Pavel Andrade, Ph.D.

Course Description

Cultural interactions between Latin America and Russia/the Soviet Union were not only widespread but key to the formation of a revolutionary imagination and social consciousness throughout the twentieth century. Focusing on different instances of cultural exchange from 1917 to 1991 this upper-level course explores the aesthetic ideas and social processes that continually challenged and transformed notions of revolution and internationalism in the Second and Third Worlds. We follow the evolution of the Latin American-Soviet relation through developments in literature, film, painting, journalism, and other media. While this course strives to make sense of the mutual repercussions of the Latin American-Soviet cultural exchange, emphasis is given to Latin American cultural production. Readings include works by Manuel Maples Arce, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Diego Rivera, José Carlos Mariátegui, César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Patrícia Galvão, Mikhail Sholokhov, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Elena Poniatowska, and Rigoberta Menchú.

Requirements

Students are expected to read all materials thoroughly in order to contribute to discussion and actively engage in class activities. Students should be able to demonstrate they have: 1) reflected upon the readings; 2) synthesized the main ideas, and; 3) identified key concepts and categories. Students will submit a short, written response to each week’s readings and are encouraged to bring questions to class, not only about the works assigned for each week but about their relation to other materials assigned for this course. Assignments include presentations, discussion facilitation, a seminar paper, and a collective/group project in the form of a cultural manifesto.

Grading Policy

Participation: 15%
Exam 1: 20%
Exam 2: 20%
Final essay: 30%
Group project: 15%

Reading Calendar

Week 1, The Spectre of Communism

• Franco, Jean. “Communist Manifestos.” The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War, Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 57-85.

Week 2, Mexican Stridencies

• Maples Arce, Manuel. City: Bolshevik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos. 1924. Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010.
• D. Burliuk, A. Kruchenykh, V. Mayakovsky, and V. Khlebnikov. “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.” Russian Futurism through its Manifestoes, 1912-1928, edited by Anna Lawton, translated by Anna Lawton and Herbert Eagle, Cornell University Press, 1988, pp. 51-52.
• Gallo, Rubén. “Maples Arce, Marinetti and Khlebnikov: The Mexican Estridentistas in Dialogue with Italian and Russian Futurisms.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 31, no. 2, invierno 2007, pp. 309-324.

Week 3, Painting the Mexican-Bolshevik Revolution

• Siqueiros, David Alfaro. Art and Revolution. Lawrence and Wishart, 1975. (Excerpts)
• Rivera, Diego, and Jodi Roberts. “Moscow Sketchbook.” October, no. 145, 2013, pp. 85–114.
• Segal, Joes. “Between Nationalism and Communism: Diego Rivera and Mexican Muralism.” Art and Politics: Between Purity and Propaganda. Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

Week 4, Bolsheviks in Aztlán

• Mayakovsky, Vladimir. “Mexico.” My Discovery of America. Hesperus Press, 2005, pp. 3-35.
• Eisenstein, Sergei, et al. Que Viva Mexico!: Da zdravstvuyet Meksika. 1932. Kino on Video, 1998.
• Smith, Stephanie J. “Trotsky in Mexico: Artists United, Artists Divided, 1930–1940”. The Power and Politics of Art in Postrevolutionary Mexico, University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Week 5, Literary Journalism and the Politics of the Avant-garde

• Mariátegui, José Carlos. “Literature on Trial.” Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. University of Texas Press, 1971.
• Vallejo, César. Selected Writings of César Vallejo. Wesleyan University Press, 2015. (Excerpts from “Art and Revolution,” “Moscow vs. Moscow,” “Reflections at the foot of the Kremlin,” and “Russia Facing the Second Five Year Plan.”)
• Clayton, Michelle. “Lyric Technique, Aesthetic Politics.” Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity. University of California Press, 2011. pp. 134-150.

