COMPLIT 123A: Resisting Coloniality: Then and Now (ILAC 123A)

Course Description

What are the different shapes that Western colonialism took over the centuries? How did people resist the symbolic and material oppressions engendered by such colonialist endeavors? This course offers a deep dive into history of the emergence of Western colonialism (alt: Spanish and Portuguese empires) by focusing on literary and cultural strategies of resisting coloniality in Latin America, from the 16th century to the present. Students will examine critiques of empire through a vast array of sources (novel, letter, short story, sermon, history, essay), spanning from early modern denunciations of the oppression of indigenous and enslaved peoples to modern Latin American answers to the three dominant cultural paradigms in post-independence period: Spain, France, and the United States. Through an examination of different modes of resistance, students will learn to identify the relation between Western colonialism and the discriminatory discourses that divided people based on their class, gender, ethnicity, and race, and whose effects are still impactful for many groups of people nowadays. Authors may include Isabel Guevara, Catalina de Erauso, el Inca Garcilaso, Sor Juana, Simón Bolívar, Flora Tristán, Silvina Ocampo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel García Márquez. Taught in Spanish.