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Warwick International Intensive Study Programme (WIISP)

Nature and Modernity in Latin America


Nature and Modernity in Latin America

**This module is not available in 2024/25**

The modern world as we know it would not exist without Latin American extractive economies, yet we still think of it as a product of the "west". What does modernity look like from Latin America? And what imaginative visions have emerged from this region that can contribute to rethinking our relationship with nature in the face of climate breakdown? This module explores these questions.

Climate breakdown and the prospect of a post-nature world where human beings have irreversibly transformed their environment are correlated to the cultural and economic model of western modernity. So, while we think of progress, development and growth as incremental global processes that continue to expand to other regions and continents, we are called to question their significance: is modernity as we know it reconcilable with the future of the earth?

Latin America stands in a unique place in relation to this question: as a region colonised by European powers, its natural resources were exploited to produce the wealth that made Europe the centre of the modern world. After gaining independence, its own modernity has continued to be hindered by the history of exploitation of its nature and people. What does it mean to be modern in Latin America, where development, democracy and social justice are undermined by continued exploitation in the name of global modernity? What can we learn about modernity and its contradictions from Latin America? And how have Latin Americans made sense of and responded to the notion that modernity is based on the domination of nature in the name of progress? This module explores these questions in relation to four main themes:

  1. Representations of new colonialism and extractivism in contemporary Latin American film
  2. Visual reconstructions of gender and race in relation to Latin American nature and its peoples
  3. Recent recuperations of indigenous understandings of nature-human relations especially through storytelling in the Amazon
  4. Current Latin American decolonial alternatives to the idea of modernity as endless development

Students will be encouraged to use a variety of primary materials: film, visual arts and photography, short story and the essay of ideas. Countries include Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba and Brazil.

The module will be most suitable to students with an interest in one or more of the following areas: the literature and culture of the Hispanic world, twentieth-century and contemporary Latin America, ecology, post-colonialism and neo-colonialism, environmental history, environmental movements and ideas, global modernity, the global south, the politics of nature. All primary texts are also available in English.


Who is this module open to?

A good reading knowledge of Spanish is preferable but not required: all primary materials are also available in English; a number of recommended secondary materials will be in Spanish.

Credit bearing:

Open to all to all current intermediate level (second year) students at Warwick.

Open to students from partner institutions

  • HP321-15 - Finalist, taken in intermediate year for 15 CATS credit to final year

Key dates

This module is not available in 2024/25.

Costs

No costs have been identified for this module.

What's special about our modules?

This programme will challenge your thinking, develop your confidence and open up a world of new opportunities. You’ll consider new ideas, apply theory to real world issues working in teams and individually, and develop new networks, connections and friendships. This will provide you strong analytical and research methods skills which also enhance your employability profile for a globalised world of work, derived from a transformative blend of online learning and intercultural engagement.

Access to Intercultural Training will provide further enhancement of your skills.

The intensive nature of our programme lets you focus purely on your chosen modules.

You should expect around two weeks of daily face-to-face sessions (on location) and possibly one week of preparatory online activities. The aim is to work in groups consisting of incoming students (from partner institutions) and Warwick students during the module. Assessments will consist of a mix of group and individual activities.

There are no additional programme fees for Warwick students to take our modules.

Where will you be taught?

Our intensive modules are taught in various ways: mostly face-to-face (combing some online learning and face-to-face teaching). Modules will be based at Warwick central campus, or our overseas residentials will be based at selected European locations relevant to module content. Our modules are designed to be taught in an intensive way, combining physical teaching, and online activities.

All participants will be expected to attend all lectures and group work activities in real time; this might include some online activities in the prep week (where listed in Key dates). As modules are intensive there is not expected to be free time during the teaching period for you to undertake other activities; there will be limited time available during the teaching period to explore the surrounding area.

Students are responsible for checking their own visa requirements and all associated applications and costs.

For overseas modules students are responsible for identifying and booking their own accommodation.


Dr Michela Coletta

Dr Michela Coletta is Assistant Professor in Hispanic Studies. Michela specialises in intellectual and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on cultural modernity. Her monograph Decadent Modernity: Civilisation and Latinidad in Spanish America 1880-1920 was published by LUP in 2018.

Her research bridges the fields of modernity studies, environmental humanities and decolonial studies, approaching the history and politics of the environment in Latin America from the perspective of cultural and intellectual history.

Among other works, she has co-edited the volume Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America (ILAS Book Series, 2016). The book can be downloaded for free here. She is currently working on South American philosophies of Buen Vivir and on the relationship between epistemicide and ecocide.

