SPAN 0090 - LATIN LOVERS: ROMANCE, BETRAYAL, AND DESIRE FROM DON JUAN TO BAD BUNNY

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Long Description Why have "Latin Lovers" been such an enduring stereotype? Where did it come from? Is passionate love a liberating force, a tool of social repression, or a dangerous obsession? Love in the Iberoamerican world is a cultural practice, a political act, a creative force, and sometimes a scandal. This course explores some of the most salient, and engaging stories, scandals, and artistic expressions focused around love and desire in Spanish, Latin American, Brazilian, and U.S. Latinx literatures and cultures. Some questions the class addresses: How does desire get expressed and repressed differently across Spanish, Latin American, Brazilian, and U.S. Latinx cultures? What is the relationship between erotic passion and artistic creation? How have women (from Sor Juana to Shakira) highlighted love, loss, and scandal to claim a public voice? And how has the culture of love been transformed in the digital age? Together, we will examine how love, sex, and heartbreak have been used to spark political revolutions, subvert gender norms, and shape modern popular culture. We organize our journey around five central thematic questions that span five centuries of Hispanic thought. We consider medieval matchmakers, Golden Age playboys, queer poetry and narrative, alongside visual art, cinema, telenovelas, and musical chart-toppers like Rosalia and Bad Bunny. And we trace some of the culture's most iconic real and fictional lovers, from the medieval seducer Don Juan, to Tita and Pedro in Like Water for Chocolate, to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, to Betty and Armando in Betty la Fea, and ask how they shape real expectations about desire, class, gender, and romantic contracts. The course is student-centered and discussion-driven. Students are expected to engage critically with the material and to connect and contrast these questions with their own cultural experience. This class is taught in English. All readings and media are provided in English translation.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade

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