Content:

This module provides an introduction to some of the ways in which literary texts have explored the theme of migration from the late19th to the early 21st Century in Latin America. While in recent years migration north from Central and South America to the USA has garnered significant attention in international news media and cultural production alike, this module seeks to contextualise this contemporary crisis by examining key moments of mass migration in recent Latin American history through their literary representation. The movement of people across regional and national borders invariably involves linguistic displacement, and writers have long understood that literary texts have the power to shape public perceptions of migrant communities. Thus by analysing texts which examine historical migrations, students will learn about: some of the economic, political and social changes and conflicts which have led to periods of mass migration; the ways in which migrant communities reciprocally contribute to, accelerate, or produce economic, political, and social change; some of the varied literary styles and genres deployed in Latin America to represent culturally diverse migrant experiences; and the ways in which mass migration is closely linked to questions of indigeneity, race, social class, gender, and conflict in Latin America and that literary texts perpetuate or resist xenophobia, racism, and the negative perception of migrant communities.

Aims:

The module aims to:


	enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of historical and contemporary migration in Latin America, including knowledge of the economic, political and social changes and conflicts (for example, industrialisation, internal conflict, economic disparity between regions and nations) which have led to mass migration in the region;
	
	
	explore the ways in which writers respond to periods of mass migration and utilise literature to examine this phenomenon, better understand the migrant experience, and shape public perceptions of migrant communities;
	
	
	examine some of the linguistic and cultural differences involved in mass migration in Latin America, the ways in which these differences are hierarchized and stigmatised, and the ways in which literary texts contribute to these processes;
	
	
	enhance students’ knowledge of some of the ways in which xenophobia, racism, indigeneity, sexual difference are expressed in Latin America;
	
	
	cultivate skills and aptitudes of close (con)textual analysis in oral presentations and in written work.
	
Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of the module, students will be able to:


	demonstrate knowledge of several moments of mass migration in recent Latin American history and the factors which led to the displacement of people;
	
	
	critically examine a range of literary texts which imaginatively represent migrant experiences;
	
	
	demonstrate awareness of some of the wider social issues connected with migration, and the ways in which writers engage with these issues and attempt to shape public opinion;
	
	
	engage in close reading and critical analysis of primary and secondary sources (including materials written in academic and regional forms of Spanish) which engage with these themes.
	
Bibliography:Primary Texts:

SELECTION FROM:

Valeria Luiselli, Los niños perdidos: un ensayo en cuarenta preguntas (2016)

Eugenio Cambacérès, En la sangre (1887)

Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones (1998)

Leoncio Bueno, select poems from Al pie del yunque (1966) and Invasión poderosa (1970)

Julio Ortega Adiós Ayacucho (1986)

Laura Restrepo, La multitud errante (2001)

Gloria Anzaldúa, excerpts from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)

Select Secondary Reading:

Baily, Samuel L. Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City 1870-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)

Baily, Samuel L., and Miguez, Eduardo José (eds), Mass Migration to Modern Latin America (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003)

Cala Buendia, Felipe, ‘Truth in the Time of Fear: Adios, Ayacucho’s Poetics of Memory and the Peruvian

Transitional Justice Process’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 6:2 (2012) pp.344-354

Carazas, Milagros, ‘La poética del arenal: imágenes de la migración en la poesia de Leoncio Bueno’ in Garcia Liendo, Javier (ed.) Migración y frontera: experiencias culturales en la literatura peruana del siglo XX, pp.273-290

Dajes, Talia, ‘Peru's Living Dead: Spectrality, Untimeliness, and the Internal Armed Conflict’ Romance Quarterly, 67:4 (2020), pp.181-95

Esplin, Marlene Hansen, ‘Self-translation and Accommodation: Strategies of Multilingualism in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Margarita Cota-Cárdenas’s Puppet’, Melus, 41:2 (2016), pp.176-201

Gatti, Gabriel and Peris Blanes, Jaume ‘The Deviated Mourning of the Disappeared: Reimagining Disappearance and Transcending its Tropes’, Bulletin of Latin American Research (2020) https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.13138

Hallstead-Dabove, Susan, ‘Identity Crises and Immigration in Argentina: Consumption and Belonging in En La Sangre (1887) by Eugenio Cambaceres’, Confluencia, 27:2 (2012), pp.16–33

King, Russell, Connell, John, and White, Paul (eds), Writing across Worlds: Literature and Migration (New York: Routledge, 1995)

Mejia, Gustavo, ‘Fragmentación del discurso histórico: Individuo y multitud en La multitud errante de Laura Restrepo', Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, 30:59 (2004), pp.297-304

Messina, Anthony M. and Lahav, Gallya, The Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006)

Munro, Martin, ‘Writing Disaster: Trauma, Memory, and History in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones’, Ethnologies, 28:1 (2006), pp.81-98

Perales, Monica, ‘On Borderlands/La Frontera: Gloria Anzaldúa and Twenty-Five Years of Research on Gender in the Borderlands’ Journal of Women's History, 25:4 (2013), pp.163-73

Santiváñez, Roger, ‘Migración interna y poesia en el Perú (1960-2000)’ in Garcia Liendo, Javier (ed.) Migración y frontera: experiencias culturales en la literatura peruana del siglo XX, pp.227-246

Vargas, Jennifer Harford, ‘Novel Testimony: Alternative Archives in Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones’, Callaloo, 37:5 (2014), pp.1162-180