This course explores the prevalence of desert spaces in Latin American literature. Considering the desert both as a physical landscape—encompassing a range of ecosystems from the Argentine pampas, to the Brazilian sertão, the to the Mexican páramo—and as a figurative construct, we will ask what role it plays in narratives individual, regional, and national identity. How are desert spaces, real and imagined, traversed by questions of gender, race, class, modernization, memory, and migration? What challenges does this spaced defined by its emptiness pose to literary and visual representation and to historical and political understanding? We will examine visual works, films, and sound recordings alongside literary and critical texts.

Fulfills Cross Cultural Analysis.