RLL 175LEC—Indigenous Cultures of Latin America Through the Lens of Theatre

This course explores the history of Amerindian theatre in the Spanish Americas in the Early Modern period (late 15th-18th century) and its relationship to contemporary Native American expression in Latin America and the American Southwest. Key study areas will be: the diverse Mayan regions of Central America; the Andes, in both Inca-influenced and non-Incan indigenous spheres; and the colonial Southwest, called “La Gran Cjhichimeca” in the colonial period, and home to traditions of sacred and secular theatre of Hopi, Dine, and Northern Mexico’s Nahua-speaking peoples. From the 16th-century “dances of the Conquest” staged by Andean peoples with the help of renegade Spaniards, to contemporary production of Mayan and Southwestern pre-Conquest drama, re-staged and re-tooled to reflect current political concerns, we will study how the comp-lex nature of Latin American drama reflects itself in the use and innovation of these ancient forms of living Native American theatre. Influences both on and from Spanish Golden Age drama will also illuminate aspects of the reception of New World culture in Renaissance-era Europe, including the internal dissent regarding Empire within Spanish colonial opinion.