Fall 2012

Three Credit Courses 

SPAN 70200 – Spanish Literary Theory
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4433, 3 credits, Prof. Dapía

SPAN 70300 – Introduction to Methods of Research
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m.,Rm. 4422, 3 credits, Prof. del Valle

SPAN 72300 – Don Quijote
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4419, 3 credits, Martínez Torrejón

SPAN 86400 – Seminar: Spanish-American Novel – Last Evenings of Modernity: The Writings of Roberto Bolaño
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 7395, 3 credits, Prof. Zavala

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Franquismos entre la Falange y la Iglesia: literatura y política en un tiempo de destrucción (1936-1973)
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 3 credits, Prof. Alonso 

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – In-Between Worlds and Traditions: Rereading the "Crónicas de Indias"
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4433, 3 credits, Prof. Chang-Rodriguez

Four Credit Courses

SPAN 80100 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Sociolinguistics – Spanish in the U.S.
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3209, 4 credits, Prof. Otheguy, []
(cross-listed with LING 75600, 3 credits)

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Contemporary Spanish and Mexican Cinema and Television
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 7314, 4 credits, Prof. Smith, []

PORT 88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Brazilian Literature I – Versions of the Picaresque in Brazilian and Latin American Literature
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3310B, 4 credits, Prof. Santos, []

One Credit Mini-Seminars

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – "Travelling" por la Historia del Cine Vasco
GC: Monday, 10/1 – Friday, 10/5, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. Joxean Fernández, Director de la Filmoteca Vasca, []
(Basque Institute & Bernardo Atxaga Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

Span 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Language and Post-Nationalism in Contemporary Catalonia
GC: Monday, 11/5 through Friday, 11/9, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. Joan Pujolar, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, []
(Llull Institute & Rodoreda Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

Detailed Course Descriptions

THREE-CREDIT COURSES

SPAN 70200 – Spanish Literary Theory
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Dapía, [18806]

"The economist J.M. Keynes once remarked that those economists who disliked theory, or claimed to get along better without it, were simply in the grip of an older theory. This is also true of literary students and critics."
Terry Eagleton

Why did theory come about? What qualifies as theory under different historical conditions? What difference could it make to our reading of literature? What is "ideology," "habitus," "hegemony," "postcoloniality," and why did these notions appear? The aim of this course is to give a map of the main concepts and currents of contemporary theory while providing historical and philosophical understanding of those theories and concepts. Included on our map will be Critical Theory, Culture Studies, Feminist literary studies, Marxism, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalytic literary studies, and Queer studies. We will place these theories in its historical and institutional context and explore the way in which fundamental assumptions are at stake. The goal is to understand them in their place, time, and traditions, but also to see what is of "use" for literature in their thought, and to discuss it together in ordinary and accessible language. Our cartography will not exclude the so-called "Third World," including theory from or about Latin America (Néstor García Canclini, Enrique Dussel, Ernesto Laclau, Walter Mignolo, Nelly Richard).

SPAN 70300 – Introduction to Methods of Research
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. del Valle, [18807]

In this course, students will be introduced to various practices associated with scholarly research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We will carefully review CUNY's library and bibliographic resources and explore the numerous available depositories of archival material in the New York area (including the holdings of neighboring universities, the New York Public Library, the Hispanic Society of America, the Morgan Library and the Instituto Cervantes). Secondly, we will discuss the basics of ethnographic fieldwork and the ideological intricacies of ethnographic writing, and examine the pragmatics of archival research and theoretical problems associated with the archive. Thirdly, we will trace the evolution and discuss the profile of key professional journals (in cultural, linguistic and literary studies) in order to identify and critically reflect upon the emergence and deployment of research trends. Fourthly, we will practice the production of various textual genres associated with research and with a scholar's involvement in the profession. These will include abstracts, conference presentations, lectures, grant applications, opinion pieces, and research articles. In the process we will discuss managing primary and secondary sources and framing research questions. Finally, the course will include a component in which the emergence and currency of the Digital Humanities will be discussed. Each student will do at least three oral presentations on a topic assigned by the professor and complete four writing assignments throughout the semester. At the end, all students will submit a five-page research proposal.

