ENVI 218
"Ecologismo": Literature, Culture and the Environment in Latin America
Last Offered Spring 2019
Division I Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed RLSP 214
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

How have Latin American authors and artists responded to environmental concerns, from the logging and rubber booms that threatened the Amazon in the early 20th century to contemporary global warming? How do the realities of Latin American societies–including massive disparities of wealth and poverty; the cultural and political impacts of the region’s indigenous populations; and the complex histories of colonialism, dependency and neoliberalism–inform Latin American responses to environmental issues? How does Latin America’s environmental imaginary differ from those of the U.S. and Europe? In this course we will explore these issues and more through literature and other cultural texts from Latin America. We will consider short stories and novellas by authors including Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay), Luis Sepúlveda (Chile), Mempo Giardinelli (Argentina), and Ana Cristina Rossi (Costa Rica); poetry by Esthela Calderón (Nicaragua), Juan Carlos Galeano (Colombia), Homero Aridjis (Mexico); the paintings of Tomás Sánchez (Cuba); and feature films as well as shorter documentaries. In Spanish.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 12
Class#: 3876
Grading: no pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: brief response papers, as well as three 5- to 7-page essays based on close-readings of literary and cultural texts
Prerequisites: RLSP 105, placement exam results, or permission of the instructor
Enrollment Preferences: Spanish and Environmental Studies majors
Distributions: Division I Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENVI 218 Division I RLSP 214 Division I
DPE Notes: This course is inspired by and organized around Arturo Escobar's notion of "the political ecology of difference:" our work throughout the semester aims to understand the myriad ways in which "difference"--economic, ecological, and cultural--informs Latin American responses to environmental degradation.

Class Grid

Updated 4:32 pm

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