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Start date: Monday, January 31, 2022 |
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End date: Monday, May 16, 2022 |
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Mode of Instruction: In Person |
Course Description:
Some of the greatest and most lasting depictions of México in fiction, non-fiction, cinema and photography have been produced by non-Mexicans. Rather than exposing any lack of significant Mexican creators in all these genres, such works reflect the strong pull, the attraction and at times repulsion, exerted by this complicated country and culture on outsiders. We will choose readings from such twentieth and twenty-first century works such as John Reed's Insurgent México, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, DH Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent, Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, the short-stories of Katherine Anne Porter and Paul Bowles, the novels of B. Traven, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the poetic meditations on Pre-Colombian México by recent French Nobel Prize winner Le Clézio, the contemporary México novels of the Chilean Roberto Bolaño, and, in Ana Castillo’s fiction, a U.S. Chicana's return to México, as well as other contemporary writings. Movies will be chosen from among A Touch of Evil, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Wild Bunch, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Night of the Iguana, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Sín Nombre. The emphasis will be on the prose, novels especially, with three or four movies, and a class devoted to photography. We study the works themselves, their relation to their own literary-cultural traditions, their depiction of México, and the multiple issues raised by their status as works created by "foreigners." Supplemental readings, some by Mexicans. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1900. |