LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE 2 ELS 201.5254 (41467)
Course Time Tuesdays 5:45- 9:05 Room: C-723
Instructor: Rojo Robles
Office Hours: By appointment
Email: rroblesmejias@lagcc.cuny.edu
Course Blog URL: http://archive.cunyhumanitiesalliance.org/textualidades/
Course Description: This course, conducted in Spanish, examine the most salient cultural and literary movements since postmodernism (understood broadly). Topics to be covered include postmodernism, social realism, the avant garde, the experimental novel, afro caribbean aesthetics, diasporic poetics urbanization and resulting alienation, the fantastic and others. The course will explore the diversity of the Latin American experience as reflected mainly in its literary, visual and musical texts. We will read, view and listen to cultural products from a range of genres and media (poetry, narrative, film, video and popular music) in order to reflect upon significant artistic trends, political and intellectual movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Required:
Professor Robles will bring copies of the texts except for:
Rita Indiana. Nombres y Animales (Used copies and e-books are welcome)
Attendance: Being present in a broad sense is a must. You are responsible for all material presented in class. If absent, you can follow the class and catch up through the 201 blog: Textualidades. If you have trouble accessing the internet on a regular basis, please let me (us) know as soon as possible and I (we) will make sure you get access to the materials. Exams, quizzes, and homework often include questions on material discuss in class, so performance on these indirectly reflects attendance. I’m available to discuss options if a personal or health situation arise. Communicate your needs.
Additionally, if any factors you cannot control -family safety in the midst of changing immigration policies, etc. – are interfering with your ability to benefit from this class experience, know that there are many resources available to you through LaGuardia.
Some of these resources are housed at the Wellness Center (discussed below and linked here: http://www.laguardia.edu/WellnessCenter/) and others -including legal counseling, financial assistance, health care enrollment, etc. – can be accessed through Single Stop (linked here: http://www.laguardia.edu/singlestop/).
Free and confidential immigration assistance is available through CUNY Citizenship Now, linked here: http://www1.cuny.edu/sites/citizenship-now/ and CUNY CLEAR, linked here: http://www.cunyclear.org
Evaluation: There will be two exams. Each exam is worth 30 % of the course grade. The remaining 40% will derive from one presentation 20% and four written assignments (4 @ 5% each).
Students in this class will be writing short essays to document their integration of course content into their record of lifelong learning. 40% of the final grade will be based on written assignments. All exams and homework must be finished in order to complete this course.
Be honest about your academic writing.
Writing in college means taking part in a conversation with other scholars, writers, and thinkers. Academic citation is how you demonstrate the relationship between your ideas and those of others. On the other hand, plagiarism is the failure to demonstrate that relationship. I want to hear your voices and and read the ways you get involve in the dialogue. Part of your academic experience is to enter these conversations by learning different ways to engage with sources.
The Writing Center
Be aware of the resources available at the Writing Center for help with the content, grammar, and sentence structure. Making good use of this has the potential to improve your writing and modify your experience in class. The Center is in Room B-200, Office hours are Monday –Thursday 9:15am – 3:15pm, 4:30-9:00pm and Friday: 9:15am-2:00pm, 4:30-9:00pm. http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/Writing-Center/Schedule/
SCHEDULE
WEEK 1: lntroducción al curso: Los movimientos literarios de principios de siglo: El postmodernismo, la vanguardia y el realismo social.
Imágenes y voces de mujeres: erotismo y sensualidad; representación y diversidad cultural.
Delmira Agustini (Selección)
Angela María Dávila (Selección)
Música y video: Ana Tijoux Somos sur
Week 2: La vanguardia: el creacionismo; caligramas; viaje y cosmopolitanismo; anti-poemas y humor.
Vicente Huidobro (Selección)
Oliverio Girondo (Selección)
Nicanor Parra (Selección)
Cortometraje: René Clair & Francis Picabia Entr’acte
Week 3: Poesía Afro-antillana: negrismo/exotismo; pan-caribeñismo; consciencia racial, histórica y cultural; representación y diáspora.
Luis Palés Matos (Selección)
Nicolás Guillén (Selección)
Música: Ismael Rivera “Las caras lindas”
Cortometraje: Nicolás Guillén Landrían En una ciudad vieja
Week 4: Poesía Diaspórica: poesía Nuyorican; editoriales alternativas; poéticas del libro como objeto.
Pedro Pietri Puerto Rican Obituary & Beware of Signs
Nicole Cecilia Delgado América
Yarisa Colón (Selección)
* Yarisa Colón nos visitará y conversará con nosotros sobre su escritura, proyectos editoriales artesanales y nos dará un taller corto de artesanía de libros.
Week 5: Voces Consagradas: compromiso histórico-social; el poeta como voz del pueblo; lo real-visceral y el escritor-lector.
Pablo Neruda (Selección)
Octavio Paz (Selección)
Roberto Bolaño (Selección)
Videos: Entrevista a Roberto Bolaño
Repaso de la unidad de poesía. Preparación para el EXAMEN para entregar.
Week 6 & 7: El cuento hispanoamericano: temática y estilo; Teóricos del cuento: Poe y Quiroga; Realismo social, realismo sicológico y realismo mágico; Todorov: El cuento fantástico.
