SELCS

Women's Writing in Latin America (Southern Cone and the Andes)


Course code: SPAN2109.
Course unit value: 0.5.

This course will introduce you to a range of work by a number of literary texts from the Southern Cone and the Andean region in order to examine the construction and deconstruction of femininity. The course will begin with a consideration of the principal issues at stake in approaching the topic of women’s writing (e.g. can writing be gendered? Is there such as thing as a women’s language?), in the course of which you will be equipped with the relevant vocabulary and conceptual framework necessary for this enterprise. During the rest of the course you will study a range of work in different genres. Issues to be considered throughout the course in relation to the texts studied will include: questions of language, style and form; thematic concerns such as identity, family, nationhood and ‘race’; and the writers’ and works’ relationship to the literary canon and to broader historical contexts of literary production.

This course will taught in Spanish.

Assessment: one 3000 word essay (40%); and one unseen two-hour written examination (60%).

Tutor: Dr Constanza Ceresa

Preparatory reading and set texts: As much of the material may be difficult to purchase, the readings will be provided on Moodle. You are welcome to bring laptops to class so as to cue up your readings, or you could photocopy them.

Primary texts:

  • Gabriela Mistral (selection of poems and essays)
  • Alejandra Pizarnik (“La condesa sangrienta”, selection of poems)
  • Cristina Peri-Rossi (selection of poems and essays)
  • Néstor Perlongher (selection of poems, essays and short stories)
  • Cecilia Pavón (selection of short stories)


General background reading:

  • Helena Araújo, La scherezada criolla (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, 1989) Susan Bassnett ed., Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America (London: Zed, 1990)
  • Anny Brooksbank Jones and Catherine Davies eds. Latin American Women’s Writing: Feminist Readings in Theory and Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
  • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. (New York ; London : Routledge, 1999). Chapter "Subversive bodily language". Part IV: "Bodily inscriptions, performative subversion".
  • Castillo, Debra. Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Criticism (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992).
  • Castro-Klarén, Sara Sylvia Mohillo & Beatriz Sarlo, Women's Writing in Latin America: An Anthology (Boulder: Westview, 1991)
  • Sara Castro-Klaren ed., Narrativa femenina en América Latina: Practicas y perspectivas teóricas/Latin American Women’s Narrative: Practices and Theoretical Perspectives (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana and Vervuert, 2003)
  • de Beauvoir, Simone. Introduction to The Second Sex (1949)
  • García Pinto, Magdalena, Women Writers of Latin America: Intimate Histories, translated by Trudy Balch and Magdalena García Pinto (Austin, Tex: University of Texas Press , 1991)
  • Amy Kaminsky, Reading the Body Politic: Feminist Criticism and Latin American Women Writers (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
  • Kristeva, Julia. Fragment of "Revolution in poetic language" in Julia Kristeva Reader: Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1986.
  • Toril Moi, Sexual/Texual Politics (London: Routledge, 1985)