COMP 346
Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: Narratives from the Arab World, Latin America and the Caribbean Spring 2019
Division I Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ARAB 346
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course offers a South-South comparative reading of revolutions and counter-revolutions in the second half of the 20th century in the Arab World, Latin America and the Caribbean. Throughout we will read novels and watch films that focus on histories of social movements, post-independence revolutions, indigenous autonomies, dictatorship, and counter-revolutions with the aim to investigate narratives of people power vs. absolute power, insurgency vs. neocolonialism, utopias and dystopias. A comparative and critical reading of these texts will introduce you to the complex histories of national liberation, state terrorism and democratic imagination in two geographies in the Global South that share similar struggles against Euro-American imperialism. These texts will also familiarize you with an alternative, yet foundational, canon of Arabic, Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cinema, particularly from the post-Sixties generation in the Arab world and the post-Boom Latin American generation. Although this course is conceptualized as a South-South comparative reading of revolution and counter-revolution, it does not adhere to strict geographical parallels between the Arab World, Latin America and the Caribbean. It is mapped, however, according to major critical questions and thematic tropes that inform this topic. For example, how do contemporary Iraqi and Chilean writers and filmmakers write an aesthetic of evil in narratives that investigate the legacy of prolonged dictatorship? How do national novels in Mexico and Palestine depict parallel movements of indigenous resistance and anti-capitalist struggles? What motifs of dystopia are illustrated in narratives about post-revolution civil wars in Argentina and Syria? What histories of popular nationalism and socialism are revealed in feminist memoirs from Egypt and Cuba from the 1960s and 1970s?
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 3515
Grading: no pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active class participation, two short papers (3-4 pages), two film reviews (1-page), two critical reflections (1-page), a performance, and a final paper (7-10 pages)
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis
Prerequisites: none
Distributions: Division I Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under COMP; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under ARAB DPE: This course will explore difference, power, and equality through a comparative reading of narratives of dissent and revolt. The novels examines the effects of class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality on social and economic inequalities that ultimately have mobilized revolutions in the Arab world, Latin America, and the Caribbean since the 1960s. Reading narratives of socialist revolutions from the Global South, students will hone skills to address global injustices and neoliberalism
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ARAB 346 Division I COMP 346 Division I

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