Latin American Avant-Gardes (343-0-1)

Instructors

Jose Manuel Delpino Vivas

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-440: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

This course explores the 20th century Latin-American avant-gardes through a transnational and intersectional lens focusing on five crucial threads: language, subjectivity, gender, technology, and geopolitics. We will cover both foundational and less known groups and artists, pondering the interplay between gender, aesthetics, politics, and power, that avant-garde practices and artifacts put forth and develop intensively. In one hand, we discuss the rich connections and mixtures of written and visual language, as well as the sustained spillover of artistic practice and subjectivity into public space. In the other, we will challenge historicism and the dichotomy between text and context, among other counterproductive preconceptions. We will cover a diverse corpus of poems, paintings, photographs, happenings, books, book covers, artist's books, interventions, essays, and narrative texts.

Prerequisites: SPAN 250, 251, 260 or 261

Registration Requirements

Prerequisites: SPAN 250, 251, 260 or 261

Learning Objectives

- Learn about the main topics and currents of Latin American Avant-gardes from both an intersectional and interdisciplinary perspectives.
- Further improve literary analysis skills applying fundamental concepts of literary theory and criticism to challenging artistic objects and practices.
- Establish the foundations of close readings informed by cultural history.

Class Materials (Required)

All reading materials will be available in Canvas

Class Attributes

Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area