Discovering Jewish Latin America (232-0-1)
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.
Primary works include: Alberto Gerchunoff's The Jewish Gauchos (1910/1936), a short collection of vignettes/stories set in a Jewish-Argentine agricultural colony in the early 20th century; Moacyr Scliar's The Centaur in the Garden (1980), a semi-picaresque/fantastic novel about the life of a Jewish centaur born to Russian immigrants living in an agricultural community in Brazil; Ana Maria Shua's The Book of Memories (1994), a humorous, reflexive novel about three generations of a Buenos Aires Jewish family; Michel Laub's Diary of the Fall (2011), a novella-diary written & narrated by the Brazilian grandson of a Holocaust survivor; Daniel Burman's The Lost Embrace (2003), a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film set in Once, the old Jewish neighborhood in Buenos Aires; Sandra Kogut's A Hungarian Passport (2002), an autobiographical documentary about the Brazilian filmmaker's "quest" for a passport from the country from which her family fled during the Holocaust.
Registration Requirements
Course prerequisite/Language/Letter grade
There is NO prerequisite for Span 232
The course is conducted in English
No P/NP (i.e., this course may only be taken for a letter grade)
Class Materials (Required)
Ebooks via NU Library (or purchase print or electonic editon): Parricide on the Pampas?: The Jewish Gauchos - ISBN-10 0826317677; The Book of Memories - ISBN-10 0826319491; Diary of the Fall -
ISBN-10 1590516516.
Purchase print edition: The Centaur in the Garden (U of Wisconsin P, 2003) - ISBN-10 0299187845
Canvas: films, several short stories from other countries, and all secondary materials.
Class Notes
Major/Minor credit (Spanish, Portuguese, Jewish Studies, CompLit); Distro Area VI credit--
Spanish minor: Span 232 may be counted as one of the five required 200-level courses
Spanish major: Span 232 may be counted as one of the three required elective courses
Portuguese minor: Span 232 may be counted as one of the two required elective courses.
Jewish Studies major: Span 232 may be counted as one of the required courses (see JS advisor)
CompLit major: Span 232 may be counted as one of the required courses (see CLS advisor)
Journalism: Span 232 may be counted as one of the courses required for an outside concentration
Distro Area VI (Literature & Fine Arts): Span 232 may be counted as Area VI required course
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area