by genre theory, performance, and cultural studies. Prerequisite: Spanish 321 or equivalent with consent of the instructor. Conference.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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