RMST280

Love and Revolution

Love is a central virtue of human kind that frames some of the most significant relationships and roles we will experience in our lifetime, particularly during times of change.  From guerrilla movements and political upheaval to intimate acts of resistance and desire, we will examine how love in its various enactments—patriotic, romantic, familial, erotic—serves as metaphor and material force in accounts of revolution in Latin American literary and cultural production of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Beginning with Pedro Páramo (1955), Juan Rulfo’s haunting representation of (post)revolutionary Mexico and ending with Cantoras, Caro de Robertis’s unapologetic imagining of five women’s fight for freedom in Uruguay’s military dictatorship, RMST 280 traverses countries (Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay), rebel movements, and genres to evaluate how some of the most influential voices and works-in-translation from both fiction and non-fiction traditions frame the powerful interplay between love and revolution in a Latin American context: Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s Cuban campaign diary, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and Gioconda Belli’s autobiographical memoir on love and revolution in Nicaragua, The Country Under My Skin, as well as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Manuel Puig’s seductive exploration of intimacy and resistance from within the prison cell in The Kiss of the Spider Woman, among segments from other representative texts.  We will also consider the intersections of the works studied with music, film and documentary, and artistic production, as well as other themes that shape perceptions of love during times of revolution.

Accessibility—in terms of topics addressed and types of works studied, affordability and easy access to materials, and student interests and levels—is a major priority for the instructor.

Language of instruction: English

Instructor: Dr. Brianne Orr-Álvarez

Prerequisites: No prerequisites