This course will explore diverse aspects of Latin American society from pre-Columbian times to the present. The course will cover a comprehensive range of topics: conquest, class and caste, post-independence development, politics and the culture of protest, indigenous and contemporary social movements, post-dictatorship and neoliberalism, and current trends in Latin American culture, thought and politics. During this course, participants will deepen their knowledge and skills in the use of interdisciplinary methodologies appropriate to the study of key issues in Latin America. They will also develop a fundamental understanding of historic and current Latin American society. Recommended texts will include significant writings of contemporary Latin American scholars as well as multimedia sources such as the internet, music and film.

On successful completion of this course students will have the knowledge and skills to identify and critically appraise the key concepts associated with the development of latin American societies and their integration with the rest of the world.  They will be able to communicate their comprehension of the course content by constructing sound arguments, expressing their ideas coherently and logically, and demonstrating reflective and argumentative thinking in their analysis. Students will develop skills to research and evaluate a diversity of information sources about Latin American(e.g. print/multi media, academic publications, journalism, screen presentations, web pages, song lyrics, creative literature) and the various perspectives they reflect, and will be able to identify and explain a personal view in the context of highly contested views of these topics.

Students will be able to choose some combination which totals 100% of the following assessment tasks:

(i) Four book reviews of 1,500 words each critically appraising listed texts (25% each)

(ii) One 25 minute presentation on a listed topic or on student-initiated research topics following the agreement of the convenor. The presentation should include a Powerpoint presentation and an annotated bibliography (50%)

(iii) Two 3,000 word essays on a listed topic or on student-initiated research topics following the agreement of the convenor (50% each) 

36 hours class time - 8 weeks

• (i) 4 weeks on-line (3 hours per week)
• (ii) 2 days (weekend) intensive (6 hours per day)
• (iii) 4 weeks on-line (3 hours per week)

None

Note: all internet sources will be advised at the start of the course

The key text recommended will be:  

Fuentes, Carlos. The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World. London: Deutsch, 1992.

Other texts recommended will be:

Chomsky, A., Carr, B. and Smorkaloff, P. M., eds. The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Coronil, Fernando. The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997.

Dussel, Enrique. The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of "the Other" and the Myth of Modernity. New York: Continuum, 1995.

Eckstein, Susan, ed. Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

García Canclini, Néstor. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Hortiguera, H. and Rocha, C., eds. Argentinean Cultural Production during the Neoliberal Years (1989-2001). Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007.

Beverley, John, and Marc Zimmerman. Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

Morris, Nancy. "Canto porque es necesario cantar: The New Song Movement in Chile, 1973-1983", in Latin American Research Review, Vol. 21, 2 (1986): 117-136.

Schiwy, Freya. Indianizing Film: Decolonization, the Andes and the Question of Technology. London: Rutgers Press, 2009.

Larsen, Neil. Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture and Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

Masiello, Francine. The Art of Transition: Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Winn, Peter. Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Internet Access for on-line delivery