Teaching

This course introduces students to contemporary Latin American horror literature and cinema , approaching horror not as escapism but as a lens through which to analyze urgent social realities. We will examine how horror addresses two central issues: systemic violence against female bodies and the environmental devastation caused by climate change.

The course centers on Ecuadorian authors María Fernanda Ampuero and Mónica Ojeda—associated with the emerging Gótico Andino—and Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez—linked to the Gótico Rioplatense. Through their work, students will analyze how monstrosity emerges as a social and political construct. Here, the Gothic functions not only as a genre but also as a critical apparatus, mobilizing what resists dying—ghosts, lingering traumas, and specters—that haunt social orders alongside class, gender, and racial violence. Ampuero’s Visceral serves as a central text, combining stories and essays that theorize monsters as products of patriarchy, beauty norms, and inequality.

In addition, the course engages with the Gótico Tropical, turning to films such as Pura Sangre (Colombia), where vampirism allegorizes lingering feudal and economic power structures, and Cuando acecha la maldad (Argentina), which reimagines rural violence and supernatural terror to expose extractive economies that corrode both community life and the natural environment.