Undergraduate Course: Latin America: History and Culture Entwined (Ordinary) (ELCH09029)
Course Outline
School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 9 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | Students on this course will explore interactions between history and culture in Latin America. Topics will include watershed moments (such as the Cuban Revolution and the dictatorships in the Southern Cone) up to the present day, the representation of history in cultural forms, associated cultural techniques and movements, processes by which historical conditions inform culture and vice versa, erasures and amplifications, and instances where cultural objects enter the public consciousness. You will be invited to reflect on these interconnected issues and the challenges and creative possibilities involved in attempting to untangle, conceptualise and articulate them.
N.B. In this course we will be discussing content that may be traumatising to some students. |
Course description |
What is Latin America? Who speaks in its name? On this course we will work together to explain the interaction between history and culture at key moments in Latin America. You will scrutinise a dossier of cultural works and historical documents from across the region and then explore them chronologically and thematically with the group. Each week students will deliver individual presentations on the primary sources.
Assessment has been designed to help students develop skills in analysis, communication and personal reflection. Students will use multimodal digital technologies to represent the issues (with full training and on-going support) and compose a final essay that is both analytical and reflective.
Feedback will be provided on the non-assessed student presentations and both pieces of assessed coursework.
Please note that this course will be conducted in English. Students may choose, if they wish, to read the works in the original Portuguese or Spanish and write their essay in Portuguese or Spanish.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | Visiting Students should have the equivalent of at least two years of study at University |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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Academic year 2023/24, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 2 |
Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
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Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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Additional Information (Assessment) |
Formative assessment: Class presentation«br /»
Summative assessment: Timeline 40% and Essay 60% |
Feedback |
Feedback will be provided on the non-assessed student presentations and both pieces of assessed coursework. |
No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand certain relationships between history and culture in Latin America.
- Approach Latin American culture using historicist methods of analysis and elements of reception theory.
- Discuss the impact of Eurocentric and androcentric modes of thought on understandings of Latin American history and culture and reflect on the validity of ¿Latin America¿ as a unit of analysis.
- Communicate the interplay between history and culture in Latin America via digital technology.
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Reading List
Essential Materials:
osé Teófilo de Jesus, Allegory of the Four Continents¿America (1810)
Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States of America (1932)
Carolina Maria de Jesus, Child of the Dark (1960)
Gilberto Gil, That Hug (1969)
Juan Manuel Roca, Landscape with beggars (2009)
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, The Adventures of China Iron (2017)
Lastesis Collective, The Rapist is You (2019)
Pope Francis, Beloved Amazon (2020)
Recommended Reading:
R. Arditti, Search for life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999
A. Arias and D. Stoll, The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001)
A. Barahona de Brito, Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America: Uruguay and Chile, Oxford Scholarship, 2003 (online resource)
M. Bell, Gabriel García Marquez: Solitude and Solidarity (Baskingshark: MacMillan, 1993)
The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) vols. I, II
E. Carpenter, Frida Kahlo (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2007)
A. Dorfman, Some Write to the Future: Essays on Contemporary Latin American Fiction, trans. by George Shiver (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 201-221
P. Earle, Gabriel García Márquez (Madrid: Taurus, 1981)
J. Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared, London: Zed, 1989
R. Fregoso and C. Bejarano, Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010)
E. Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1971)
L. Gilmore, Tainted Witness: Why we Doubt what Women say about their Lives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)
R. González-Echevarria, 'Cien años de soledad: The Novel as Myth and Archive', in Modern Language Notes, 99:2 (1984), pp. 358-80
R. González Echevarría, Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
G. Grandin, Levenson-Estrada, G. and E. Oglesby, E., The Guatemala Reader : History, Culture, Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)
P. Hamilton, Historicism (New York: Routledge, 2002)
B. Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen, 1987)
R. C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Methuen, 1984)
E. G. Kantaris, 'The Silent Zone: Marta Traba', The Modern Language Review, Vol. 87, No. 1, (Jan., 1992), pp. 86-101
J. King, Modern Latin American Fiction: A Survey (London: Faber, 1987)
Latin American Narratives and Cultural Identity: Selected Readings (New York: P. Lang, 2004)
Daniel K. Lewis, The History of Argentina, New York: Palgrave, 2003
A. Lifshey, Specters of conquest: Indigenous absence in transatlantic literatures ( New York: Fordham University Press, 2010)
N. Lindstrom, Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994)
M. Lindauer and F. Kahlo, Devouring Frida The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999)
A. Lyon, C. Gustafson and P. Manuel, Pope Francis as a Global Actor Where Politics and Theology Meet (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
G. Martin, Journeys through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1989)
McGuirk and R. Cardwell, Gabriel García Márquez: New Readings (Cambridge: CUP, 1987)
G.R. McMurray, Gabriel García Márquez (New York: Ungar, 1977)
G.R. McMurray, Critical Essays on Gabriel García Márquez (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987)
K. McNerney, Understanding Gabriel García Márquez (Columbia: South Carolina UP, 1989)
S. Minta, Gabriel García Márquez, Writer of Colombia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987)
L. Pankl and K. Blake, K. (2012). 'Made in Her Image: Frida Kahlo as Material Culture', Material Culture, 44(2), 1-20,90.
L. A. Romero, A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century, trans. by James P. Brennan, Pennsylvania Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003
S. S. Schlau, 'Conversación al sur': Dialogue as History', Modern Language Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, (Summer, 1992), pp. 98-108
T. Skidmore, Modern Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
P. Swanson, Landmarks in Modern Latin American Fiction (London: Routledge, 1990)
P. Swanson, Latin American Fiction: A Short Introduction (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Pub., 2005)
E. Tomlinson, 'Rewriting Fictions of Power: The Texts of Luisa Valenzuela and Marta Traba', The Modern Language Review, Vol. 93, No. 3, (Jul., 1998), pp. 695-709
M. Viveros-Vigoya and C. Roberts, 2016, 'Masculinities in the continuum of violence in Latin America', Feminist Theory, 17(2), 229-237
P. Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 2010)
R. Williams, Gabriel García Márquez (Boston: Twayne, 1984)
R. L. Williams, The Twentieth-Century Spanish American Novel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003)
M. Wood, Gabriel García Márquez: 100 Years of Solitude (Cambridge: CUP, 1990)
R. Wright, Stolen Continents: Conquest and Resistance in the Americas (London: Phoenix, 2000)
L. P. Zamora, The Usable Past: The Imagination of History in Recent Fiction of the Americas, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Digital literacy, collaborative learning, global citizenship, intercultural skills, creativity, analysis, critical thinking |
Keywords | History,Culture,Latin America,Reception,Historicism |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Iona MacIntyre
Tel: (0131 6)50 3641
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Kat Zabecka
Tel: (0131 6)50 4026
Email: |
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