SPAN 72300 – Don Quijote
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [18808]

This course will focus on the transmission of the text of Cervantes Don Quijote in the seventeenth century and in the twentieth century. The question of the relationship between the first and the second parts of the novel will be also examined, as well as the most important semantic and ideological aspects of the text. To study problems of annotation, several modern editions will be analyzed, among them, the best known ones of M. de Riquer, J.J. Allen, L. Murillo, J.B. Avalle-Arce, V. Gaos, F. Sevilla-A. Rey Hazas and Francisco Rico. Critical interpretations of the Quijote will be also considered so as to recast the history of its reception in the twentieth century.

SPAN 86400 – Seminar: Spanish-American Novel – Last Evenings of Modernity: The Writings of Roberto Bolaño
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Zavala, [18811]

Seminar description: Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) is being hailed as the most important Latin American writer of the last twenty years. His complex and ambitious œuvre innovates and simultaneously breaks with Latin America's modern narrative tradition. From his nouvelles to his masterpieces The Savage Detectives (1998) and the posthumous 2666 (2004), Bolaño's writing traces Western civilization's failures, from the aftermath of World War II to the tragic daily life at the U.S.-Mexico border today. His texts can be read as the final epic from Latin America at the crudest and most dramatic crossroads of its recent history: a discontinuous series of police stories investigating the mass killing of women at the borderland, the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the obscure link between art and crime, and an extended chronicle denouncing genocide, injustice, poverty, exploitation, racism and political corruption in the neoliberal world. Bolaño's works, which include remarkable novels, poetry, short stories and essays, radicalize and bring to a point of exhaustion the most important aspects of Latin America's modern literary tradition. This seminar explores how Bolaño's works are the culmination of Latin America's century-old quest for modernity that was central to the most important writers of the 20th century. Read together with a variety of contemporary authors and literary theorists such as Borges, Sebald, Perec, Foucault, Bürger and Bourdieu, Bolaño's works neutralize the anxieties of Western influence to achieve a literature that effectively erases cultural and sociopolitical boundaries to produce a series of works that can only be labeled "Latin American" problematically, challenging various conceptions of Western canons and pioneering the avenues of 21st century Latin American literature.

Course requirements: Each week students will write a one-page response paper to a question posed by the professor. All students will deliver an individual in-class presentation covering one text or topic discussed. Students will write a term paper that expands on their class presentation.

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Franquismos entre la Falange y la Iglesia: literatura y política en un tiempo de destrucción (1936-1973)
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Alonso, [18812]

