Key Issues and Texts: The Politics of Nature in Latin American Literary Culture

MT 2025

Primary texts are listed for each seminar. You will be expected to have studied all primary texts set for each seminar, together with some of the secondary reading suggested in the bibliographies. Links are given in the bibliographies to online articles, and some additional material is available as PDFs to download from Moodle.

Some key issues relating to each seminar are identified – you may wish to focus on one or more of these in a seminar paper or an essay.
 

Seminar 1: Nature and Empire: Natural Histories and Colonial Rule (Carlos Fonseca)

Primary texts 

  • Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo. De la natural hystoria de las Indias. Toledo: Por industria de maestre Remon de Petras, 1526. [Available online in Internet Archive] 
  • Sahagún, Bernardino de. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. c. 1577. México: Editorial Porrúa, 2013. Libro XI: capítulos 1, 4, 7, 9-11 [See also the manuscript’s paintings] 

Key issues 

  • Empirical observation and the crisis of classical authority 
  • Taxonomies and colonialism 
  • First engravings of the New World’s nature 
  • Indigenous knowledge and technologies 
  • Mining and imperial power   

Bibliography
 

Seminar 2: Romanticism: Reinventing América as Nature  (Carlos Fonseca)

Primary texts

  • Excerpts from Von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of a Journey (Introduction & Chapters 1-2, 10-14 & 18)(Darwin online)
  • Selected poems from José María Heredia (iDiscover online) Poems: “En una Tempestad”“Niágara” “En el Teocalli de Cholula” “Al Popocatéptl” “Al Océano”
  • Introduction to La naturaleza en disputa (Gabriela Nouzeilles ed.) 

​Key issues

  • Sublime aesthetics
  • Nature and politics
  • Critique of Enlightenment ideals
  • Nature/culture and nature/history dichotomies
  • Nature as event versus nature as peaceful garden
  • The legacy of the natural history paradigm

Required Readings

  • W.J.T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (University of Chicago Press), Introductory Chapter “Imperial Landscape”
  • Introduction to La naturaleza en disputa, edited by Gabriela Nouzeilles 
  • Graciela Montaldo, “La Naturaleza bajo sospecha,” in Gabriela Nouzeilles ed, La naturaleza en disputa (Buenos Aires, Paidos, 2002). 
  • JB Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, Power” in Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, The Iconography of Landscape (Cambridge UP, 1989). (Many college libraries, UL & pdf. semantics)
  • Jens Andermann, Part 2 “Maps” in The Optic of the State (University of Pittsburgh press, 2007)

Bibliography
 

Seminar 3: Landscapes in the Anthropocene (Liesbeth François)

Primary texts and artworks: 

  • Laia Jufresa, “El esquinista” (short story) (Moodle) 
  • Pablo López Luz, Terrazo series (photographs)
  • Fernanda Trías, Mugre rosa (novel) 
  • Sergio Chejfec, “Donaldson Park” (short story) 

Key issues: 

  • The concept of the “landscape” 
  • Critical debates on the Anthropocene 
  • Aesthetics and the environmental humanities  
  • (Post-)apocalyptic thinking  
  • Urban expansion 

Required reading: 

Bibliography
 

Seminar 4: Postcolonial Ecologies: Nature, Catastrophe and Modernity (Part 1) (Carlos Fonseca) 

Primary texts 

  • Wifredo Lam’s artworks included in Wifredo Lam: The EY Exhibition. Tate, 2016. 
  • Particular emphasis on The Jungle (1943), Self-Portrait III (1938), Figure (1939), Annonciation (1969-71), Dark Malembo, God of the Crossroads (1943), and At the End of the Night (1969) 
  • Ana Mendieta’s earth-body works - Particular emphasis on the following series: Glass on Body Imprints, Facial Cosmetics Variations, Siluetas. Also watch  clip 1 & clip 2
  • Cabañas, Kaira M.,  “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, Body I Am’,” Woman’s Art Journal 20, no. 1 (1999): 12-17.doi:10.2307/1358840  
  • Mercer, Kobena. “Wifredo Lam's Afro-Atlantic Routes.” The EY Exhibition: Wifredo Lam, edited by Catherine David, Tate, 2016, pp. 22–35. (Moodle) 

Key issues 

  • Postcolonial ecologies 
  • Nature and catastrophe 
  • Critiques of progressivism 
  • Debates concerning the Anthropocene 
  • Body and nature 
  • Epidemics, AIDS, biopolitics 

Bibliography
 

Seminar 5: Geology and extractivism (Dr. Liesbeth François) 

Primary texts and artworks:  

  • Verónica Gerber Bicecci, La compañía (photonovel)  
  • Luis Carrera Maul, Metonimias (installation/paintings)  
  • Gabriela Jauregui, Feral (novel) 
  • Eugenia Vargas-Pereira, works from Selección de obras (performances/photographs) 

Key issues:  

  • Geological imaginaries 
  • Geontology and geontopower 
  • Extractivism and neoliberalism 
  • “Cuerpo-territorio” (body-territory) 
  • Posthuman feminism 

Required reading in addition to primary texts:  

  • Povinelli, Elizabeth A, ‘The Three Figures of Geontology’, in Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2016), pp. 1–29  
  • Yusoff, Kathryn, 'Geologic Subjects: Nonhuman Origins, Geomorphic Aesthetics and the Art of Becoming Inhuman', Cultural Geographies, 22.3 (2015), 383–407 
  • Krieger, Peter, ‘Luis Carrera-Maul. Excavaciones, compresiones y transferencias’ in Metonimias. Luis Carrera-Maul , pp. 39-136  
  • Speranza, Graciela, 'Reconstrucciones', Heterotopías del Área de Estudios Críticos del Discurso de FFyH, 4.8 (2021), 1–12 (Moodle)   

Bibliography
 

Seminar 6: Postcolonial Ecologies: Nature, Catastrophe and Modernity (Part 2) (Carlos Fonseca) 

Primary texts 

  • Ana Mendieta’s earth-body works - Particular emphasis on the following series: Glass on Body Imprints, Facial Cosmetics Variations, Siluetas. Also watch  clip 1 & clip 2
  • Cabañas, Kaira M., “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, Body I Am’,” Woman’s Art Journal 20, no. 1 (1999): 12-17.doi:10.2307/1358840 

Key issues 

  • Postcolonial ecologies 
  • Nature and catastrophe 
  • Critiques of progressivism 
  • Debates concerning the Anthropocene 
  • Body and nature 
  • Epidemics, AIDS, biopolitics 

Bibliography