The London Centre for Languages and Cultures is a partnership between schools and universities that aims to encourage the uptake of Languages-related subjects amongst students in London schools. This year, the LCLC is running a seminar series designed to introduce students to concepts and topics that they may not have encountered in their curriculums. Here, Juned, one of our participants, reflects on the first of these seminars:
On Tuesday 28th April, we were lucky enough to attend a seminar on “The Latin American Boom in Literature” that was delivered by Luis Medina from King's College London. It was an incredibly enriching seminar that looked at how literature had expanded or “boomed” in the Latin American region during the 1960s and how key writers such as Gabriel García Márquez or Julio Cortázar started to get international recognition. Honing in on these writers, Medina explored greatly the sense of revolutionary writing that had risen during this period where writers were shifting from social realism to the more abstract, flourishing magic realism. We also got the opportunity to look at key criticisms of this “Latin American Boom” which I found very thought-provoking as I had always questioned as to why women and Portuguese-speaking writers have not had as much recognition in Latin American Studies. The most intriguing notion I learnt from this seminar was the concept of “Developmentalism” and how that had an influence on the exposition of the Boom.
Juned Muhith, Westminster Academy