La sola mención del nombre de Francisco Franco parece evocar presencias fantasmales y apunta hacia un largo periodo en la noche del pasado de España identificado, casi de un modo reflejo, con la represión, el miedo, la presencia de la religión en el espacio público, y un tono gris intelectual, política y culturalmente del que penosamente se consiguió salir en la década de los 80. Esta representación de la memoria social ha tendido a petrificar nuestra imagen del franquismo, convertido en un antimodelo no sólo de nuestra moderna cultura postmoderna sino de nuestra misma racionalidad: el polo opuesto de nuestra identidad, que en el mejor de los casos asociamos contemporáneamente con las pervivencias en el presente de las imágenes y de las prácticas de la cultura reaccionaria. Romper con esta concepción monolítica del franquismo, que inevitablemente atraviesa gran parte de los discursos historiográficos en torno a la época, es la tarea principal que se plantea en este curso. Frente a un franquismo "psicoanalizable", convertido en un sujeto imaginario que produce fantasmas y que ha sido maquiavélicamente ocultado por un pacto de silencio, recuperar la complejidad del momento centrándonos en un periodo clave: "el erial", los años que van de 1936 a 1956, que han sido el trasfondo de gran parte de las ficciones escritas sobre este momento histórico. De La colmena a Tiempo de silencio, pasando por La noche de los tiempos, y de Calle Mayor a Pá negre, pasando por El espíritu de la colmena, gran parte de los relatos escritos o filmados en torno al pasado de la cultura española, y en última instancia en torno a nuestra identidad y los límites de la comunidad política, son intentos de elucidar el significado de aquellos años en los que tuvo lugar el cenit y el ocaso de una utopía fascista, el nacimiento de un estado católico, y una lucha invisible pero no silenciosa entre las élites del régimen por tomar la dirección del estado dictatorial que se fue construyendo en la época de Franco. Para estudiar este momento se van a adoptar tres perspectivas diferentes: primero, un análisis de las representaciones de esta época que se han vuelto hegemónicas a través de los relatos historiográficos y de la ficción, atravesados ellos por conceptos que en el fondo intentan dar forma a nuestra autoconciencia: resistencia, represión, violencia, fascismo, pero también responsabilidad, expiación, culpa y, de un tiempo a esta parte, memoria; además, una reconstrucción de los conflictos internos del régimen prestando atención a las luchas por dominar sus aparatos ideológicos, señaladamente la Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular, el llamado Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas y la Universidad. Finalmente, recomponer la lógica de un campo cultural en cierto sentido heterónomo, a partir del análisis de las trayectorias de intelectuales que participaron en la elaboración de ciertos relatos sobre la identidad histórica de España, como Camilo José Cela, Dionisio Ridruejo, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Pedro Laín Entralgo, Rafael Calvo Serer, Miguel Delibes, José Antonio Maravall, Santiago Montero Díaz, José Luis López Aranguren y la sombra de José Ortega y Gasset.

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – In-Between Worlds and Traditions: Rereading the "Crónicas de Indias"
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Chang-Rodriguez, [18816]

The course will study a diverse group of testimonies related to the early contact period. Generally grouped under the label "crónicas de Indias," they will include letters, histories, "relaciones" and chronicles written by authors of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity. These works will be situated in a historical grid in order to analyze, from various perspectives, the objectives of their authors and understand their meaning in the shared culture and history of Europe and the Americas. The discussions will include: 1) the concept of history and the impact of the New World; 2) why these texts became "literature;" 3) the polemics about the indigenous population; 4) the shifting positions of the writing subject; 5) the role of the eye-witness; 6) the indigenous perception of the encounter; 7) gender issues. There will be time to present and pursue individual projects. Class discussions will be illustrated with visual materials and communication facilitated through Blackboard.

Readings will include a variety of texts by: Las Casas, Cortés, Inca Garcilaso, Guaman Poma de Ayala, Catalina de Erauso. If the student has read some of the selected texts in campus, alternate texts will be supplied in order to expand his/her familiarity with the area.

FOUR-CREDIT COURSES

SPAN 80100 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Sociolinguistics
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Otheguy, [18810]
(cross-listed with LING 75600, 3 credits)

The main purpose of the seminar is for students to carry out research on the Spanishes spoken and written in the United States, using either the paradigm of variationist sociolinguistics or that of the sociology of language. Under variationist sociolinguistics, the student will organize and carry out a small research project on a variable feature of the lexicon, phonology or grammar of Spanishes as spoken or written in New York or other parts of the US. Under the sociology of language, the student's paper will be on attitudes toward these forms of speech, or their social and demographic distribution, on code selection, on maintenance and shift, on Spanish-language media, on language in the schools, or on some other relevant topic. A second purpose of the course is for the student to become familiar with the salient works of the research literature on the topic, with an emphasis on variationist works. The instructor will conduct classes in Spanish. Questions in class, and class dialogue in general, can be in either English or Spanish according to student preferences. Written work can be in English or Spanish. Some readings will be in English and some in Spanish.

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Contemporary Spanish and Mexican Cinema and Television
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Smith, [18813]
(cross-listed with FSCP 81000, 3 credits)

This course, which is taught in English and requires no knowledge of Spanish, compares and contrasts Spanish and Mexican cinema and television of the last three decades. The course will address four topics in film: the replaying of history, nationality and transnationalism, gender and sexuality, and regionalism and urbanism; and will further study aspects of television fiction. Feature films will be viewed in subtitled versions and English-language synopses will be provided of TV episodes. Methodology will embrace analysis of the audiovisual industry, film form, and theory.