She has recently been invited to contribute to the Advanced Study Programme in Integral Ecology (Diplomatura Superior en Ecología Integral) organised by the Red Universitaria para el Cuidado de la Casa Común, a network of 37 Latin American universities.


Read a student blog

A student blog about the impact this module had on her, outlining how it inspired her to travel to the Amazon and her experiences whilst there.

BlogLink opens in a new window

Module aims

  • Deep understanding of the relationship between ideas of nature and ideas of the modern in postcolonial Latin America drawn from different areas of the discipline
  • An ability to analyse complex literary texts and other cultural output, making use of scholarship
  • An ability to construct a cogent and original argument firmly anchored in the analysis of primary material

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.

PRIMARY TEXTS

Films [available on Moodle]
  • También la lluvia (Even the rain, Icíar Bollaín, 2010)
  • The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, 2014)
Visual arts [available on Moodle/online]

Artists include:

  • Ana Mendieta (Cuba, 1948-1985)
  • Alvaro Enciso (Colombia, 1963- )
  • Photographer Sebastião Salgado (Brazil, 1944- )
Short stories [available on Moodle]
  • Juan Carlos Galeano, Cuentos amazónicos, 2014 (Folktales of the Amazon)

Essays of ideas [available on Moodle]

Authors include:

  • Enrique Dussel (Argentina, 1934- )
  • Walter Mignolo (Argentina, 1941- )

SESSION OUTLINE

Please note: All lectures will be uploaded on Moodle on the dates listed below. Each seminar lasts one and a half hours and will be devoted entirely to class discussion and group activities. 

Week commencing 27 May (Preparatory week)
Session 1:

There are no seminars this week. An introductory lecture (Lecture 1) will be uploaded on Moodle. Students should spend week 1 working on the materials made available by the tutor on Moodle in preparation for the taught sessions that will take place during the two teaching weeks.

    Week commencing 3 June (Teaching week one)
    Session 2:

    • Lecture 2: “New colonialism and extractivism”

    • Seminar 1: How to use “primary texts”

    Session 3:

    • Seminar 2 (on Lecture 2): Discussion question: What colonial imaginaries shape the modern worldview?

      • Analysis of También la lluvia (Even the rain), (Icíar Bollaín, 2010)

    Session 4:

    • Seminar 3 (on Lecture 2): Discussion question: In what ways are categories such as ‘post-colonial’, ‘neo-colonial’ or ‘coloniality’ helpful in analysing the legacies of colonialism?

      • Preparatory reading: Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (Routledge, 2005), chapters 1 and 2

    • Lecture 3: “Ecologies of race, gender and migration”

    Session 5:
    • Seminar 4 (on Lecture 3): Discussion question: In what ways can we imagine the relationship between ‘nature’ and the ‘body’?
    Session 6:
    • Seminar 5 (on Lecture 3): Discussion question: In what ways can we reflect upon the notion of landscape as border?
    Week commencing 10 June (Teaching week two)
    Session 7:

    • Lecture 4: “Nature and indigeneity in the Amazon”

    • Seminar 6: Essay-writing

    Session 8:
    • Seminar 7 (on Lecture 4): Discussion question: How is our identity as modern subjects affected if we think through relationality?
      • Preparatory reading: Juan Carlos Galeano, selected stories (provided by tutor); J. Adamson and J.C. Galeano, with illustrations by Solmi Angarita, ‘Why Bears, Yakumama (Mother of All Water Beings), and Other Transformational Beings Are (Still) Good to Think’, in S. Monani and J. Adamson (eds), Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (Routledge, 2017), pp. 223-240.
    Session 9:
    • Lecture 5: “Alternative (to) modernity?” (uploaded on Moodle)
    • Seminar 8 (on Lecture 4): Discussion question: In what ways does the inclusion of the more-than-human affect the modern discourse?
    Session 10:
    • Seminar 9 (on Lecture 5): Discussion question: Does modernity colonise knowledge?
      • Preparatory reading: W. Mignolo, ‘DELINKING: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality’, Cultural Studies 21:2 (2007), 449-514
    Session 11:
    • Seminar 10: Discussion question: Is modernity violent?
      • Preparatory reading: E. Dussel, ‘Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures)’, boundary 2, 20:3, The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America (Autumn 1993), pp. 65-76

