World Literatures 212 - Author, Authority, Authoritarianism: Writing and Resistance in the Portuguese-Speaking World

Offered as WLT 212 and POR 212. Introducing translated works by celebrated Portuguese-language writers, this course explores themes of resistance, including resistance to dictatorship, patriarchy, slavery, racism, and colonialism, but also more ambivalent postures of resistance toward authority assumed within particular forms of expertise and knowledge production and deployment. Discussing fiction by Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Mia Couto (Mozambique), Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (Angola/Portugal), and Nobel laureate José Saramago (Portugal), students consider historical contexts; how their work resonates with the contemporary world, literature, and fictionality as sites of resistance; and the sometimes fraught dynamics they reveal between authorship and authority.