Rivers That Were: Latin American Ecopoetry

For over a century, poetry in Latin America has been tracing the connections between the human and the nonhuman. We will examine closely the ways in which such poetry registers environmental degradation and its disproportionate impacts along axes of race, gender, and class. How does such poetry unearth a history of colonialism and extractivism that continues to manifest socio-politically and economically in the Latin American landscape? What futures do these eco-poets imagine and advocate? In its encounter with the natural world, poetry makes us feel: how might it inspire us to act? Texts include works by Mistral, Neruda, Parra, Cardenal, Pacheco, Aridjis, Calderón, and Huenún. Taught in Spanish.