Between Realism and Science Fiction

At Middlebury Professor Paz Soldán will deliver a talk connected to two courses: SPAN 310, a course titled Otherness in the Hispanic World, and SPAN 350, a course about “los raros” or alternative fiction in Spanish. In SPAN 310, the students will read the short stories found in Las visiones. In this science fiction book, a racially-segregated dystopian world is created where biopolitical technology is used to discriminate against and control certain ethnicities deemed to be inferior, and that rebel against power in various ways to fight for their humanity and dignity. These short stories contain contemporary depictions of a traditional issue in Latin American societies, the inequality between indigenous populations and the creole elite. In SPAN 350, we will read Los días de la peste, a horror novel set in an imaginary Latin American prison where violence, chaos, and death are commonplace. In this setting, a new and extreme religion is born that captures the prisoners’ imagination. Finally, Paz Soldán will also address the link between the two facets of this intellectual identity: a professor and a writer, he will discuss his fiction from both perspectives.