RESCHEDULED: Appreciation of Literature: A Case study of Jorge Luis Borges and Manuel Rojas

This event has ended.

Please note this event was due to take place on Thursday 8th March but has been rescheduled for Thursday 19th April.

A public talk with guest speaker Dr Danilo Aros (University of Chile).

Abstract:
Motivated by the deficit in both oral and written communication skills observed in the students, and ultimately by a personal interest in literature, Dr Danilo Aros created the module ‘Appreciation of Literature’ at the University of Chile, offered to students coming from different undergraduate programmes. Running since 2012, it is aimed at developing oral and written communication skills in the students by reading and discussing pieces of literature written by famous and award-winning authors, such as Dostoievsky, Kafka, García Lorca, among others. In this talk, delivered in Spanish, Dr Aros will introduce his module, providing some information on the students’ response to it, before taking a comparative approach to the biographies and literature produced by the Chilean Manuel Rojas and the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges. Both prolific writers of fiction, particularly short stories, are well recognized as leading writers of Latin American literature. However, their origins are completely different, one coming from a wealthy, educated environment and the other from a working-class, harsh life. Of particular interest is assessing to what extend an origin can lead to a certain destiny and how the biography of a writer can influence the style and the topics considered in their writing.

Biography: Dr Danilo Aros is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Chile. He was born in Santiago, Chile, and got his BSc. in Agricultural Sciences in 2004 at the University of Chile. In 2010 he got his PhD in Molecular Cell Biology at the School of Biosciences in Cardiff University. Apart from his career in the field of Agricultural and Plant Sciences, Dr Aros has been always interested in literature. Enthusiastic reader and amateur writer, in 2008 he won awards in two literature competitions (Zaragoza, Spain and Santiago, Chile) in the category ‘short stories’. Among his activities at the University of Chile, Dr Aros has been lecturing the course ‘Appreciation of literature’ since 2012, teaching students from different undergraduate programmes. This valuable experience led him to be awarded as the best academic in teaching at the University of Chile in 2016. He is currently spending a 6-month sabbatical period at the School of Biosciences, here in Cardiff University.