This module looks at minority cultures and identity politics within Spanish and Latin American societies and examines how experience that falls outside the mainstream has been represented in recent film, documentary, and biography. The module also examines how films from Spain and Latin America have articulated critique of pressing political concerns, such as hazards in the environment and the workplace. The module asks how the presence of minority voices in Hispanic societies is shaping our understanding of cultures in the Spanish speaking world. What is normal, and for whom?

How does looking from an outsider’s perspective help us to understand the bigger picture? How can our reading of fiction, film, and other texts expand our knowledge of diversity within the national cultures of Spain and Latin American countries?

The syllabus texts include comics, fiction films, documentaries and autobiography. Texts are drawn from the film and written cultures of Spain, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru and cluster around themes including:

• Disability
• Human rights and social justice
• Labour relations
• Indigeneity
• Domestic politics
• LGBT identities
• Transnational childhood
• Ethnic and religious minority experience 

• Discuss knowledgeably aspects of minority identity and political activism in Latin America and Spain as these are represented in film and writing.
• Show ability to read and discuss narrative, filmic and artistic texts by presenting arguments in a structured and coherent manner.
• Offer close textual readings of the texts studied in class and establish relevant historical, cultural, and social connections.
• Understand how questions of diversity and equality are framed in the texts studied and how these questions have been impacted by individual and socio-political circumstances.
• Clearly present an overview of one of the modules themes through the form of a curated visual exposition of an artist’s work or through an informative report supported by archive materials identified and verified by the student 

Teaching is provided through lecture and seminar format: lectures will usually be weekly and are supplemented by weekly or fortnightly seminars in which students are divided into smaller groups. Key materials for assigned reading and preparation will also be made available through the virtual learning environment. Reading and viewing of essential core texts is compulsory, as is participation in the cycle of seminar presentation. In addition to essays and the semester 1 Report/Project, students submit a précis and bullet points of seminar presentation for upload to learning central. There will be feedback on the content of this seminar work and this is informal and not factored into the overall grade achieved. The written essay is assessed.

There are two components of the module:

 Semester 1:  A Living on the Hyphen: Biographies Across Borders

                     B Work, Dignity and the Environment

Whilst studying this module, students will practice and develop a number of skills. Not all of these will be assessed formally and included as learning outcomes. Students will be challenged to understand and report on texts which range from graphic novels to complex documentaries. Creative thinking which enables a student to connect texts and establish patterns will be encouraged.

Intellectual Skills

Align developments in rights for groups rendered marginal with social and political developments in Spain and in Latin American nations; make a critical engagement with Spanish and Latin American film and writing alongside awareness of disciplines such as disability studies, feminist studies, LGBT studies and ethnography; acquire greater cognisance of the context in which minority and diversity related texts have been produced and interpreted; appreciate the contingency and constructedness of aspects of identity; understand the differences between experiences of non-normative groups in Spanish and non-Spanish speaking countries; appreciate the value of human variety and understand why the rights of minority cultures are hard won; acquire greater understanding of labour politics; widen knowledge of exile, emigration, and transnational identities.

 Transferable Skills

 Synthesis of materials in Spanish and oral presentation of argument; application of critical discernment to texts read as a base for individual knowledge and intellectual development; independent study and research skills; facility in academic writing; ability to sustain and defend with factual knowledge a point of view about a text or an argument; ability to express informed opinion; use of archive materials; development of curatorial skills; peer to peer communication.  

Coursework (100%) : Essay  of 2,500 words.  Self-generated titles relating to the core texts and reading.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:

Students achieving an overall pass mark will not be required to re-sit any failed components. Students failing the module overall will have the opportunity to re-sit the module during the university re-sit examination period in August. The re-assessment takes the form of a 2 hour written exam (maximum mark: 40%).

The module will be structured around texts which allow students to approach the representation and production of a number of minority groups: the syllabus includes several texts which address the experience of children as transnational adoptees and as ethnic minority adults in their adoptive countries; it includes texts which represent disability in Spain; other texts address the experiences of transgender and transvestite people; films and texts are included which portray religious and ethnic minorities in Spain. Generally the syllabus uses a core text and an associated literature. Students will also be encouraged to connect texts around themes such as childhood, machismo, prejudice, and transnationality.

