This course explores the history of violence in women’s lives in the midst of the political, social and artistic moments that shaped Latin America. Using primary literary texts, film, art, and music, students will engage scholarly readings that contextualize those moments including the emergence of women in convents, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, black nuns, and the brides of Christ.  Follow Frida Kahlo and her political vision, through Remedios Varo’s issues of gender and ambiguity, to the soldaderas / guerrilleras, poets of the mountains and the testimonial literature of rural leaders in Latin America, such as the Mapuche indigenous leaders.

Issues of bodies, ancient medicine for women and conceptual notions of the body in present times will be explored with a collage of collaborative media. Come and explore it all, from beads to embroidery, from digital protest to political lipstick.

Graduate students: This course will concentrate on the works of Sor Juana and the new indigenous women’s intellectuals such as Cusicanqui in Latin America.