Key Issues and Texts: Present Pasts, Pasts Present: Reflections on Literature and History
The primary texts covered in 2025 will be:
Seminar 1: The colonial chronicle (Carlos Fonseca)
- Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios (1555)
- Juan José Saer, El entenado (1983).
Seminar 2: The slave (auto)biography (Carlos Fonseca)
- Francisco Manzano, Autobiografía de un esclavo (1835/1840)
- Miguel Barnet, Biografía de un cimarrón (1966).
Seminar 3: Worlding the national romance (María Reyes Baztán)
- excerpts from Jorge Isaacs, María (1867)
- Adelaida Fernández Ochoa, Afuera crece un mundo (2018).
Seminar 4: Indigenismo (María Helena Martínez-Acacio)
- Clorinda Matto de Turner, Aves sin nido (1889)
- photographs by Martín Chambi
Seminar 5: The Diary (Carlos Fonseca)
- excerpts from José María Arguedas, El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (1971)
- Ricardo Piglia, Los diarios de Emilio Renzi: Años de de Formación (2015)
Seminar 6: The urban chronicle (Liesbeth François)
- Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, selected crónicas
- Carlos Monsiváis, Los rituales del caos
Student papers: please keep these between 10 and 15 minutes if possible, so as to guarantee lots of time for group discussion.
Preliminary Reading: Students must read *all* of the primary texts before attending seminars.
Good introductory works for those who do not have a foundation in Latin American literature include Jean Franco’s Introduction to Latin American Literature (1969), Angel Rama’s La ciudad letrada (1984), Gerald Martin’s Journeys Through the Labyrinth (1989), and Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991).
