Fall 2020  |  SPPT 3601 Section 001: 'Race' in Brazil & Latin America (33451)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
Completely Online
Class Attributes:
Online Course
Meets With:
SPPT 5930 Section 001
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
09/08/2020 - 12/16/2020
Tue, Thu 04:00PM - 05:15PM
Off Campus
UMN REMOTE
Enrollment Status:
Open (10 of 15 seats filled)
Also Offered:
Course Catalog Description:
As cultural, national and racial mixings have become the celebrated norm in our society, it is instructive to reflect upon the radically historical, contingent role that the idea of racial mixings has played in the construction of national imaginaries. The idea that Latin America is a continent of mestizos looms large in the US as elsewhere, but generally without the contextual understanding of how that racial category came to be, and as imaginaries of national mestiçagem/mestizaje were consolidated, developed and questioned in the twentieth century and, finally, transplanted to other geographical and epistemological sites, as is the case with Chicanx in the USA. Rather than contributing to the invisibility of Brazil by generalizing from Spanish-speaking Latin America, the present course aims to introduce students to racial thinking in Brazil, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in a comparative frame with racial thinking elsewhere in Latin America, particularly in Mexico. Aside from understanding how the Spanish "mestizo" construction is not equivalent to that of "mestiço" or "pardo" or "mulato" in Portuguese, nor to contemporary multicultural US-branded notions of racial mixings, the course aims to query how the imaginaries of nationhood that have prevailed in Latin America contribute not only to the social exclusion of black people, even where they are a majority, but also to the systematic racism that is still dominant and difficult to combat. We will go over the social and anthropological concepts, the literary and artistic representations, and the political uses of racial ascriptions with attention to changing historical contexts and locations. The main topics covered are the idea of the mixed-race nation in romanticism; post-emancipation, modern nation-making and whitening; modernism and the ideals of "la raza cósmica" (José Vasconcelos, in Mexico) and racial democracy (Gilberto Freyre, in Brazil); the problem of forging a black consciousness in
Class Notes:
This course is completely online in a synchronous format. The course will meet online at the scheduled times.
Class Description:
Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/33451/1209

ClassInfo Links - Fall 2020 Spanish and Portuguese Classes

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