COMPONENT A: LIVING ON THE HYPHEN: BIOGRAPHIES ACROSS BORDERS

In this component of the module we look at the biographies of three figures whose lives were lived across international frontiers:

• Ana Mendieta (Cuba-USA)
• Elián González (Cuba-USA)
• Asha Miró (India-Spain)

Ana Mendieta was an artist born in Cuba, where she also lived her childhood. She grew up in the USA where she was sent as one of the 14 000 Pedro Pan children, all of them evacuated from Cuba by their parents following the Revolution in 1959:

Elián González’s rescue off the coast of Florida became a worldwide media sensation in 2000. His mother had died at sea when their rickety boat capsized; his father was still in Cuba. Who should take charge of the four year old boy: his Miami relatives, or his remaining family in Cuba? A miraculous rescue at sea led to consternation in international relations between Cuba and the US and provoked difficult legal questions around custody, migration, and children’s autonomy/dependence. Key texts on Mendieta and Elián González are:

Christine Redfern Who is Ana Mendieta? (2011)

Jane Blocker Where is Ana Mendieta? (1999)

Julia Sweig Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (2009)

Victor Andres Triay Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children’s Program (1999)

Asha Miró was adopted from India as a young child by Spanish parents who brought her up to be a model Catalan citizen in Barcelona. Her writing explores the motivation for and conclusions to be drawn from the series of roots journeys she undertakes to her biological homeland. Where does her identity come from? Is she Spanish, Catalan, Indian, or all three? Key texts for this strand are Miró’s two volumes of autobiography and Barbara Yngvesson’s Belonging in and Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption (2010).

COMPONENT B: WORK, DIGNITY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

In this component of the module we will look at three films, two from Mexico, and one from Spain.

The two films from Mexico are documentaries—Maquilápolis: City of Factories (2006), and En el hoyo (In the Pit, 2006). Maquilápolis uncovers the ecological disaster unfolding in Tijuana, its effects on women workers in the assembly plants that form the backbone of the border city’s economy, and the grassroots movement attempting to hold companies to account for the damage to the environment and to human health.

En el hoyo gives us the perspective of the male labourers working to build the second deck of Mexico City’s ring road and shows us a megalopolis deeply divided by disparities of wealth and opportunity.

The feature film from Spain, Punta del iceberg (Tip of the Iceberg, 2016) examines a different kind of workplace hazard as a female executive is charged with discovering why there has been a spate of stress-related suicides in her company. Read alongside each other, the three films delineate the dangers of the workplace, from toxic fumes to toxic bosses, and show that there is a continuum of hazardousness running across the boundaries between the national contexts of developing and post-industrial economies.

Key supporting texts for this component are:

Leslie Salzinger Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories (2003)

Iñaki Piñuel Neomanagement: Jefes tóxicos y sus víctimas (2006)

Ewa Mazierska Work in Cinema: Labor and the Human Condition ((2013) 

Leslie Salzinger Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories (2003)

Iñaki Piñuel Neomanagement: Jefes tóxicos y sus víctimas (2006)

Ewa Mazierska Work in Cinema: Labor and the Human Condition ((2013)

Ann Oakley Housewife (1976)

Ian Lumsden Machos Maricones and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality (1996)

Barefoot in the Kitchen/Con la pata quebrada (dir. Diego Galán, 2013)

Álvaro Rodríguez Díaz España en su cine: aprendiendo sociología con películas españolas (2015)

Martin Norden The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (1996)

Kimberley Theidon Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru (2014)

Ryan Prout Piensa diferente: Neurovdiversity in Visual Cultures of Spain and Latin America (2017)

Stuart Murray Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative Fascination (2008)

Olga María Alegre de la Rosa La discapacidad en el cine (2003)

Chanan, Michael, Cuban Cinema (2004)

Fraser, Benjamin, Disability Studies and Spanish Culture: Films, Novels, the Comic, and the Public Exhibition (2013)

Foster, David William, Mexico City in Contemporary Mexican Cinema (2002)

Kuhn, Annette, Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (1994)

Martínez Martín, María Ángeles, Todo sobre el autismo (2013)

Mendiola García, Sandra Street Democracy: Vendors, Violence, and Public Space in Late Twentieth-century Mexico (2017)

Picone, Mary Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood (1999)

Quiroga, José, Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America (2000)

Rousseau, Stephanie, Indigenous Women’s Movements in Latin America: Gender and Ethnicity in Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia (2017)

Russo, Vito, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1987)

Yngvesson, Barbara, Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption (2010)

Indicative secondary literature bibliography

Chanan, Michael, Cuban Cinema (2004)

Fraser, Benjamin, Disability Studies and Spanish Culture: Films, Novels, the Comic, and the Public Exhibition (2013)

Foster, David William, Mexico City in Contemporary Mexican Cinema (2002)

Kuhn, Annette, Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (1994)

Martínez Martín, María Ángeles, Todo sobre el autismo (2013)

Mendiola García, Sandra Street Democracy: Vendors, Violence, and Public Space in Late Twentieth-century Mexico (2017)

Picone, Mary Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood (1999)

Quiroga, José, Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America (2000)

Rousseau, Stephanie, Indigenous Women’s Movements in Latin America: Gender and Ethnicity in Peru, Mexico, and Bolivia (2017)

Russo, Vito, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1987)

Yngvesson, Barbara, Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption (2010) 

Topic specific readings and viewings for the seminars and coursework essays, with guiding questions and detailed instructions, will be provided on Learning Central.