This module exposes students to some of the most representative narrative moments in the history of Latin American letters after the Wars of Independence of the 1820s. Looking at the work of practitioners like Domingo Sarmiento, Jose Marti, Ruben Dario, Jorge Luis Borges and Manuel Puig, it asks students in Year 2 to engage in debates centred around issues of cultural sovereignty and the aesthetics of self-representation in the wake of the extrication from the tutelage of Spanish empire.

What happens after the colonising country is removed from the sphere of national self-definition? How do the republics of Spanish America, and the still-possessed islands of the Caribbean, envision the future of their self-representation after Independence in the 1820s? How do these issues manifest themselves on the level of language? In this module, students will be asked to critically engage texts ranging from the initial expressions of discovery to focus on the discourses of nation and narration in the 19th and 20th centuries. Two-hour class meetings (combining one hour of lecture and one of seminar discussion) organized around the rubric of ten (10) weekly 'themes' or units, will allow the students to analyse and discuss the historical, narrative, and aesthetic development of Spanish American expression until the late 20th century.