Decolonizing Speculative Fiction in Latin America
SPAN 299
Spring 2025
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01
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This course interrogates what it means to imagine alternative futures in colonial and postcolonial settings. As the writings of conquistadors, explorers and missionaries show, Europe envisioned the New Continent as the land of the future or utopia, to the point that contemporary decolonial theorists have observed that nothing was "discovered" by the first European travelers to America but the idea of discovery itself. Modern temporalities of progress became thus inseparable from the image of the Americas as a frontier of imperial expansion, religious conversion, and economic exploitation. If European SF (science fiction/speculative fiction) emerged hand-in-hand with positivist notions of progress and civilization, Latin American SF contested Eurocentric epistemologies by claiming the ability to imagining the future and fictionalizing worlds otherwise. The course will center on three key moments of Latin American literary history: 1) the early to mid-twentieth century experiments in fantastic literature from the Southern Cone, which broke with realist mimesis from the margins of modernity; 2) post-1989 SF novels from Bolivia, Guatemala and Chile, that address the making of neoliberal globalization from the vantage point of the Global South; and 3) contemporary Dominican and Cuban works in which Afro-Caribbean religions and gender formations engage in productive conversations with digital technologies, biomedical engineering, game cultures, and climate change. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA RLAN |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (HISP) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Literature by: Leopoldo Lugones, Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, Roberto Bolaño, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Rita Indiana, Liliana Colanzi, Elaine Vilar Madruga, Michel Nieva.
Theoretical, historical and critical work by: Aníbal Quijano, Johannes Fabian, Frederic Jameson, Ailton Krenak.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Short response papers
Presentation
Final Paper/Art Project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This class is intended for students who have completed 221 with a grade of B- or better. Students who have not done so are encouraged to contact the instructor during pre-registration. Only COL students may take the class C/U. All students are expected to be active and informed participants in class discussions, working on their oral communication skills. |
| Instructor(s): Plaza,Juan Esteban Times: ..T.R.. 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: FISK410; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 8 | JR major: 2 | | |
| Seats Available: 4 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 1 | JR non-major: 1 | SO: 2 | FR: 1 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 1 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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