This course explores contemporary Caribbean literature, film and music production in order to foster a better appreciation of Antillean cultures and history while investigating the complex power dynamics in the Caribbean. We will interrogate the myth of the Caribbean as paradise by focusing on how artistic works can make visible hidden social, political or economic structures of violence. We will examine how the politics of leisure of the tourist economy clash with slavery or exploitation in plantation and post-plantation societies. We will investigate the search for identity and sovereignty as centuries of colonialism still make it difficult for Caribbean nations to escape political and economic dependency on metropolitan centers of power. The course will focus on writers from the Caribbean islands and the Caribbean diaspora, such as Ana Lydia Vega (Puerto Rico),Junot Díaz (Dominican Republic), Edwidge Dandicat (Haiti), Adelaida Fernández (Cuba), Andrea Levy (Jamaica), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), Earl Lovelace (Trinidad), Frantz Fanon (Martinique); and films such as Ladrones a Domicilio (A. Muñiz, 2008), The Agronomist (J. Demme, 2003), Cecilia (H. Solás, 1982), and The Harder They Come (P. Henzell, 1972). Conducted in Spanish (readings in Spanish and English).