SPAN 497-001 – Short Forms, Big Worlds: The Latin American Cuento

This course examines the development and diversity of the Latin American short story from the nineteenth century to the present. Through a selection of authors, literary traditions, and movements, students will analyze major transformations in the genre, its narrative strategies, and its relationship to shifting historical, social, and cultural contexts. Particular attention will be given to questions of modernity, identity, violence, gender, inequality, and formal experimentation, as well as to how the short story has served as a distinctive space for imagining and questioning Latin American realities.