Gender Studies 333LA - Female Autobiog. in Latin Am.

Who speaks in a text? What relationship exists between literature, images and identity? How can we portray ourselves in specific socio-political contexts? How do women writers build themselves as authors in the context of a patriarchal literary tradition? How do they address problems of subjectivity, self-representation and self-legitimation? What are the challenges that the self-writing poses to women writers like a black Brazilian woman living in favelas who supports her family by digging through the garbage for paper and scraps to sell; a nun and poet during the colonial period in Mexico; a political prisoner and survivor from a Southern Cone concentration camp during the Argentinian dictatorship; K'iche' political activist and survivor of the Guatemalan Civil War? How do those challenges interact with those of other women writes with more privileged positions in their societies? The course focuses on a heterogeneous corpus of Latin American texts (novels, diaries, letters, poetry and memoirs) that display a literary female personae in a variety of contexts and how they shape the process of construction of woman as author in Latin America from the colonial period until now.

Prereq: Two 200-level Spanish courses above SPAN-212.