Spanish 340 - Transatlantic Avant-Garde

Are you avant-garde? To be 'avant-garde' once meant to be 'ahead of your time' or to be situated along the cutting edge of an artistic or political movement. In the first part of the twentieth-century, a cadre of artists in Europe as well as in Latin America put forward subversive critiques of art by considering innovative form and content as political tools for change. In this class we will read avant-garde artists from Spain and Latin America alike to explore the productive tensions between peninsular and Latin American trends as well as between art and activism, theory and practice. We will look at movements like Dadaismo, Modernismo, Surrealismo, and Indigenismo and consider the relevance of the avant-garde today.

Prereq: Two courses in Spanish beyond Span-212