    Learning outcomes

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

    • Engage critically with literary and visual texts (both individually and in a group) and be able to present in written form an essay that examines the context, content, and significance of cultural representations [cognitive/key skills]
    • Engage critically with secondary literature in English and Spanish, and demonstrate knowledge of the scholarly debates on the ideas and authors studied [cognitive/key skills]
    • Demonstrate knowledge of the scholarly debates on the ideas and authors studied [key skills]
    • Indications of independent research and of engagement with secondary literature are taken into account in the award of marks for formative and summative assessment

    Indicative reading list

    General:
    • Acton, Mary, Learning to Look at Paintings (London: Routledge, 1997)
    • Alonso, C., The Burden of Modernity: The Rhetoric of Cultural Discourse in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
    • Balfour, Sebastian, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898-1923 (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1997)
    • Bayly, C.A., Birth of the Modern World 1780−1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Maiden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)
    • Carey, M., ‘Latin American environmental history: current trends, interdisciplinary insights, and future directions’, Environmental History, 14 (2): 221− 52 (2009)
    • Chakrabarty, D., ‘The climate of history: four theses’, Critical Inquiry, 35: 197− 222 (2009)
    • Devés Valdés, E., El pensamiento latinoamericano en el siglo XX: entre la modernización y la identidad. Del Ariel de Rodó a la CEPAL (1900-1950) (Buenos Aires-Santiago de Chile: Editorial Biblos-Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros de Arana, 2000)
    • Franco, Jean, An Introduction to Spanish American Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1969)
    • Larraín, Jorge, Identity and Modernity in Latin America (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000)
    • Martin, Gerald, Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1989)
    • Miller, Nicola, In the Shadow of the State. Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Spanish America (London: Verso, 1999)
    • Miller, Nicola, Reinventing Modernity in Latin America. Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900-1930 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
    • Miller, Shawn, An Environmental History of Latin America (CUP, 2007)
    • Skidmore, Thomas and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America (Oxford Paperback, 2001)
    • Swanson, Philip, The Companion to Latin American Studies (London: Hodder Education, 2003)
    • Williamson, Edwin, Penguin History of Latin America (London: Penguin, 2009)
    Colonialism and extractivism:
    • Acosta, Alberto, La maldición de la abundancia (Quito: Abya-Yala, 2009) [TUTOR]
    • Denevan, William, ‘The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1491’, Annals of the Association of American Geography 82 (Sept. 1992)
    • Greenblatt, Stephen, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford University Press, 1991)
    • Escobar, Arturo, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (DUP, 2008) [LIBRARY E-BOOK]
    • Munck, R., Rethinking Latin America: Development, Hegemony and Social Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) [TUTOR]
    • O’Toole, G. (2014) Environmental Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, Introduction (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2014)
    Latin American visual arts:
    Ecology and ecocritical literature (Juan Carlos Galeano):
    • Adamson, Joni and Salma Monani, Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (Routledge, 2016) [LIBRARY - TUTOR]
    • Anderson, Mark and Zelia Bora (eds.), Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America: Ecocritical Perspectives on Art, Film, and Literature (Lexington Books, 2016)
    • Barbas Rhoden, Laura, Ecological Imaginations in Latin American Fiction (UP of Florida, 2011)
    • Clarck, Timothy, Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept (Bloomsbury, 2015) [LIBRARY - ONLINE READ]
    • Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang, 1983)
    • Crosby, A.W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, 1972)
    • DeVries, S.M., A History of Ecology and Environmentalism in Spanish American Literature (Bucknell University Press, 2013).
      Galeano, Juan Carlos, Cuentos amazónicos (Editorial Paraíso Perdido, 2007 / Tierra Nueva, 2014) [TUTOR]
    • Yakumama (and other Mythical Beings), trans. J. Kimbrell and R. Morgan (Tierra Nueva, 2014) [LIBRARY]
    • Marcone, Jorge, ‘Jungle Fever: The Ecology of Disillusion in Spanish American Literature’, Encuentros, November 2007, N. 58, Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center [Available at: http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=1774474Link opens in a new window] [ONLINE]
    • Suárez Araúz, Nicomedes (ed.), Literary Amazonia: Modern Writing by Amazonian Authors (University Press of Florida, 2004)
    • Rivera-Barnes, Beatriz and Jerry Hoeg, Reading and Writing the Latin American Landscape (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009) [TUTOR - PDF]
    • Slovic, Scott et al. (eds.), Ecocriticism of the Global South (Lexington Books, 2015) [LIBRARY - EBOOK LOAN]
    • Tally, Robert and Christine Battista (eds.), Ecocriticism and geocriticism: overlapping territories in environmental and spatial literary studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) [LIBRARY]
    • Worster, Donald, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1993)
    • Wylie, L., Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks: Rewriting the Tropics in the novela de la selva (Liverpool University Press, 2009)
    • ‘Introduction’, Amazonian Literatures, ed. L. Wylie, Hispanic Issues On Line 16 (Fall 2014): 1–16. [https://cla.umn.edu/hispanic-issues/onlineLink opens in a new window]
    • Wylie, Lesley, ‘The Poetics of Plants in Latin American Literature.’ Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America, edited by Malayna Raftopoulos and Michela Coletta (London: ILAS, 2016) [LIBRARY - TUTOR]
    Modernity after nature in the essay of ideas:
    • Aparicio, J.R. and M. Blaser, ‘The “lettered city” and the insurrection of subjugated knowledges in Latin America’, Anthropological Quarterly, 81(1): 59− 94 (2008)
    • Coletta, Michela and Malayna Raftopoulos (eds.) Provincialising Nature: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Politics of the Environment in Latin America (London: ILAS, 2016) [LIBRARY - TUTOR]
    • Boaventura de Sousa Santos (ed.), Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life (Lexington Books: 2007)
    • Descola, P., Beyond Nature and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
    • Dussel, E., ‘Europe, modernity, and eurocentrism’, Nepantla, 1 (3):465− 78 (2000)
    • Fatheuer, Thomas, Buen Vivir: A Brief Introduction to Latin America's New Concepts for the Good Life and the Rights of Nature. Trans. John Hayduska (Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2011)
    • Gudynas, E. ‘Buen Vivir: today’s tomorrow’, Development, 54 (4): 441− 7 (2011)
    • Mignolo, W., Local Histories/Global Designs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)
    • ‘The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 10 (1): 57− 96 (2002)
    • ‘DELINKING: the rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality’, Cultural Studies, 21 (2): 449− 514 (2007)
    • The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization, 2nd edition (University of Michigan Press, 2003).
      Quijano, A. ‘Coloniality of power, ethnocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla, 1 (3): 533− 80 (2000)
    • ‘“Live well”: between “development” and the descoloniality of power’, in A.L. Bialakowsky et al. (eds.) Latin American Critical Thought: Theory and Practice (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2012)

