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ILAC 116Q: Not Quite White?: Whiteness in and Across the Americas

Is Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen a woman of color? Does the answer to that question change whether she is in Brazil or in the United States? Why was there a backlash in the Mexican entertainment industry to the stardom of visibly and proudly indigenous actors Yalitza Aparicio (the star of the film Roma) and Tenoch Huerta (Wakanda Forever)? Would a white-presenting person with one Black grandmother be eligible for university admissions through Brazil¿s socioeconomic and racial quotas? In this seminar style IntroSem, we will explore these questions through an investigation of whiteness and white supremacy in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the Southern Cone, and the US and the Latinx community. Through in-class discussions and collaborative curation projects, we will analyze historical documents, current events, films, and, yes, Twitter debates, to think critically about whiteness in Latin America, how it relates to discourses of racial democracy, and how its am more »

Is Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen a woman of color? Does the answer to that question change whether she is in Brazil or in the United States? Why was there a backlash in the Mexican entertainment industry to the stardom of visibly and proudly indigenous actors Yalitza Aparicio (the star of the film Roma) and Tenoch Huerta (Wakanda Forever)? Would a white-presenting person with one Black grandmother be eligible for university admissions through Brazil¿s socioeconomic and racial quotas? In this seminar style IntroSem, we will explore these questions through an investigation of whiteness and white supremacy in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the Southern Cone, and the US and the Latinx community. Through in-class discussions and collaborative curation projects, we will analyze historical documents, current events, films, and, yes, Twitter debates, to think critically about whiteness in Latin America, how it relates to discourses of racial democracy, and how its ambiguity perpetuates national and regional identities founded on anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. You will engage with a wide range of methodological approaches to studying whiteness, including ethnography and psychology, as well as theoretical traditions like Black feminism and decoloniality. Your multidisciplinary final projects will showcase the skills you develop in using historical and cultural analysis as an entry point to examine and compare the different ways in which whiteness works throughout the Americas. Taught in English.

| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

ILAC 119: The Memory of the Eye: Iberian Cinema from Buñuel to Almodóvar

An introduction to Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, and Catalan cinema through films from the 1920s and 30s to the present. How film uses a visual grammar of the image to tackle social questions and construct a collective memory. This course will consider the problems of individual recollection under conditions of collective trauma and distortion of the past, exploring the relation between film and history. The course will also focus on how images can be used to explore subjectivity and the passions. We will be watching outstanding films by Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura, Víctor Erice, Bigas Luna, Pedro Almodóvar, Miguel Gomes, Julio Medem, Ventura Pons, Iciar Bollaín, and Isabel Coixet. Students will be responsible for watching all the films, engaging in lively discussion, in preparation for which, they will be asked to consider certain issues in writing before each class. Each student will present on one of the films for about fifteen minutes. There will be one short midterm essay and one final paper "on a different film."

Last offered: Spring 2020 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 132E: Introduction to Global Portuguese: Cultural Perspectives

Portuguese is the sixth most-spoken language in the world (roughly 250 million speakers now, with expected growth to 400 million by 2050) and the most-spoken language south of the Equator. It is the official language of nation-states on four continents, making it truly global in scope. Beyond Brazil, there are tens of millions of Portuguese speakers in Africa and Europe as well as smaller communities in Asia and North America. In this course, students will learn about the cultures and communities that make up the Portuguese-speaking world, even as they learn to critique the idea of linking these communities by means of a language that became global (like Spanish and English) through violent colonial expansion. Topics include art and music, film, poetry, short story, post-colonialism, indigeneity, crioulismo, empire, diaspora, semi-peripherality, modernism. Course taught in English with optional Portuguese section.

Last offered: Spring 2018

ILAC 140: Migration in 21st Century Latin American Film (CHILATST 140)

Focus on how images and narratives of migration are depicted in recent Latin American film. It compares migration as it takes place within Latin America to migration from Latin America to Europe and to the U.S. We will analyze these films, and their making, in the global context of an ever-growing tension between "inside" and "outside"; we consider how these films represent or explore precariousness and exclusion; visibility and invisibility; racial and gender dynamics; national and social boundaries; new subjectivities and cultural practices. Films include: Bolivia, Copacabana, La teta asustada, Norteado, Sin nombre, Migraci¿n, Ulises, among others. Films in Spanish, with English subtitles. Discussions and assignments in Spanish.

Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

Instructors: Briceno, X. (PI)

ILAC 151: Cuban Literature and Film: Imagination, Revolt, and Melancholia.

Since the late nineteenth century, the island of Cuba has been at the center of a number of key epochal disputes: between colonialism and independence, racism and racial justice, neocolonialism and revolution, liberalism and socialism, isolationism and globalization. In the arts, the turn of the century launched a period of great aesthetic invention. Considering the singular place of Cuba in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe, this course addresses some of the most representative works of Cuban literature and film since independence until the present time. Special attention will be given to Afrocubanismo, ethnographic literature, the avant-garde aesthetics of the group Orígenes, Marvelous Realism, testimony, revolution, socialist experimental film, diaspora, the Special Period, and post-Soviet life. Taught in Spanish.

Last offered: Spring 2022 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ILAC 178: Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 78, HISTORY 178)

In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.

Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

Instructors: Wolfe, M. (PI) ; de Meira Borba, N. (TA)

ILAC 182: Mexican Cinema in the Era of Globalization

In this course we focus on the polemic quality of Mexican contemporary cinema, as we study this cinema in relation to the scholarship on globalization. We study how contemporary Mexican films and directors participate in coding, creating and reformulating images of Mexico and the world into the screen. Rather than concentrating on how contemporary films represent Mexican identity through a selection of films, we discuss rather how these films point to a situated `global' film making.

Last offered: Winter 2022

ILAC 202: Revolution and Dictatorship in Latin American Literature and Film

TBD

ILAC 236: Gender and Feminist Debates in Latin America

This interdisciplinary, 10 hour, 1-unit course, explores gender politics and representation in contemporary Latin American film, theory, and social movements. Seminar format, open to undergraduate and graduate students. Works may include: film: Señorita María (2017) by Rubén Mendoza (Colombia); studies by Marta Lamas (Mexico), Ana Amado (Argentina), and Sonia Corrêa (Brazil), among others. The course will be taught in Spanish at Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row. Schedule: The course dates are Monday, April 23 to Wednesday April, 25, 6:00-9:00pm. Instructor: Professor Moira Fradinger (Yale University), hosted by Professor Héctor Hoyos. NOTE: Professor Fradinger will also give a talk on "Antígonas: A Latin American Tradition," on Friday, April 27th, in the CLAS noon lecture series.