Art, Literature and Revolution in Latin America: Telling the Story

Course Description: As German intellectual Walter Benjamin writes in his essay “The Storyteller”, “Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn.” In the process of sharing experiences, more stories are born with authorship that are common while at the same time recognizing the individual opening of the hearer and the teller. In this course, we will explore storytelling as a way to understand the changes that Latin America went through during the twentieth-century: from dictatorships and revolutions to efforts for reconciliation and preservation of memory. The course content will include diverse forms of art, including poetry, mural paintings, photography, testimonies, music, and novels. Equally important, students will be placed in bi-weekly engagement with a Latin American immigrant from the London (Ontario) community. Students will maintain a portfolio to keep notes, reactions, and thoughts about their conversations, class discussions, readings, and own reflections. Based on the portfolio, students will share one story with the rest of the class at the end of the term. Revolutionary movements: we will be able to discern, survive and keep growing in a large part because of its storytelling component, the sharing of experiences from mouth to mouth.