Valeria Luiselli: A Mexican New Materialist?

Award-winning Mexican Valeria Luiselli¿s (1983) novels, although thematically very different from each other, explore the tension between body and text in ways that engage with contemporary critical theory, media ecology studies and new materialist philosophies, raising important aesthetic and political questions about the representability of actual and residual boundaries. Students taking this class will both engage in a narratological examination of the novels, survey the existing secondary bibliography, and explore pertinent theoretical frameworks. Combining sentence-by-sentence analysis with well-informed speculative reflection, the goal of the class is to prepare and encourage students to formulate their own perspectives on literature¿s agency in the world. The course will be taught in Spanish and is open to intermediate and advanced Spanish speakers.