    Interdisciplinary

    Students read philosophical and sociological essays, short stories, watch films and analyse visual arts. They are encouraged to use tools from different areas of knowledge and epistemic approaches in order to develop their own critical and creative reformulations.

    International

    Global approach to the study of Latin American modernity from the perspective of resource extraction and the Anthropocene.

    Subject specific skills

    Critical knowledge and understanding of Latin American modernity and modernisation within the global extractive context; critical knowledge and understanding of the historical, material and symbolic entanglements of the climate crisis in global extractive zones like Latin America; critical and independent reflection on deeper connections between cultural/symbolic understanding and socio-political significance of global modernity.

    Transferable skills

    • Learning to build and present a reasoned argument through group discussion and interaction
    • Developing oral presentation skills through individual or small group presentation
    • Analytical skills through close textual analysis
    • Critical thinking skills through individual and group reflection
    • Digital presentation skills through preparation of visual presentation

    Study time

    Type Required
    Lectures 9 sessions of 1 hour (6%)
    Seminars 9 sessions of 1 hour (6%)
    Tutorials 1 session of 2 hours (1%)
    Private study

    60 hours (40%)

    • Students will be expected to watch films, read primary material, prepare seminar topics for discussion in class.
    Assessment
    		 70 hours (47%)
    Total 150 hours

    Assessment

    You must pass all assessment components to pass the module:

      Weighting Study time
    Research Essay 100% 70 hours

    Research essay with option to propose own title

    Feedback on assessment

    • Students will be given the opportunity to discuss the plan for their assessed essays
    • Formative feedback on essay plans

    Before you apply

    You can take a maximum of two WIISP modules, and cannot take them at the same time.

    Please note

    • Warwick students will need to check with their department before applying to take a WIISP module
    • Students from partner institutions will need to apply via their home institution
    • You are expected to fully engage and participate in the module, including in any group activities, if not your registration will be cancelled
    • Module details provided on these pages are supplementary to module details in the module catalogueLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window. Subsequently individual module pages (moodle/my.wbs) will provide live details
    • All modules require minimum numbers to run. This is set by each module leader.

    How to apply

    If you want to make an enquiry before applying, please contact the WIISP team at WIISP at warwick dot ac dot uk

    Apply - Warwick students