Admission requirements
The teaching language of the course is Spanish. Elective students who want to follow the course must contact the lecturer. Occasionally, English can be used when participating in the tutorials.
Description
Latin America is a massive geographic area with rich, complex and diverse landscapes, peoples and cultures that reflect an equally varied historical accounts and social dynamics.
This course will introduce you to some of the complexities of this region by exploring cultural and historical developments from the end of the 19th century to present. Looking into some representative literary and filmic examples of Hispanophone Latin American culture, you will explore some of the fascinating but also turbulent topics and histories that have shaped questions on identities and subjectivities and its representations of ideas of nation, class, citizenship, gender and ethnicities. These topics include the (re)inventions of urban cultures, ideas of revolution, post-dictatorship narratives in the Southern Cone and the new aesthetics and temporalities of contemporary Latin American culture in Spanish.
The emphasis of the course is a cultural analysis of primary texts (including literature and film), which will involve reading of primary texts in Spanish and a historically informed analysis of each topic. You are expected to relate the suggested primary texts with their social and historical contexts.
Course objectives
Drawing on the first-year courses on Latin American literature and culture, this course will allow students to:
Have a solid grasp of the specific context of production of at least one of the primary texts studied in the course.
Understand some of the main debates surrounding notions of identity within the Hispanophone cultural history from the 19th century to present.
Be able to use tools and terms of literary and/or filmic analysis when constructing an argument.
Further develop teamwork skills, presentation skills and reading strategies of literary texts in Spanish and non-literary texts in Spanish and English.
Get to know some theoretical and critical approaches to Latin American film and literature.
Besides these specific skills, students will gain some transferable skills when it comes to researching about a specific topic, collaborating with others when performing a taks and critically evaluating previous and new information.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Lectures and seminars. Attending all lectures and seminar sessions is compulsory. Students may not miss more than two sessions.
Assessment method
Essay, paper
Abstract, oral presentation.
Assessment
Weighing
Group Oral Presentation in Spanish (10 minutes) 20%
Essay plan with annotated bibliography in Spanish (800 to 1000 words) 30%
Final Essay in Spanish (1500 to 2000 words) 50%
To complete the final mark, please take notice of the following:
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average. To pass the course, the weighted average of the partial grades must be 5.5 or higher. There is no resit for the presentation nor for the essay plan.
Resit
Students who score an overall insufficient grade for the course, are allowed resubmit a reworked version of the Final Essay. The deadline for resubmission is 10 working days after receiving the grade for the Final Essay and subsequent feedback. If the student fails to resubmit the reworked version of the Final Essay within 10 calendar days, the student will not pass the course.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
The reading list will be announced and made available at the first lecture. The study material will be found on dedicated folders available in the course module on Brightspace week by week. Keep in mind that there are 54 hours designated for reading and watching the proposed films (i.e. self-study). For primary texts (in Spanish) and secondary texts (some in English) you are expected to read about 20 pages approximately for each session.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration À la carte education, Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of À la carte education (without taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats
Remarks
Not applicable.