This course is a survey of Puerto Rican literature that examines how various writers negotiate empire, the Puerto Rican nation, identity, culture, and coloniality through a study of fiction. The selected course novels, The House on the Lagoon, The Taste of Sugar, and Velorio, are literary narratives situated in different historical contexts that speak to experiences of the Spanish and American empires in Puerto Rico, and their afterlives in the present. The course is centered around three novels and also includes short story, poetry, and short film and music as contemporary responses to modernity projects. Students will learn how writers from the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, Rosario Ferre, Marisel Vera, Xavier Aquino Navarro, Rene Marques, and Jose Luis Gonzalez etc., and contemporary artists like Bad Bunny and Chuwi take on questions of empire, (neo)colonialism, displacement, and migration in their respective genres. This ongoing dialogue about the American influence and dominance in Puerto Rico since 1898 has preoccupied many artists and writers alike, and it has motivated various fictive projects in different mediums. As the world’s oldest colony, how has Puerto Rico been impacted by empire in the past and present? How does Puerto Rico’s colonial status affect Puerto Ricans and their constructions of identity, culture, and the nation? How does the Puerto Rican diaspora shape the archipelago? These are some of the notions and questions leading the study of this semester. While this course is focused on Puerto Rican literature, students will understand how representations and criticisms of Puerto Rico in fiction can be useful in studying other Caribbean diasporic populations, nations, and modern colonies with histories related to Spanish and American empires through an exploration of diaspora theory and archipelagic relations.
- Enseignant: Keishla Rivera-López