Seminar in Modern Spanish-American Literature: Psychoanalysis for Cultural Critics

Since the publication of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, psychoanalytic theory has emerged as a key tool for analyzing culture. This seminar will examine how psychoanalysis has been a model for various forms of criticism - literary, artistic, architectural, filmic, sociological, anthropological - and how these tools have been applied to understand Latin American culture in the 20th century, with special emphasis on Mexico and Cuba. We will discuss how psychoanalytic theory has been used to read the work of architects (Luis Barragán), filmmakers (Luis Buñuel), artists (Remedios Varo), and writers (Octavio Paz).