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Interpreting Culture (202-0-22)

Topic

Discovering Jewish Latin America

Instructors

Lucille Kerr
847/467-6698
3-131 Crowe

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-435: Mon, Wed, Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

"Jewish Latin America": An oxymoron? Well, yes and no. Aren't Latin American countries, in fact, Catholic? Well, yes and no. If the region is Catholic, what can possibly be "Jewish" about Latin America? Well, that's what we're going to "discover" in this course. Indeed, as it turns out, Latin America--and especially Argentina and Brazil (our focus), but also somewhat Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Cuba, for example--is much more heterogeneous than you might have thought. The story of the Jewish presence in Latin America is a surprising--and yet surprisingly familiar--story that begins with Jewish emigration/immigration in the late 19th -early 20th centuries and beyond (e.g., after the Holocaust), and continues to unfold to the present day. In reading some parts of that story in works of narrative fiction and film, and in reading about that story in secondary sources, we'll also be pushed to think about--and interrogate--topics such as identity and difference, memory and history, testimony and truth, immigration and assimilation, and so on.

Class Attributes

Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area