Slavery, Latifundio, and Revolution in Latin American Literature and Cinema (FYS)
ENGL 141F
Fall 2019
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01
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In this course, we will study literatures and cinemas of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Cuba that depict insurrectionist and revolutionary ruptures that take place on plantations, latifundios, and other spaces beyond what those formations could capture. We will study how insurrections (plural), revolution (as a large scale phenomenon), and (sometimes archivally elusive) racialized female insurgencies are deployed by Caribbean and Latin American literary imaginations to critique the dangerous economic situations in the early 20th century of U.S.-backed client states--referred to dismissively in the United States as "banana republics" after the United Fruit Company converted U.S. naval ships into cargo boats that would import exploitatively planted and harvested bananas--and the schemes of "underdevelopment" that aligned with expanding U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere. We will engage narratives, poetics, and music of revolution that expose different systems of oppression, and different scales of radical motion, including the range of events and phenomena in Hispaniola that aggregate as the Haitian Revolution of the late 18th century, insurrections in Chiapas against casta and latifundio before and after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and revolts against U.S. economic and military interventions in Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Cuba in the 20th century. We will attend to the aesthetic, formal, and structural ways that revolutions are (re)presented as vertical ruptures that explode the past, and as horizontal historical formations that continue select legacies of the past that they claim to critique. While we're at it, we will deconstruct revolutionary progressive discourses of hetero-masculinity, modernity, and development. We'll sense for smaller scales of varied aesthetic, sensorial, and slow forms of something in the neighborhood of revolutions. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ENGL-Creative W)(ENGL-Literature) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 | | Special Attributes: FYS |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Students will obtain: Alejo Carpentier's Kingdom of this World (1949) on Haiti; Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo (1955) and Rosario Castellanos' Book of Lamentations (1962) on Mexico; Rigoberta Menchú's I, Rigoberta Menchú, A Guatemalan Woman, on Guatemala. Films on reserve or for purchase: Alfonso Cuarón's Y tu mamá también (2001); Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's La última cena (1974) and Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968); Steven Soderbergh's Che (2008, two films).
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Examinations and Assignments:
Attendance, 3 short papers (2-3 pages), and a final research paper (6-8 pages). |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
THIS SECTION IS A FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR (FYS) CLASS. |
| Instructor(s): Ellis Neyra,Ren Times: .M.W... 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: DWNY100; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: X | JR major: X | | |
| Seats Available: 1 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: X | JR non-major: X | SO: X | FR: 15 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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