Fragments of the Rural Spain and Argentina

In this course we will analyze cinematic and literary representations of the rural in Spain and Argentina. We will explore the complexities of rural spaces and identities, as well as how they interact with understandings centered on urbanity. In the texts we study, rural spaces can be stifling and oppressive, but they can also be sophisticated and diverse. Drawing from the concept of medium-specificity, we will examine how the cinema and literature allow for particular forms of representation in specific contexts, whether they be cultural, economic, political, social, etc. We will seek to better understand the place of the rural within Spanish and Argentine society, especially in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, as well as reflect upon our own experience of Middlebury as a rural place.