This course concentrates on the Latin American Boom of the 1950s and 1960s. In the fiction of Julio Cort‡zar, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, students will explore postmodernist narrative techniques. The course will also consider the economic, political, and cultural conditions responsible for the Boom, the legacies of J. L. Borges and Alejo Carpentier, and the genre of magical realism. The course will also sample representative women writers of the period, such as Isabelle Allende and Rosario FerrŽ. Prerequisite: 104 or C or higher in 105 or C or higher in 195.