To teach Latin American literature means to share well-known names with students: García Márquez, Borges, Vargas Llosa, Neruda, Allende, Paz, etc. Many have already read these authors or are, at least, familiar with one or two of their texts. This tends to be the case in regard to much of the twentieth century; a period when Latin American literature solidified into a presence that not only participated in the international literary dialogue, but even at certain moments seemed to control the conversation’s subject. This is not, however, the same with the preceding one hundred years. In today’s discussion, nineteenth-century Latin American authors do not enjoy nearly the renown of their twentieth-century successors. This is due to many factors, not least is that Latin America’s independence from Spain began at the century’s start (1808) and finished at the end (1898). It is almost as if the elements that came together in the 1950s to produce an environment where authors could be known worldwide were, in the 1850s, still dispersed and being cultivated by writers who were no less brilliant. Yet, as far as today’s reader is concerned, instead of fame, their calling was to lay in relative anonymity the foundations for their successors.
This lack of fame makes nineteenth-century literature from Latin American difficult to teach, but fortunately this semester our graduate-level course was visited by Dr. Gloria Casañas. Dr. Casañas is a lawyer and university professor in Buenos Aires. She is also a novelist who has set romantic fiction in historical Argentina. This ability to make the past matter to twenty-first century sensibilities has earned her success. It also helped our students to move names like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento from simply a Wikipedia biographical entry to something that was human and therefore more meaningful. Dr. Casañas’s latest novel is La maestra de la laguna which deals with the very real women who travelled from the United States to then President Sarmiento’s Argentina to spread normal schools. These schools in turn produced teachers –many of which were also women- who then transformed the education and, therefore, the cultural landscape of a country. Dr. Casañas’s visit was particularly poignant because she attended a course that forms part of our MAT in Spanish. In other words, the students she spoke with were all professional teachers who not only benefitted from learning about literature, but also the novelization of foundational educational figures such as Sarmiento, Horace Mann, and the teachers who worked with them.
Dr. Casañas’s visit crossed the parallel lines of culture and pedagogy which form the delineations of our graduate program. It was made possible thanks to her work as a visiting scholar at Framingham State University where she continues to develop research on Sarmiento and the normal schools. Interestingly, the building she visited –Salem State University’s Sullivan Building- was originally a normal school. It is nice to think that Sarmiento’s reputation as the “Schoolmaster of America” echoed with renewed energy in an old building during a new century.
This lack of fame makes nineteenth-century literature from Latin American difficult to teach, but fortunately this semester our graduate-level course was visited by Dr. Gloria Casañas. Dr. Casañas is a lawyer and university professor in Buenos Aires. She is also a novelist who has set romantic fiction in historical Argentina. This ability to make the past matter to twenty-first century sensibilities has earned her success. It also helped our students to move names like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento from simply a Wikipedia biographical entry to something that was human and therefore more meaningful. Dr. Casañas’s latest novel is La maestra de la laguna which deals with the very real women who travelled from the United States to then President Sarmiento’s Argentina to spread normal schools. These schools in turn produced teachers –many of which were also women- who then transformed the education and, therefore, the cultural landscape of a country. Dr. Casañas’s visit was particularly poignant because she attended a course that forms part of our MAT in Spanish. In other words, the students she spoke with were all professional teachers who not only benefitted from learning about literature, but also the novelization of foundational educational figures such as Sarmiento, Horace Mann, and the teachers who worked with them.
Dr. Casañas’s visit crossed the parallel lines of culture and pedagogy which form the delineations of our graduate program. It was made possible thanks to her work as a visiting scholar at Framingham State University where she continues to develop research on Sarmiento and the normal schools. Interestingly, the building she visited –Salem State University’s Sullivan Building- was originally a normal school. It is nice to think that Sarmiento’s reputation as the “Schoolmaster of America” echoed with renewed energy in an old building during a new century.
