From Rubber to Cocaine: Commodities in Colombian Literature

Do you like "Narcos" on Netflix and want to learn more about the Drug Wars and its representation? Are you curious about Colombia? The present sophomore seminar serves the double purpose of introducing you to Colombian culture and of training you in sophisticated rhetorical analysis. At the end of the course you will be a better reader and writer (in Spanish, no less!). You will also have familiarity with a country that in some ways is a "meta-Latin American country," for it includes the regional cultures of the Caribbean, Pacific, Andes, plains, and Amazon jungle. We will read fascinating novels that deal with the sugar plantation economy in the 19th century, the exploitation of rubber at the onset of the 20th, and the coffee and cocaine booms leading to the present. Some things to expect: gripping, tragic love stories among the landed elites of the Pacific Coast, and among their slaves, set against the backdrop of a landscape forever transformed by agriculture (La María); dangerous adventures of city-dwellers turned jungle explorers (La Vorágine), a strike among banana workers turned supernatural catastrophe (Cien años de soledad); the criminal legacy of Pablo Escobar, a man who built an empire of coca leaf, as a symptom of broader societal problems (La parábola de Pablo). This rare course offering will allow you to gain granular knowledge about a fascinating body of literature. You will also become acquainted with an exciting method of cultural analysis called "new materialism." Taught in Spanish.