Course Details

Course offered Spring 2020

HONORS 394 A: Art, Memory and Violence in Latin America (A&H / SSc, DIV)

HONORS 394 A: Art, Memory and Violence in Latin America (A&H / SSc, DIV)

SLN 14945 (View UW registration info »)

Maria Elena Garcia (Comparative History of Ideas; Anthropology; American Indian Studies; Geography; Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies)
Office: B102 Padelford Hall, Box 354300
Phone: 206 221-0561
Email: meg71@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 15 students

Honors Credit Type

There will be 25 students total in this course (15 Honors/10 CHID)

This Honors/CHID seminar invites students to think critically about violence, memory and social activism in Latin America. Theoretically, students will examine how notions of “otherness” and the power to label are central to the cultural politics of violence. After examining the forces and discourses of state authoritarianism, the gendered strategies of torture, and the role of race in political violence, students will learn about the politics of struggle, resilience and hope. Specifically, students will learn about Indigenous movements for food sovereignty and against extractive industry; they will consider the role of art in social activism, and they will read and hear from human rights activists and other social justice actors. In addition to ethnography and social scientific analysis, we will rely on films, documentaries, historical fiction, plays, and testimonials to interrogate the complexities and intersections of art, memory, and violence in Latin America.