Cuban Literature and Film: Imagination, Revolt, and Melancholia.

Since the late nineteenth century, the island of Cuba has been at the center of a number of key epochal disputes: between colonialism and independence, racism and racial justice, neocolonialism and revolution, liberalism and socialism, isolationism and globalization. In the arts, the turn of the century launched a period of great aesthetic invention. Considering the singular place of Cuba in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe, this course addresses some of the most representative works of Cuban literature and film since independence until the present time. Special attention will be given to Afrocubanismo, ethnographic literature, the avant-garde aesthetics of the group Orígenes, Marvelous Realism, testimony, revolution, socialist experimental film, diaspora, the Special Period, and post-Soviet life. Taught in Spanish.