ANTH 148a Media in Latin America
Professor Elizabeth Ferry
226 Brown Hall
Spring 2015
T-F 11:00-12:20
Location TBA
Office hours Tuesday 1-2:30; Th 11-12
This upper level course will look at the complex and fascinating region of Latin America from the perspective of media production, circulation and consumption. We will begin with a few foundational texts on the region and on the study of media in anthropology and cultural studies, and will then take a thematic/regional approach focusing on such topics as muralism in postrevolutionary Mexico, indigenous video in the Amazon, Eva Perón as media icon, and online video streaming in Colombia’s propaganda war.
Learning goals :
Students will gain exposure to the thriving field of anthropology of media by focusing on a single (but extremely diverse and complex) region of the world
Students will learn about Latin America through the relatively “focused lens” of media studies. The course will thus build on broader courses on the region in the anthropology department and elsewhere.
Students will develop their critical thinking and writing skills through focused in-class discussions, small group work, participation in a course blog, and a final project. The final project can be a written paper or a product in another medium, such as film, podcast, photographic essay, etc. Students can also experiment with creating multimedia final projects.
Disabilities: If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
Academic Integrity: You are expected to be familiar with, and to follow, the University’s policies on academic integrity. Please consult Brandeis University Rights and Responsibilities for all policies and procedures. All policies related to academic integrity apply to in-class and take home projects, assignments, exams, and quizzes. Students may only collaborate on assignments with permission from the instructor. Allegations of alleged academic dishonesty will be forwarded to the Director of Academic Integrity. Sanctions for academic dishonesty can include failing grades and/or suspension from the university.
Classroom use of electronics: You may use a reader or laptop in class, on condition that you refrain from using the Internet or checking email during class (unless we are going online as part of the class). Please turn off your phone during class.
Attendance and Participation:
If you are unable to attend class, please send me an email before class. In exceptional circumstances (sickness, family emergency, job interview, athletic competition with a letter from the athletics department) you will be excused from that class. Otherwise absences will be factored in to your participation grade. For class, you must have done all readings, be prepared to discuss them, and bring a hard copy or electronic version.
Course Requirements:
Undergraduate students:
Attendance and participation = 20%
2-3 page reflection paper on a film, newspapers or other media product from Latin America – version 1 at beginning of the course, version 2 towards end of course: 10% each = 20 %
Class facilitation = 10%
2-3 page final paper or project proposal = 10%
In class presentation on final project = 10%
10-12 page paper or other final project (video, mashup, web gallery, podcast) to be determined in consultation with the instructor 30%
Graduate students:
Attendance and participation = 20 %
Class facilitation = 10%
Final paper proposal = 2-3 pages 10%
Final paper 25-30 pages = 60 %
Course Readings :
Introduction
We will begin the class with some background readings in both media studies (with an emphasis on the anthropology of media) and Latin America.
Week One
1/13 – Introduction: What are media? What is Latin America?
Outline and expectations for the course
1/16 -
Karl Marx, “Capital,” CHAPTER 1, SECTIONS 1 AND 4; CHAPTER 4, CHAPTER 7
Teodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer “The Culture Industry”
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Week Two
1/20 –
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle [read to page 21 - 1-72 – stop at “The Proletariat as Subject and Representation”]
Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations”
1/23 –
Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message”
Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding”
Week Three
1/27-
James Faris, “The Gaze of Western Humanism”
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
1/30 –
Arjun Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology”
Purnima Mankekar, "Media and Mobility in a Transnational World"
Jeff Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social media, public space, and emerging logics of aggregation”
Week Four
2/3
Nathan Wachtel The Vision of the Vanquished: the Conquest in Peru through Indian Eyes [selections]
Smithsonian Institution Online Exhibition “Creativity and Resistance: Maroon Cultures in the Americas”
2/10 - Roberto Fernández Retamar “Caliban”
José Martí, “Our America,”
Octavio Paz, “The Sons of La Malinche,”
Week Five
2/13
Peter Kornfeld The Pinochet File [selections]
Humberto Arenal, “Fish a la Grande Jardiniere”
2/16
Gloria Anzaldua “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
Declaration of Iximché
Juana Camacho, “People, Place, and Plants in the Pacific Coast of Colombia”
FEBRUARY 16-20 WINTER BREAK
Week Six (student presentation/facilitations will be begin here)
Graphic Arts in the Mexican Revolution
2/24
How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals, Museums, and the Mexican State, Mary Coffey
Reflection paper version 1 due
2/27
“Posada and the'popular': Commodities and social constructs in Mexico before the Revolution,” Thomas Gretton
“The Revolution and Its Specters: Staging the Popular in the Mexican Revolution” Hector Legras
Week Seven
Icons – Che, Evita and Selena
3/3
“Little Eva,” Alma Guillermoprieto
“Performing Evita,” Javier Auyero
“Virtual Resurrections: Che Guevara’s Image as Place of Hope” Maria Carolina Cambre
“Copyrighting Che. Art and Authorship under Cuban Late Socialism.” Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
3/6
“Commemoration as Crossover: ‘Remembering’ Selena” Mary Beltrán
Film, Selena Remembered*
Week Eight
Telenovelas, Narco-dramas and “the Real World”
3/10
Drugs, Thugs, and Divas: Telenovelas and Narco-Dramas in Latin America, Hugo Benavides
3/13
“The Narcomedia: A Reader,” Paul Eiss
Weeks Nine and Ten
Media and the State
3/17 “Mediating Infanticide: Theorizing Relations between Narrative and Violence,” Charles Briggs
“If the Miners had been Mexican: The Chilean Mine Rescue as Mexican ‘Politics Machine.’”
Elizabeth Ferry
“Art and Labor in the Framing of Guatemala’s Dead,” Gabriela Torres
3/20
Film TBA
3/23 – 3/27
Violentology, Stephen Ferry
Samet, Robert “The Photographer's Body: Populism, Polarization, and the Uses of Victimhood in Venezuela.”
3/30
Ieva Jusionyte. On and Off the Record: The Production of Legitimacy in an Argentine Border Town.
Spring Break – April 3-10
Week Eleven: Consumers as Producers
4/ 14 -
Terence Turner, “The Social Dynamics of Video Media in an Indigenous Society: The Cultural Meaning and the Personal Politics of Video–making in Kayapo Communities,”
Lynn Stephen “Community and Indigenous Radio in Oaxaca,”
Jeff D. Himpele, “Arrival Scenes: Complicity and Media Ethnography in the Bolivian Public Sphere”
Final project proposal due
4/17 -
Alex Fattal, “Hostile Remixes on YouTube, A New Constraint on Pro-FARC Counterpublics”
Anthony D’Andrea, “2013 Protests in Brazil: The Kite and the Byte in New Forms of Popular Mobilization”
Week Twelve: The Making of Latin America/Latinos
4/21
- Louis Pérez, Cuba in the American Imagination
Reflection paper version 2 due
4/24 – Arlene Davila, Latinos, Inc.
Final class
4/27 – 5-7 minute presentations
May 7 final project due.
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