SPAN 3270 - [Shapes of the Past]

Spring. Not offered: 2020-2021. Next offered: 2022-2023. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: SPAN 2140, SPAN 2150, SPAN 2170, or CASE Q++.

I. Troconis.

This course considers how the arts-through their many forms and platforms-give shape to the narratives of the past. It explores the various transformations of the rhetoric of social, political, and historical memory in Latin America, starting with works produced by writers of the Boom during the 60s and the 70s, and ending with more contemporary texts that bring the discussions of memory to the digital age. We will trace the development of these transformations by analyzing the tensions between memory and literary/cultural genres, and how these changes through engagement with different moments of political and social upheaval and with the development of new technologies. We will discuss how the discourses of class, race, and gender intervene in the production of memory, giving visibility to certain narratives of the past while rendering others-and the actors behind them-invisible. Lastly, we will also consider how the relationship between memory and the coming into being of a nation, particularly how the past intervenes in the production of collective imaginaries that shape territories and dictate who can and who cannot be a citizen.