When we talk about “adventurers”, “explorers”, or “travelers”, we tend to imagine them embodied in a masculine figure. In this course, we will focus on the limits of this idea of travel, analyzing travel as a gendered and racialized experience. Throughout the semester, we will study different types of mobility, travel, and travel literature created by women from the nineteenth century to the present, debunking stereotypes of female immobility and immanence. From the Peruvian rabonas to the Mexican Revolution’s soldaderas, from pleasure trips to forced exiles, we will read and examine the writings of Flora Tristán, Fanny Calderón de la Barca, la Baronesa de Wilson, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Victoria Ocampo, Clarice Lispector, Cristina Peri Rossi, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Valeria Luiselli, among others. These different travelogues will serve as the basis for discussing the complexities of gender, race, and social class in relation to travel, nation, and literature. We will also discuss different theoretical approaches, seeking to deepen and enrich our academic writing in the Spanish language.
CRN: 53121.
MWF: 1:00 – 1:50 AM.
Location: 219 David Kinley Hall.
Instructor: Yamile Ferreira
Course Image: Victoria Ocampo, first women to drive an automobile in Argentina. Archive