This course introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
What can Guillermo del Toro’s monsters say about oppression, politics or war? How are vampires or the devil reimagined after the Cuban or the Mexican Revolutions? How do Cortázar’s and Borge’s fantasies draw connections between Latin American and European literature? Latin-American literature is well known for magical realism. However, authors’ engagement with fantasy and reality varies along a large gamut touching different genres. Authors and filmmakers have sometimes suggested subtle fantastic elements within realistic settings; other times they have introduced supernatural beings like ghosts or the devil as central characters in their narratives. Often recovering figures from folktales, mixing indigenous and Christian religions, or adapting myths from other cultures into the Latin American context, short stories and films have found intriguing ways to comment on reality through fantasy. This course will explore the ways in which Latin American authors and filmmakers have engaged with fantasy. We will read English translations of fantastic short stories by twentieth-century authors from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico. We will also analyze films dealing with fantasy in Hispanic and Latin American contexts from Guillermo del Toro’s horror film The Devil’s Backbone to the animated comedy Vampires in Havana.
Emiliano Gutierrez Popoca