Grading is by written exam (25%), student oral participation and presentation (25%) and final paper (50%). A reader in English will be available and bibliography in Spanish provided on request.

PORT 88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Brazilian Literature I - Versions of the Picaresque in Brazilian and Latin American Literature
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Santos, [18817]

The course exams the re-creation of the picaresque genre, with especial focus in Brazilian literature. Picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) will be the reference to the two lines the Spanish literary genre acquired in its migration to South America. The satirical line appeared in Brazil during the 19th Century and continues in 20th Century. For better understanding the transformation of the Spanish pícaro into the Brazilian malandro, the students will read the novels Memórias de um Sargento de Milícias (1854), de Manuel Antônio de Almeida, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), de Machado de Assis e A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro d'Agua (1959), de Jorge Amado and the literary criticism which these novels innaugurated. The pessimistic and violent aspect of the picaresque genre, transformed into the contemporary Spanish American sicaresca genre will be examined thourgh the novels El juguete rabioso (1926), by Argentinean Roberto Arlt, O matador (1995), by Brazilian Patricia Melo and La virgen de los sicarios (1998), by Colombian Fernando Vallejo. All Brazilian novels Have translations into English and Spanish. Taught in Spanish (or Portuguese, or English, as far as the proficiency of these languages by the students is concerned).

The students will be evaluated through their reaction to the readings and participation in class (10%), a first in-class presentation covering one text or topic discussed (20%), a written a term paper (50%) that expands a second class presentation (20%).

ONE-CREDIT MINI-SEMINARS

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – "Travelling" por la Historia del Cine Vasco
GC: Monday, 10/1 through Friday, 10/5, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 1 credit, Prof. Joxean Fernández,
Director de la Filmoteca Vasca, [18814]
(Basque Institute & Bernardo Atxaga Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

A journey from the origins of cinema in the Basque Country to the end of the silent era, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Basque cinematographic propaganda, the wasteland as a result of the repression of the Franco regime up to the bold awakenings of the dying years of the dictatorship, the intense debates surrounding the nature of Basque cinema in the transition period to democracy, the full blooming of Basque cinema coinciding with the autonomous era and the beginnings of the key artists in the 1990s through to the shaping of the very diverse current reality. It is, then, a journey from Edurne, modista bilbaína (Edurne, Bilbao dressmaker, 1924) by Telesforo Gil and El mayorazgo de Basterreche (The Basterreche heir, 1928) by the Azcona brothers, to Tasio (1984) by Montxo Armendáriz and 80 egunean (For 80 days, 2010) by Jon Garaño and José Mari Goenaga, to cite but a few examples. All this comes from the perspective and methodology of a historian rather than a film critic. In other words, it searches for the numerous close links between contemporary Basque history and the history of Basque cinema, rather than just offering personal views on the artistic quality of Basque films.

Span 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Language and Post-Nationalism in Contemporary Catalonia
GC: Monday, 11/5 through Friday, 11/9, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 1 credit, Prof. Joan Pujolar,
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, [18815]
(Llull Institute & Rodoreda Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

In this course, we are going to examine the recent transformations of linguistic practices and ideologies in Catalonia brought about by globalization. More specifically, we are going to examine how immigration, tourism and other forms of mobility have questioned the ideological principles of both Catalan and Spanish nationalisms, which have traditionally constructed language as inextricably linked to national belonging and territoriality. The course will be structured on the basis of five case studies presented and documented by the teacher and discussed with students.
 

