Literature constructs for us scenarios and spaces in which, at least for a time, other habits and customs are in play, and which thus allow us to see that the rules of the everyday games that we play are as arbitrary as any others. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 02:17 Patterns of Commonality and Difference 04:00 Questions 16:06 Seeing and Playing Difference 30:56 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about teaching and reading Latin American literature. With Erin Graff Zivin and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction01:13 The Canon and Beyond08:28 Latin America and Beyond10:37 Images of Latin America14:20 The Latin American Writer and the Tradition19:40 Going Beyond Ourselves22:27 Reading as Misreading25:55 Inexhaustible Texts29:54 Good Enough Readings38:07 Repetition and Learning37:40 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Samanta Schweblin's novel of uncanny horror on the Pampas, Fever Dream. With Jordana Blejmar and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:03 Genres in Dialogue 08:59 Imagining Space 15:30 Rethinking Agency 21:56 Shameful Monstrosity 26:55 Reading for a Moral 29:09 Disturbing Presence 33:59 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

As with a game we have started that gets out of hand, it can feel that all we can do is look on as events unfold when confronted with the seemingly irresistible force of a hyperobject in motion once a tipping point has been passed. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 06:27 The Chemistry of Anxiety 14:10 Questions 17:56 The Shadow of the Hyperobject 26:03 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Cristina Rivera Garza's The Taiga Syndrome. With Cristina Rivera Garza and Jon Beasley-Murray. In which we talk about tone, translation, and escape, among other things. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:38 Distance and Indirect Language 06:01 Tone and Experience 10:55 Mediation and the Archive 16:05 Quotation and Subversion 18:59 Speech and Concealment 22:57 Translation and Communality 26:37 Escape and Vanishing Points 28:30 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

This is the wild west (wild north?) Russian style—or Swedish or Latvian, even Mexican or Argentine, it matters little, as it is the same almost everywhere now that untrammeled extraction reduces and eliminates any refuge a forest may offer, for wolves or for children, or for lovers on the lam. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 03:37 Beginnings, Endings, and Limits 15:39 Questions 18:26 Forests, Failures, and Low-Level Fear 29:17 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Rita Indiana's novel, Papi. With Arturo Victoriano and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see ⁠⁠https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ 00:00 Introduction 01:10 A History of Migration 04:00 One Foot Here and Another One There 11:19 The Smell of Success 17:47 The Sounds of Progress 22:13 From Trujillo to Balaguer and Beyond 28:56 Dreams and Reality 33:16 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

In a world in which movies, adverts, music videos, video games, and television all blend and cross-contaminate, new cross-cultural and transnational jargons and slang arise, and new roles to play, to compensate for the increasing inequalities and unbridled violence that are also associated with unregulated markets, be they legal or illegal. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 04:34 Constructing Excess 15:16 Questions 17:47 Loving the Game 32:06 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Chilean Pedro Lemebel's novel, My Tender Matador. With Juan Poblete and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ 00:00 Introduction 01:22 Three Approaches to My Tender Matador 02:55 Lemebel's Context 07:35 A Theory of the Novel 14:02 A Politics of the Pose 19:40 An Affective Reconstruction of the 1980s 25:38 The Popular Baroque 30:58 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

We are encouraged to take surfaces or appearances seriously in their own right. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 02:56 Names, Playacting, and Embellishment 09:44 Questions 14:55 Power, Performance, and Impurity 24:11 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Giannina Braschi's Yo-Yo Boing! With Giannina Braschi and Jon Beasley-Murray. In which we talk about language, cosmopolitanism, the collective, and the end of the twentieth century. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:32 Looking from a Distance 02:57 An Aperture in the World 06:49 From Spanish to English 10:01 Invading the North 12:36 Always Cosmopolitan 16:55 A Chorus of Voices 19:25 Yo-Yo 20:58 Waiting for Liberation 23:07 The End of the Twentieth Century 26:50 (Mis)Understanding 30:42 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

Braschi’s novel resists translation both because it is already in translation—and translation cannot be translated—and because it touches on the untranslatable, on the limits of language and meaning. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 06:37 Translation, Movement, and Nonsense 11:11 Questions 16:05 Kairos and the Future Event 26:43 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Roberto Bolaño's post-dictatorship novel, Distant Star. With Ryan Long and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:04 Crime Fiction and Poetry Workshops 05:04 Correspondence and Investigation 09:44 Collaboration and Conversation 14:48 Violence Explicable and Inexplicable 18:39 Loss and Recovery 22:01 Writing and Reading 25:00 An Expanding Universe 26:43 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

Literature can never forget that it is first and foremost an index of barbarism, and only secondarily (if at all) any kind of recompense or restitution. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 14:31 Art and Atrocity 15:42 Fascism's Contradictions 18:58 Questions 30:24 Ni Olvido, Ni Perdón 34:40 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Rigoberta Menchú's famed but controversial testimonio, I, Rigoberta Menchú. With John Beverley and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:30 Defining Testimonio 08:12 Testimonio's Contexts 12:41 A New Political Subject 18:13 The Culture Wars 23:31 The Politics of Truth 30:33 Testimonio Today 38:50 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

However much we imagine or hope we are in solidarity with her and her struggle, we are reminded that the basis of that solidarity has to be difference and respect. Her struggle is not ours, and never will be. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 10:44 Private Pacts and Public Secrets 19:55 Questions 22:53 Captivation and Betrayal 33:28 Games of Entrapment 42:50 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Mario Vargas Llosa's comic novel, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. With Phil Swanson and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:19 Rethinking Civilization and Barbarism 10:44 The Business of Sex 14:38 A Shift from Left to Right 18:45 Technology and Form 23:18 Ambivalence and Multiple Readings 25:23 The Limits of Machismo 28:29 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

In Vargas Llosa’s world, something is almost always fucked up—a death, a massacre, a marriage, a disappearance—and it is up to him or his characters to find out why and how. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 09:19 Making Fun of Seriousness 10:47 Questions 15:46 Taking Fun Seriously 28:08 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

A conversation for SPAN 312 about Clarice Lispector's last novel, The Hour of the Star. With Sonia Roncador and Jon Beasley-Murray. For more details, see https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/. 00:00 Introduction 01:11 The Culmination of a Process 09:56 The Challenge of Unfamiliarity 18:42 The Limits of Realism 27:41 A Compulsion to Care 31:45 The Possibility of Hope 34:42 Credits #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature

It is about an ethics of writing, about how writing can be true to life, to “a life,” without necessarily laying claim to the truth of that life. It is about the hesitations, affirmations, and disruptive explosions that mark any text as it tries to describe and negotiate the world. By Jon Beasley-Murray, University of British Columbia 00:00 Introduction 11:03 A Hesitant Ethics 13:24 Questions 21:33 An Interrupted Consumption 31:06 Credits For Hopscotch! https://span312.arts.ubc.ca/ #hopscotch #span312 #rmst372 #latinamericanliterature