Week 6, The Poetics of the Popular Front

• Galvão, Patrícia. Industrial Park : A Proletarian Novel. 1933. Translated by Elizabeth Jackson and K. David Jackson, University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
• Neruda, Pablo. Residence on Earth. 1925-1945. Translated by Donald Devenish Walsh, New Directions, 2004. (Excerpts.)
• —. “Song to Stalingrad, ‘Poem.’” Soviet Russia Today, translated by Nan Pendrell, vol. 11, no. 8, 1942, p. 15.
• Lee, Steven S. “Comintern Aesthetics: Space, Form, History.” Comintern Aesthetics, edited by Amelia M. Glaser and Steven S. Lee, University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.

Week 7, The Cuban Cultural Revolution

• Guevara, Ernesto Che. The Awakening of Latin America: A Classic Anthology of Che Guevara’s Writing on Latin America. Edited by María Del Carmen Ariet García, Ocean Press, 2011. (“Guerrila Warfare: A Method,” and “Message to the Tricontinental.”)
• Gonçalves, João Felipe. “Sputnik Premiers in Havana: A Historical Ethnography of the 1960 Soviet Exposition.” The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, edited by Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane Koenker, Indiana Univ. Press, 2013, pp. 84-117.
• Serra, Ana. “Introduction: The Culture that the Revolution Created.” The “New Man” in Cuba : Culture and Identity in the Revolution, University Press of Florida, 2007.

Week 8, The Moscow-Havana Connection

• Kalatozov, Mikhail. I am Cuba. 1964. Milestone Film & Video ; Distributed by New Yorker Video, 2007.
• Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás. Memories of Underdevelopment. 1968. The Criterion Collection, 2018.
• Rupprecht, Tobias. “Moscow Learns the Mambo: Latin America and Internationalism in Soviet Popular Culture.” Soviet Internationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War. Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 73-127.

Week 9, Cultural Intermediaries

• Pitol, Sergio. The Journey. Translated by George Henson, Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015. (Excerpts.)
• Guillén, Nicolás. The Daily Daily. University of California Press, 1989. (Excerpts.)
• García Márquez, Gabriel. De viaje por los países socialistas: 90 días en la “Cortina de hierro.” Ediciones Macondo, 1978. (Excerpts.)
• Loss, Jacqueline. “Cuban Intermediaries.” Dreaming in Russian: The Cuban Soviet Imaginary, University of Texas Press, 2013, pp. 78-123

Week 10, A Magical Farewell to Socialist Realism

• Sholokhov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich. Virgin Soil Upturned. 1932. Translated by Stephen Garry, Penguin Books, 1977. (Excerpts)
• Cofiño López, Manuel. La última mujer y el próximo combate. Casa de las Américas, 1971. (Excerpts)
• Carpentier, Alejo. “On the Marvelous Real in America.” 1949. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, edited by Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, Duke University Press, 1995.
• Clark, Katerina. “What Socialist Realism is and What Led to Its Adoption as the Official Method of Soviet Literature.” The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, The University of Chicago Press, 1985. pp. 27-45.

Week 11, Third Cinema and the Politics of Filmmaking

• Solanas, Fernando and Octavio Getino. “Towards a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World.” Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, edited by Scott MacKenzie, University of California Press, 2014.
• Solanas, Fernando E., and Octavio Getino. La hora de los hornos: notas y testimonios sobre el neocolonialismo, la violencia y la liberación. 1968. Página/12, 2000. (Part I)
• Wayne, Mike. “Dialectics of Third Cinema.” Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema. Pluto Press, 2001, pp. 108-156

Week 12, Soviet Latin American Studies and the Rise of Testimonio

• Dalton, Roque. Miguel Marmol. 1972. Curbstone Press, 1987. (Excerpts.)
• Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Verso, 1984. (Excerpts.)
• Beverley, John, and Marc Zimmerman. “Testimonial Narrative.” Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions. University of Texas Press, 1990.

Week 13, Looking Back: Nostalgia and Literary Memories of Bolshevism

• Poniatowska, Elena. Tinisima. 1991. Translated by Katherine Silver, Faber, 1996. (Excerpts.)
• Nadkarni, Maya and Olga Shevchenko. “The Politics of Nostalgia in the Aftermath of Socialism’s Collapse: A Case for Comparative Analysis,” Anthropology and Nostalgia, edited by Olivia Angé and David Berliner, Berghahn Books, 2014, pp. 61-95.