This upper-level Spanish course explores how Latin American authors, artists, filmmakers, photographers, and thinkers have responded to environmental concerns from colonial times to the present day. Starting with Europeans' first impressions of the New World, we will grapple with the interplay between local cultures and the expansion of global capitalism in Latin America by analyzing literary and cultural representations of, for instance, resource extraction of rubber, wood, and petroleum in the Amazon (Brazil, Per, Ecuador); maquiladora contamination and environmental migration in the borderlands (U.S.-Mexico); water defenders and neoliberalism (Chile, Bolivia); Indigenous social movements in defense of land; nature (Ecuador); eco-feminist parallels between oppression of women and nature (Honduras, Colombia); and natural disasters, especially in the age of the Anthropocene (Mexico, Puerto Rico). We will explore these issues and more to unearth the role of Latin American cultural production in bearing witness to and generating awareness of environmental crises, While consistently accounting for the region's complex and interwoven history of coloniality, inequality, and dependency, we will look for ecological justice solutions proposed at the intersection of art and activism. Several questions will guide our interpretations grounded in ecocritical theory: What do the studied works aim to achieve by appealing to harmony between the human and the non-human? What similarities or differences exist across countries, contexts, and genres? How does Latin America's ecological consciousness differ from other peripheries and centers? This course satisfied the Inquiry Seminar to complete the HUA requirement in Spanish and would also count toward International and Global Studies and Latin American and Caribbean studies. In addition, this course would benefit students interested in WPI's Project Centers in Latin America and the Caribbean. This course is taught at an advanced level of Spanish.
This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.