Academics
Utopias and Disenchantments: Views from a Continent in Transition
FSS 192
Professor Lillian Manzor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Latin American Studies Program
Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 11:15-12:05 a.m.; Section D
Latin America in the 20th century has seen a number of utopic social projects that crystalized in the l960s. This course will focus on the Mexican Revolution (1910s), Cuban Revolution (1960s), and the short lived period of Allende's Unidad Popular in Chile (1970s), as well as the aftermath of these different projects (1990s-present). We will study how forces of change, in each particular case, were channeled into new configurations of the human condition—personal, national, and continental—in political, social, economic, cultural and erotic terms. We will also study the participation of the United States in these projects. In this interdisciplinary course, we will combine history, literature, film, music, art, and political thought to produce our own reconstruction of these three dazzling moments in order to understand their legacy—utopic impulse—in contemporary times.
Lillian Manzor (Ph.D., University of Southern California, 1988) is widely published in the field of Latin American and Latino/a cultures and theater and performance studies. In addition to scholarly articles in journals such as The Drama Review, Ollantay Theater Magazine, and Tablas, she co-edited the first book on Latina performance artists (Latinas on Stage, 2000). She has also directed the video-editing of over 30 theater productions in Cuba and the United States for the digital archive (scholar.library.miami.edu/archivoteatral).