Horacio Quiroga- El puritano
Jorge Luis Borges- El sur
Carlos Fuentes- Pantera en Jazz
Week 8: La novela hispanoamericana; Antecedentes: novela de la tierra, novela experimental, novela del “boom”.
La novela corta (nouvelle): Jazz; Charlie Parker; la crítica y la ficción musical.
Julio Cortázar- El perseguidor
Música y videos: Charlie Parker en vivo
Filme: Bird de Clint Eastwood
Week 9,10 &11: La novela contemporánea: novela de iniciación; adolescencia y educación sentimental en el caribe; estética queer.
Música y video: Rita Indiana y los misterios “La hora de volver”
Rita Indiana- Nombres y animales
*Week 11-Repaso de la unidad de prosa. Preparación para el EXAMEN FINAL para entregar. Cierre del curso.
Música y video: Calle 13 Latinoamérica
Week 12: Fecha de entrega del EXAMEN FINAL.
EVALUACIONES:
.Una presentación en clase en power point y por escrito sobre un (a) poeta y un (a) prosista.
Presentación 1: Identifique elementos biográficos relevantes sobre el escritor escogido. Dé ejemplos de aspectos estéticos y/o temáticos en alguno de sus textos.
.Cuatro reflexiones de una página: Discuta algún tema presente en el trabajo de los prosistas.
Ejemplos: los elementos fantásticos en las ficciones; la significación de los intertextos encontrados en los relatos
En ambos casos terminé explicando qué aprendió al estudiar su obra.
Estas reflexiones pueden ser incorporadas a su portafolio electrónico.
.Examen parcial para entregar. Seleccione y desarrolle dos preguntas de discusión de cinco. (5 páginas/ 2.5 por pregunta)
.Examen final para entregar. Seleccione y desarrollé dos preguntas de discusión de cinco. (5 páginas/ 2.5 por pregunta)
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS:
PART ONE POETRY Alienation is the paramount subject in twentieth century Latin American poetry. The eight poets analyzed in class approached this subject from different perspectives: through socio-poetic commitment (Pablo Neruda, Luis Palés Matos and Nicolas Guillén), formal experimentation with the expressive capacity of language (Vicente Huidobro, Oliverio Girondo and Nicanor Parra), through women’s erotic and intellectual liberation (Delmira Agustini y Angela María Dávila), through philosophical, literary and mystical explorations (Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolaño), and reflecting on the diasporic existence in the cities (Pedro Pietri, Víctor Hernández Cruz and Nicole Cecilia Delgado). In the following assignment you will reflect on the works of the poet that best develops and expresses your own concerns.
FIRST WRITTEN REFLECTION: POETRY Choose the poet whose works had the greatest impact on you and reflect on the following: 1. What are the central concerns of this poet? 2. What formal mechanisms does she/he utilize to convey these themes or concerns? 3. Analyze one specific poem by your chosen poet that best conveys what you identified in 1 & 2 above. 4. How does this poet complement the concerns of the other poets read in class? How does she/he explore an area of experience that was neglected by the cultural canon of their times? 5. What have you learned from the works of this particular poet? How has this analysis helped you to integrate past experiences into your sense of identity and/or world view
PART TWO SHORT STORIES Latin American literature encompasses several of the great masters on the short story. Writers like Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar wrote treatises about the art of writing the short story or else stretched the limitations of the genre to include variations that erased the frontiers between the historical and the fantastic. In these assignments you will be able to explore the theory (Todorov) and practice of the fantastic and the intertexts, an important structural element in the works of Borges, Cortázar and in contemporary fiction, among other topics.
FOUR WRITTEN REFLECTIONS:
1 about any of the “cuentos fantásticos y sobrenaturales”
1 about El perseguidor
2 about Nombres y animales
(1 page per reflection.)
Possibilities/Examples:
THE FANTASTIC IN “EL PURITANO” BY HORACIO QUIROGA As Todorov undertands it, the fantastic can be seen in works where both the reader and the characters have a sense of confusion about whether to understand “uncanny” events as supernatural phenomena or through rational explanation. The ending always drives the hesitation towards one of two decisions. The Fantastic can also represent dreams and wakefulness where the character or reader hesitates as to what is reality or what is a dream.
In “El puritano” the film medium is concieved as a phantasmagoria, in other words, as a fantastic intermedial space in which dead actors roam and suffer between the fictions of the screen and the reality of everyday passions.
INTERTEXTS IN “EL SUR” BY JORGE LUIS BORGES In Mirrors and After: Five Essays on Literary Theory and Criticism (1986), Swiss critic Lucien Dållenbach defines intertexts as follows: “[It] covers any sign having as its referent a pertinent continuous aspect of the narrative (fiction, text or narrative code, enunciation) which it represents on the diegetic level. The degree of analogy between sign and referent can give rise to various types of reduplication.” (10)
For example in this complex text by Borges from 1939, the author uses references to several books read by the protagonist, Juan Dahlmann: The One Thousand and One Nights, Martin Fierro, Paul et Virginie. These books function as intertexts which contribute to deliver a central and related messages (i.e. the colonization of “el desierto”; the destruction of “ el gaucho” lifestyle; the genocide of the nomadic indigenous groups in Argentina) by means of “reduplication.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Professors Ana María Hernández and Luis Henao Uribe and the Humanities Alliance Fellowship for the development of this syllabus.