Spring 2012

THREE-CREDITS

SPAN 70100 – History of the Spanish Language
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4433, 3 credits, Prof. del Valle, [17465]

SPAN 71500 – Sixteenth Century Poetry – Garcilaso and Herrera. New Poetry and Literary Criticism in the Spanish Renaissance
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4419, 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [17466]

SPAN 77700 – Jorge Luis Borges – Philosophy in and on the Works of Jorge Luis Borges
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3308, 3 credits, Prof. Dapía, [17467]

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Cuban Literature: Republic, Revolution, Globalization
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 8202, 3 credits, Prof. Fiol-Matta, [17472]

FOUR-CREDITS

SPAN 80000 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Linguistics – Language and Intercultural Communication
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3308, 4 credits, Prof. Callahan, [17468] Taught in English
(cross-listed with LING 79500)

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – The Humanistic Comedy in Renaissance and Baroque Spain: Fernando de Rojas' La Celestina and Lope de Vega's La Dorotea
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4422, 4 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [17469]

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – The City in Modern Spanish Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3307, 4 credits, Prof. Smith, [17470]

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Orientalismos en la literatura hispánica y el mundo de habla portuguesa
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15, Rm. 4433, 4 credits, Prof. Tinajero, [17473]

ONE-CREDIT MINI-SEMINARS

PORT 88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Portuguese Literature I – Silenced Voices. Portuguese Women Writers of the Early Modern Period (16th-18th Centuries)
GC:Monday, 4/30 – Friday, 5/4, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. Anastácio, [18241]
(Camoes Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Barcelona y la modernidad
GC: February 3, 6, 24 and 27, 1:30-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. Epps, [17471]
(Rodoreda Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

SPAN 87500 – Seminar: Special Topics in Galician Literature - Returns of the Native: Vernacular Pasts, Cosmopolitan Futures in Modern Galician Culture
GC: Monday, 3/5 – Friday, 3/9, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. José María Rodríguez García, [17474]
(Galician Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

SEE ALSO:

MUSIC 86200 – Local and Global Perspectives in Spanish Music
GC: Wednesday, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Rm. 3389, 3 credits, Profs. Peter Manuel and Antoni Piza, [17447]
(cross-listed with SPAN 87000, 3 credits, [18107])

Course Descriptions

THREE-CREDITS

SPAN 70100 – History of the Spanish Language
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4433, 3 credits, Prof. del Valle, [17465]

"When you read a work of history, always listen out for the buzzing. If you can detect none, either you are tone deaf or your historian is a dull dog" (Edward H. Carr). This course examines various approaches to the external and internal history of Spanish (standard and non-standard dialects as well as contact varieties). The historical frame within which traditional narratives of the language's history are inserted is wide, spanning from the second century B.C. to the present. One component of the course is the traditional description of the language's history as a linear evolution of phonetic, morphological, and syntactic forms from Latin to Spanish (historical grammar). A second component introduces contemporary categories for the study of sociolinguistic and cultural phenomena (such as bilingualism, diglossia, and standardization) that allow for a critical approach to traditional views on the emergence of Spanish a "language," to its organic evolution, and to the circumstances of its spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas (social history of language and glottopolitical history). The readings include (but are not limited to) David Pharies' Breve historia de la lengua española (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Ramón Menéndez Pidal's Orígenes del español: estado lingüístico de la Península Ibérica hasta el siglo XI (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1950); Ralph Penny's Variation and change in Spanish (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); John Lipski's Latin American Spanish (Longman: London and New York, 1994); and Francisco Moreno Fernández's Historia social de las lenguas de España (Barcelona: Ariel, 2005).

SPAN 71500 – Sixteenth Century Poetry – Garcilaso and Herrera. New Poetry and Literary Criticism in the Spanish Renaissance
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4419, 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [17466]

This course will focus on a micro-textual study of the poetical works of the two fundamental figures in the canon of Golden Age poetry. Poems that are representative of the metrical, generic and thematic variety practiced by both authors will be analyzed as well as their approaches to a critical reading of the new lyrical discourses. Such study will try to recover the particular manipulation of indirect speech – figurative language – and techniques of versification, as well as the relationship between such poetical and critical texts and their cultural and historical referents and contexts. Through the study of Garcilaso's and Herrera's works the attempt will be made to reconstruct the intricate design of poetical trends and practices in sixteenth-century Spanish literature and the creation of a first canon of classical Spanish works.

