Inner Travel
F05
Jonathan Pitcher
Beyond Columbus’s errant journey into the abyss and the ensuing quest for El Dorado, or Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, Latin America’s interior has enticed its own learned population. Their travels, in space, time, and thought, do not merely present a physical confrontation with alterity, with the continent’s supposed heart of darkness, but an intellectual clearing from which a more equitable politics may begin. As but one example, Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos, the tale of a New York composer’s journey to the origin of society, is often seen as the touchstone of Latin American identity. Through accounts of real and fictitious travels, from Carpentier to the crassest of guidebooks, we will study such quests for self. Discussions and presentations will facilitate the development of oral fluency. Students will expand their descriptive, analytical, and polemical vocabulary. Written work, including an appropriate research project, will solidify familiarity with linguistic structures.