Class Detail

Taught in Spanish. Examines the ways memories have been created, protected, organized, and suppressed in Latin America, focusing specifically on the cultural technologies involved. Addresses the following questions: What do we remember and why? Who gets to remember? Who decides what is remembered? What does memory mean for our understanding of ourselves and the places we live? The purpose of this course is to provide students with intellectual tools to read against the grain of what becomes legitimized as official and hegemonic knowledge.

From the Instructor: This course will analyze the construction of memory in Latin America by focusing on its colonial past and persistent colonial logics and those who resist these impositions. We will start by analyzing how some processes of memory?and history-making?are shaped by Eurocentric knowledge creation. We will analyze and deconstruct these processes from an epistemological and decolonial perspective. We will study the interrelations of power and the production of history by focusing on two case studies: the myth of the discovery of the Americas and the forgotten history of Haiti. We will also consider how Latin American history has been shaped by modernizing projects based on the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism. This dichotomy is behind past and present authoritarian projects and recurrent state violence in Latin America. We will analyze the long-lasting effects of the dictatorships and Operation Condor in Latin America and the political, judicial, and cultural responses to overcome impunity and oblivion.

Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Meeting Dates
	Online	Staff	06/24/24 - 07/26/24