Politics, Writing and the Nobel Prize in Latin America

Semester and Year	FA 2012
Course Number	IDSEM-UG1711
Section	001
Instructor	Linn Cary Mehta
Days	Mon,Wed
Time	3:30 PM - 4:45 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement	HUM, GLOBAL

Description

In the course of the twentieth century, seven Latin American authors have won the Nobel Prize: Gabriela Mistral (1945); Miguel Angel Asturias (1967); Pablo Neruda (1971); Gabriel García Márquez (1982); Octavio Paz (1990); Rigoberto Menchú (Peace Prize, 1992); Mario Vargas Llosa (2010). Together, they give us a chance to consider some of the major literary and political movements in Latin America leading up to the present. The poetry of Mistral and Neruda reveals the successive influences of surrealism, communism, socialism, up to the eve of the Pinochet coup in Chile; through novels and autobiography, Asturias and Menchú explore very different aspects of the indigenous struggle in Guatamala; the novels of García Márquez in Colombia and Vargas Llosa in Peru embody different sides of magical realism; and Paz, in Mexico, in his poetry and essays, represents a country that has been a literary cornerstone of Latin America.

Syllabus

IDSEM-UG1711

Course Type

Interdisciplinary Seminars (IDSEM-UG)