Human Rights and Cultural Representations

The cultural and human responses to the violence of genocide politics in the Holocaust will serve as an excellent start point to analyze political repression in Latin America (focus on Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile). Central to the theoretical and critical corpus of the course, is the multidisciplinary work of scholars (e.g. Soshana Feldman, Cathy Caruth, Dominick La Capra, Astrid Erll, Jean Amery, Giorgio Agamben). This course discusses not only the impact of trauma, the legacy of memory and the role of the national states during dictatorships in these countries, but also how to make these experiences productive to reconstruct selves and societies. The corpus includes literature, testimonies, documentary and feature film, art, oral history, journalism, poem and popular music by such authors as French-Jewish Claude Lanzmann, Chilean film director Patricio Guzmán, Guatemalan writer Rigoberta Menchú, Uruguayan poets Mario Benedetti and Mauricio Rosencof and songs by Argentine composers and interpreters Luis Alberto Spinetta and Charly García.

The University of Belgrano utilizes a 45-minute contact hour whereas the United States higher education system utilizes a 50-minute contact hour. All University of Belgrano courses represent the 45 contact hour amount and an estimated US credit calculation based on the contact hours. Each University of Belgrano transcript will include the number of hours per week and the weeks in the semester, so US universities may calculate the appropriate number of US credits for students.