Texts to be studied include: Gracilaso de la Vega, Poesías castellanas completas, Madrid: Castalia, 1969, Ed. Elias L. Rivers; Cancionero (Poesías castellanas completas), Barcelona: Bruguera, 1982. Ed. Antonio Prieto;
Poesía completa, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989. Ed. Juan Francisco Alsina; Obra poética y textos en prosa, Barcelona: Crítica, 1995. Ed. Bienvenido Morros; Herrera, Fernando de, Algunas obras, Paris: Honoré Champion, 1908. Ed. Adolphe Coster; Algunas obras en Poesía castellana original completa, Madrid: Cátedra, 1985. Ed. Cristóbal Cuevas
Poesía, Barcelona: Planeta, 1986. Ed. María Teresa Ruestes; Poesías, Madrid: Castalia, 1992. Ed. Victoriano Roncero López; Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso, Madrid: Cátedra, 2001. Ed. Inoria Pepe y José María Reyes

SPAN 77700 – Jorge Luis Borges - Philosophy in and on the Works of Jorge Luis Borges
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3308, 3 credits, Prof. Dapía, [17467]

This course will examine Borges's work at the intersection between philosophy and literature, with specific attention to two relationships: philosophy on and philosophy in Borges's writings. By philosophy on Borges's writings, I mean the use of philosophical approaches or problems as frameworks to illuminate particular philosophical issues that arise in Borges's work such as representation, truth, and selfhood. By philosophy in Borges, I mean the particular philosophers and problems that Borges explicitly brings into play in his writings, particularly those belonging to the epistemological field. Some of the questions we shall raise are as follows: Why would a writer whose aims are literary make use of philosophical ideas, themes, and vocabulary? What, in general, is Borges able to achieve with literary forms that non-literary forms cannot? Philosophers whose work we shall discuss are Theodor Adorno, George Berkeley, F. H. Bradley, Donald Davidson, René Descartes, David Hume, William James, John Locke, Fritz Mauthner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Rorty, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Baruch Spinoza.

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature - Cuban Literature: Republic, Revolution, Globalization
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 8202, 3 credits, Prof. Fiol-Matta, [17472]

This seminar explores Cuban literature since the inception of the modern Cuban nation in the Cuban Republic (1902) through the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and its waning during the Special Period in Times of Peace into what we may call the 21st-century afterlife of a literary Cuba during which Republic and Revolution become allegories in a globalized, trans- or non-national Cuban imaginary. The seminar first introduces the master tropes of modern Cuban literature regarding nation, race, origins, and modernity, discussing a selection of key works (the anthropological treatises of Fernando Ortiz and Lydia Cabrera, the fictional worlds of Alejo Carpentier and Severo Sarduy, the poetic thought of José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera). The seminar then assesses both the Revolution's literary project and the event entailed in the creation of an exilic literature (Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Eliseo Alberto, Jesús Díaz). The last third of the course concerns the present, examining a new generation of writers profoundly transformed by the looming endings of revolution and exile (the postrevolutionary writings of Antonio José Ponte, Reina María Rodríguez, Ena Lucía Portela, Yoss, cyberauthors and blogs). All works will be read in conjunction with important, classic and contemporary works of literary criticism to coherently map dominant and alternative literary discussions of Cuba. The course will draw on theories of modernity (Benjamin, Adorno), affect theory, gender studies, psychoanalytic criticism and contemporary critical theories regarding community (Nancy, Agamben, Rancière, Badiou).

FOUR-CREDITS

SPAN 80000 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Linguistics – Language and Intercultural Communication
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3308, 4 credits, Prof. Callahan, [17468]

This seminar will focus on the role of language and linguistic behavior in intercultural communication. Using politeness theories as a point of departure, we will examine seminal work in the discipline, case studies of pragmatic variation between various languages, between Spanish and other languages, and across varieties of the same language, as well as issues involving the teaching and learning of intercultural pragmatics. Class will be conducted in English. Written work will be accepted in English, French, Portuguese, or Spanish.

