Unit name | Images and Text: Hybrid Media and Power in Latin America |
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Unit code | HISP30086 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. King |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit offers an in-depth look at the use of mixed-media texts to map out and intervene into regimes of power in Latin America. Through discussion of a range of texts produced in both Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking parts of the region, it will explore combinations of images and texts in a number of media, from graphic novels through photographic artist’s books to novellas and short stories. The focus will be how relations between text and image, whether through blurring the distinction between the two in comic-book design or reinforcing that distinction in literary fiction, reflect political tensions in the region.
The main topics for debate will be: the use of textual strategies from the post-Conquest period of the 16th century in the contemporary graphic novel; the relationship between literature and the mass-media cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries; the role of images in narratives of memory constructed during the post-dictatorship period; and the interaction between online and offline worlds in digital media cultures. The unit will also mix criticism and practice, culminating in the production of a portfolio combining an essay with a critical image-text, whether in the form of a comic or photographic artist’s book.
By the end of this unit students will have:
1 x 2 hour seminar per week, including plenary presentation, class discussions and small group work.
1 x Group presentation (15-20 minutes), testing ILOs 4-6 and individual 1,000-word write up (30%: 15% group mark for presentation, 15% for individual write-up) testing ILOs 1-6;
1 x portfolio combining a 4000-word essay and a critical image-text (70%) testing ILOs 1-6.
Set Primary Texts:
Operaci'ón Bolívar (2006) by Edgar Clement (Graphic Novel)
Desterro (2014) by Ícaro Lira et al. (Artist’s Book)
La invenci'ón de Morel (1940) by Adolfo Bioy Casares (Novella)
M'ã'e Judia, 1964 (2014) by Moacyr Scliar (Short Story)
Z'é Ningué'm (2015) by Alberto Serrano and the wider Tito na Rua project. (Graffiti project/ Graphic Novel)
Set Critical Reading:
W.J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Jens Andermann, The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.
Marcy E. Schwartz and Mary Beth Tierney-Tello, '‘Introduction,’ Photography and Writing in Latin America: Double Exposures, edited by Marcy E. Schwartz and Mary Beth Tierney-Te'llo (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 1-18.
Andreas Huyssen, ‘Of mice and mimesis: reading Spiegelman with Adorno’, New German Critique 81 (2000), 65–68.'
Nick Sousanis, Unflattening (London: Harvard University Press, 2015)