Course Description: This seminar addresses melodrama aesthetics in Latin America through the study of literature, cinema, music, and television. For being the most popular art expression, melodrama has been an effective instrument for the dissemination of political ideas and the construction of subjectivities based on gender, racial, and class inequalities. Theoretically, this seminar will discuss concepts on national identity related to sentimental narratives; affects and emotions theories to understand the role of feelings in the definition of daily life power relations; gender and queer categories to understand the melodramatic implications of machismo, misogyny, and homophobia, as well as the processes of resignification, appropriation, and uses of melodrama for deconstructing patriarchal values. The main topics to be studied are: a) the sentimental novel as foundational narrative of the nation in nineteenth century; b) classical cinema and the pedagogy of machismo; c) melodrama and the technologies of gender; d) queer deconstruction of melodrama; and d) violent imagination in contemporary melodrama.
Grade criteria:
Oral presentations 20%
Class participation 20%
Annotated bibliography 20 %
First draft of term paper 10%
Term paper 30%
Preliminary bibliography:
Benavides, Hugo. Drugs, Thugs and Divas. Telenovelas and Narcodramas in Latin America. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2008.
Bonfil, Carlos. Al filo del abismo: Roberto Gavaldón y el melodrama negro. México: Secretaría de Cultura, 2016.
Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings. Trauma, sexuality, and Lesbian Public Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Desilet, Gregory E. Our Faith in Evil: Melodrama and the Effects of Entertainment Violence. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006.
Domínguez Rivalcaba, Héctor. De la sensualidad a la violencia de género: modernidad y nación en las representaciones mexicanas de las masculinidades. México : Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 2013.
Fiol-Matta, Licia. The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music. Durham: Duke, 2017.
Franco Ramos, Jorge. Melodrama. Bogotá: Planeta, 2006.
Gerassi-Navarro, Nina. Pirate Novels: Fictions of Nation Building in Spanish America. Durham: Dike University Press, 1999.
Lemebel, Pedro. De perlas y cicatrices. Crónicas radiales. Santiago: LOM, 1996.
Mariño Solano, Germán. Análisis y elaboración de fotonovelas: una aproximación desde los cuentos de hadas y el melodrama. Bogotá: Enda América Latina, 1990.
Monsiváis, Carlos, Carlos Bonfil. A través del espejo: el cine mexicano y su público. México: Ediciones El Milagro-Instituto Mexicano de Ciunematografía, 1994.
Muñiz, Elsa. Cuerpo, representación y poder: México en los albores de la reconstrucción nacional 1920-1934. México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2002.
Muñoz, José. Disidentifications. Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota, 1999.
Oroz, Silvia. Melodrama: el cine de lágrimas de América Latina.México: UNAM, 1995.
Quiroz, Gustavo. Hacia una teoría de la significación; el caso del melodrama. México: UNAM, 1979.
Sadlier, Darlene J. Latin American Melodrama: Passion, Pathos and Entertainment. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2009.
Sommer, Doris. Fpundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California, 1991.
Zapata, Luis. Melodrama. México: Enjambre, 1983.