Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies

This concentration investigates the literatures, film, oral tra­ditions, music, and other forms of culture produced in Latin America from the conquest through the present. Faculty members explore these areas of cultural production in sociohistorical context and study the relationship between the roduction/consumption of culture and the unequal distribution of wealth and power in Latin America. The concentration also investigates Latin American cultural and political relations with Spain and encourages research on transatlantic topics. Recent graduate seminars and faculty projects have focused on Latin American literary and cultural theory, testimonio, film, the influence of indigenous cultures on the narrative form of the twentieth-century Latin American novel, U.S.-Mexico border culture and literature, and contemporary cultural critiques of the free-market, neoliberal social order imposed in Latin America over the last three decades. Faculty members are affiliated with the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Center for U.S.–Mexican Studies, and the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS).