Introductory description

How has water been understood by humans in Latin America? How has it been represented across different cultural contexts?

Latin America contains one-fifth of the world’s water resources, including some of the earth’s largest lakes and rivers. As the global climate emergency and increasing levels of pollution threaten their (and our) futures, this course looks predominantly to the past to consider the nature of human entanglements with water in Latin America. We will study examples of how indigenous societies interact with and manage water, as well as how water systems and the creatures that inhabit them have been represented in European and Latin American sources. Students will explore representations of some of the region’s most emblematic aquatic locales across three thematic blocks: Lakes, Drainage and Dispossession in Mexico (Lake Texcoco and Lake Tláhuac-Xico, Mexico), The Cauca Valley, Fluvial Travel and National Natures (Colombia), and Patagonia, Pinnipeds, and Living Water (Cape Horn and the Strait of Magellan, Argentina/Chile). This course will further familiarise students with scholarship on water, aquatic life and the ‘blue humanities’ in Latin America. We will work across a variety of primary sources including maps, an art installation, film, and literature, with students being encouraged to think laterally across disciplinary, temporal, and national boundaries in the Latin American context. This module will be of interest to any students who would like to learn more about environmental history, ecology, Latin American literature and visual culture, map history, and indigenous studies.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week One: Theories and Concepts

Essential Reading:
John R. Gillis, ‘Coasts of the Ancient Mariner’, in The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 40-67.
Veronica Strang, ‘Imaginary Water’, in Water: Nature and Culture (London: Reaktion, 2015), 51-66.
Lisa Blackmore and Liliana Gómez, ‘Beyond the Blue: Notes on the Liquid Turn’, in Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art, edited by Lisa Blackmore and Liliana Gómez (New York and London: Routledge, 2020), 1-9.

Week Two: Aquatic Latin America on the Map

Primary Sources:
Abraham Ortelius, Americae sive novi orbis, nova descriptio, in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp: 1570), Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3200m.gct00126/?sp=14
Joan Blaeu, Americae Nova Tabula in Atlas Maior, vol. 11, America, quae est Geographiae Blavianae (Amsterdam: 1662), Bibloteca Digital Hispánica, http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000001867

Weeks Three and Four: Lakes, Drainage and Dispossession in Mexico

Week Three: The City on the Lake: The Conquest of Mexico and the Mapping of Tenochtitlan

Primary Sources:
Codex Mendoza, fol. 2.r, c.1541, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/68210492-1fd1-499e-acee-188fa1226ca1
Nuremburg Map of Tenochtitlan, Nuremberg, 1524, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/cartography/map-tenochtitlan-1524
Hernán Cortés, ‘Segunda Carta al Emperador Carlos V’, 30th October 1520, available at https://www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/134.pdf (Spanish) and https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1520cortes.asp (English)

Week Four: The Return of the Lake

Primary Sources:
María Thereza Alves, ‘El retorno de un lago’, 2014, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico, https://muac.unam.mx/exposicion/el-retorno-de-un-lago (exhibition catalogue in Spanish and English: https://muac.unam.mx/assets/docs/folio_int_maria_thereza_alves.pdf)
María Thereza Alves, ‘The Return of a Lake’, in Natura: Environmental Aesthetics After Landscape, edited by Jens Andermann, Lisa Blackmore, and Dayron Carrillo Morell (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2018), 51-60.

Weeks Five and Seven: The Cauca Valley, Fluvial Travel and National Natures

Primary Source:
Jorge Isaacs, María (Colombia, 1867), https://biblioteca.org.ar/libros/70959.pdf (Spanish), https://archive.org/details/mariaasouthamer00isaagoog/mode/2up?view=theater (English).

Week Six: Reading Week

Weeks Eight, Nine and Ten: Patagonia, Pinnipeds, and Living Water

Week Eight: The Strait of Magellan

Primary Sources:
Alonso de Ovalle, Tabula Geographica Regni Chile, 1646, JCB Map Collection, John Carter Brown Library, https://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/JCBMAPS~1~1~1314~115900932:Tabula-Geographica-Regni-Chile
Alonso de Ercilla, La Araucana (1569-89), Part 1 lines 1-72, https://biblioteca.org.ar/libros/89803.pdf (Spanish), https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/book/28532 (English)

Week Nine: Francisco Coloane and Fuegian Narratives of Water:

Primary Sources:
Francisco Coloane, ‘Cabo de Hornos’, in Cabo de Hornos (Santiago: Editorial Orbe, 1973): 11-25, https://www.casadellibro.com/ebook-cabo-de-hornos-ebook/9789561228405/2776675 (Spanish ebook), https://www.amazon.com/Cape-Horn-Other-Stories-Discoveries/dp/0935480501 (English).
Francisco Coloane, ‘Tierra de olvido’, in Tierra del Fuego (Santiago: Zig-Zag, 1968): 157-169, https://www.casadellibro.com/ebook-tierra-del-fuego-ebook/9789561228566/2981759 (Spanish ebook), https://www.amazon.com/Tierra-del-Fuego-Francisco-Coloane/dp/193337263X (English).
Cristina Calderón, Úrsula Calderón, and Cristina Zárraga, Hai kur mamashu chis: I Want to Tell You a Story, translated by Jacqueline Windh (Ukika: Ediciones Pix, 2013), https://www.amazon.com/Hai-kur-mamashu-chis-story/dp/1492180599

Week Ten: El botón de nácar

Primary Source:
Patricio Guzmán, El botón de nácar (Santiago: Atacama Productions, 2015)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Critique, compare and contrast representations of water across a range of Latin American sources
• Understand the fundamentals of blue and environmental humanities scholarship
• Write about Latin American literature from an environmental and blue humanities perspective
• Construct clear arguments based on close reading of the texts

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Latin American culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.