Latin American Literature 1

The course is titled "Latin America: The Inventions of a Continent" and is divided into the following three topics, which will be addressed in sequence:
A: Rediscovering America: Chronicles, Stories, Visions
B: The Independence Revolutions: Between Emancipation and New Forms of Coloniality
C: Defining Latin American Identity: Models and Constructions
The course aims to provide an initial general overview of Spanish American literature from its origins to the threshold of the 20th century. The central theme will be the construction of the continent's identity following its discovery and colonization, focusing on the search for an expression based on cultural resistance to imperial dominance.
First, the course will address the issue of the Discovery and Conquest of a new world, to which are attributed, on one hand, the characteristics of myth and dream, and on the other, those of the nightmare of barbarism and the demonic. We will observe the processes through which European culture constructed the image of the "other," an image that remained an unsettling and disturbing foundation of modernity. Secondly, the course will focus on the literary representation of the Independence processes, aiming to understand the painful intercultural mechanisms that characterize the continent's history during its emancipation. Finally, we will analyze the identity configuration models that, from the independence context, have sought to define the heterogeneous cultural makeup of the Continent: whitening, mestizaje, transculturation, and cultural heterogeneity.
All students intending to acquire 6 CFU (university credits) will adhere to the program topics A and B; all students intending to acquire 9 CFU will adhere to the complete program (A, B, and C).
The course program is valid up to and including September 2026.