SPAN 103. Trauma y derechos humanos en la literatura centroamericana

This seminar studies contemporary Central American literature and culture with a focus on theories of trauma to discuss cultural representations of human suffering, empathy, and pain.

The seminar explores the social disintegration and legacy of violence left by decades of civil wars, genocide, and revolution in the region, as well as theories of trauma, memory, affect, aesthetics, philosophical cynicism, and human rights. These theoretical approaches will help us reflect on the relation between literature and human rights; the sociopolitical upheavals and their cultural representations; and how cultural production engages with issues of peace and conflict in the neoliberal era. We will pay special attention to representations of social disaffection, political disillusionment, and survival in a postwar context shaped by socio-economic precarity. In addition to reading literary works by some of the main authors in the region-such as Horacio Castellanos Moya, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, and Claudia Hernández-we will analyze scholarly debates surrounding Central American literature, as well as watch films and performances that probe into the issues of ethics, historical truth, social justice, reconciliation, and the human predicament in a postwar society.
Humanities.
2 credits.
Eligible for LALS, PEAC, GLBL-Paired, CPLT
Spring 2024. Buiza.
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/spanish

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