Course Title:
Latin American Women Writers

FL 456 SYLLABUS

COURSE OUTLINE

I. Catalog Description

FL 456 Latin American Women Writers (4)

The role of women in cultural production in the Spanish-speaking western hemisphere and their historical marginalization from the literary canon. Close examination of texts in drama, poetry, and prose, with an emphasis on the seventeenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. 4 lectures/problem-solving. Prerequisite: FL 351 or equivalent.

II. Required Background or Experience

Prerequisite: FL 351 or equivalent. The student must know enough Spanish to understand lectures and readings and to take examinations in Spanish.

III. Expected Outcomes

Students will be exposed to texts by major and lesser-known female authors in the Spanish-speaking western hemisphere. They will develop an understanding of their emergence from the macrotext of woman's traditional inaccessibility to the production of official culture. Students will also become aware of the impact of socioeconomic forces on these authors and how their access to the power of words and self-definition identifies them as privileged participants in the cultural system where illiteracy among women predominates. The coursework will provide a useful critical framework for students to carry over to the study of world literature and western civilization in general.

IV. Text and Readings

A college-level anthology in Spanish of Latin American women writers such as:

Sara Sefchovich. Mujeres en espejo, II: Narradoras latinoamericanas, siglo XX. (Mexico: Folios Ediciones, 1985) or

C.L. Silva-Veláquez and N. Erro-Orthman. Puerta abierta. (Mexico: J. Mortiz, 1986)

Supplementary texts where appropriate

V. Course Outline

The course will engage students in close examination of texts by female authors spanning various periods of literary creativity in Spanish America. As background, the mythic representation of women is analyzed vis-à-vis the production and transmission of culture through the centuries. Readings on feminist theory by J. Kristeva, T. Moi, and Rosario Castellanos inform approaches to a variety of texts. Initiating the series of authors highlighted in the course, an Aztec princess' poetry is examined in light of the philosophical and political tenets of the dominant culture to which she belonged in the largest pre-Hispanic empire in North America. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is presented as the epitome of the Baroque period and Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda as the embodiment of romanticism a century and a half later. The course will explore the aesthetic and sociological implications of the success attained by these female authors, both masters in several genres who gain recognition within the cultural power structure centered in Madrid and other major cities in Spain prior to her American colonies' independence. For the second half of the nineteenth century--the era of Latin American nation-building--the course will foreground Juanamanuela Gorriti and Clorinda Matto de Turned as pioneers (in Peru, Bolivia, and the province of Salta) in their commitment to social reform whose seemingly traditional fiction raises controversial race and gender issues. The former, fictionalized as the protagonist of Marta Mercader's 1981 best-selling novel in Argentina, builds a convenient bridge for discussing parallels between latter nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics and culture in relation to women's writing and their social standing. For the first half of the twentieth century, texts by the four canonical poets (Gabriela Mistral, Delmira Agustini, Juana de Ibarbarou and Alfonsina Storni) will be deconstructed--the reasons for their token inclusion in anthologies examined vis-à-vis their stylistic innovations and unorthodox lives. Teresa de la Parra's first-person fictionalized "diary" will serve as the first major example of a twentieth-century female narrative construction of a female subject. The Peruvian Magda Portal's poetry and fiction as well as her leftist political activism will be read and analyzed in contrast with the Argentinean Victoria Ocampo's essays and her aristocratic activism for the arts. The Mexican Rosario Castellanos' poetry, fiction, essays, and drama will be examined as texts by the first feminist thinker of Spanish America. The course will focus also on selected texts by some of the already very well known authors in twentieth-century Spanish America--the exclusion of Portuguese-speaking Brazil and former French territories precludes the label "Latin America"--i.e., fiction writers (María Luisa Bombal, Rosario Ferré, Marta Lynch, Silvinia Ocampo, Syria Poletti, Elena Poniatowska, Cristina Peri Rossi, Luisa Valenzuena), poets (Olga Orozco, Sonia Luz Carrillo, Blanca Varela) and playwrights (Elena Garro, Luisa Josefina Hernández, and Mariela Romero).

VI. Instructional Method

Instructor's lectures; class discussion, group collaboration, student in-class writing.

VII. . Outcomes Assessment

1. Essay exam(s) and short quizzes
2. Short critical paper presented in class
3. Oral reports and participation in class discussions