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – The Humanistic Comedy in Renaissance and Baroque Spain: Fernand de Rojas' La Celestina and Lope de Vega's La Dorotea
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4422, 4 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [17469]

This seminar will briefly examine the dramatic genre of humanistic comedy in Italy, which functioned as an important precedent for the development of drama in Spain during the early Renaissance. Rojas was influenced by humanistic plays, some of which were written in Latin, and offered in turn in his Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea or La Celestina, a literary model for the representation of love as passion and its consequences. Next the seminar will focus upon Lope's La Dorotea, seen as the last recreation in seventeenth century Spanish literature of the model built by Fernando de Rojas. Thus it will be studied in its relationship to Rojas's and other literary precedents, including Lope's own prior reworkings of the "Dorotea matter"; Ovid and elegiac poetry and comedy; Seneca's tragedies and some of his Neo-Stoic epistles. The study of the work as an ars amandi will be combined with that of its function as an ars poetica. Lope's position in the polemic on Góngora and gongorismo, which developed after 1613, will be also evaluated in the context of the practices of the aesthetics of wit. Rojas' Tragicomedia will be read in P. E. Russell's Castalia edition. Lope's La Dorotea in E. Morby's Castalia editions – major and minor; these will be compared with J.M. Blecua's for Cátedra and his older University of Puerto Rico edition. A bibliography of secondary sources will be distributed in class.

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature - The City in Modern Spanish Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3307, 4 credits, Prof. Smith, [17470]

This course, which is taught in Spanish, examines the modern Spanish city in the media of novel (Martín Santos, Goytisolo), film and TV (Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia, TVE's Fortunata y Jacinta), and visual art (painter Antonio López, web artist Marisa González). Each class examines an urban theorist (eg Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Manuel Castells), a work of criticism by a scholar of Spanish urbanism, and one or more creative works.

Please click onto this link for more information: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/hispanic/courses/SmithSyllabus.pdf

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature - Orientalismos en la literatura hispánica y el mundo de habla portuguesa
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15, Rm. 4433, 4 credits, Prof. Tinajero, [17473]

En este curso se analizarán diversos discursos orientales en la literatura peninsular, latinoamericana y en el mundo de habla portuguesa. Los estudiantes leerán cuentos, poemas, ensayos, capítulos de novelas y relatos de viaje para comprender diferentes formas de representación y aproximación a las culturas del Medio y Lejano Oriente. Se leerán pasajes o textos completos de Cervantes, Balbuena, Fernández de Lizardi, Eça de Queirós, Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Darío, Gómez Carrillo, Tablada, Malba Tahan, Borges, Paz, Bolaño y Alberto Olmos. Los estudiantes tendrán la oportunidad de ver una película y de apreciar obras de arte de temática orientalista también. Se ofrecerá una amplia bibliografía para que el alumnado tenga la oportunidad de investigar y elaborar un trabajo final (en español o portugués) en torno a una obra no leída en clase.

ONE-CREDIT MINI-SEMINARS

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Barcelona y la modernidad
GC: February 3, 6, 24 and 27, 1:30-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. Brad Epps, Harvard Univ., [17471](Rodoreda Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

Examines the construction, expansion, and transformation of Barcelona as the cultural capital of Catalonia and as a site of political and aesthetic experimentation from the mid-19th century to the present. Drawing on literature, visual arts, architecture, urban planning, film, and music, we explore national identity, nationalism, and language; bilingualism and multiculturalism; and the relations between art and economics, political conformity and resistance.

SPAN 87500 – Seminar: Special Topics in Galician Literature - Returns of the Native: Vernacular Pasts, Cosmopolitan Futures in Modern Galician Culture
GC: Monday, 3/5 – Friday, 3/9, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. José María Rodríguez García, Duke Univ., [17474] (Galician Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

This mini-seminar introduces a relatively broad range of Galician writing from the last 150 years through a representative selection of shorter texts: 3 novellas (each only 50-100 pages-long); excerpts from doctrinal and journalistic prose dealing with the development of a consciousness of national or regional self-differentiation; and a significant amount of poems mostly by women. A few paintings and photographs will also be shown and commented upon in class. Among the topics highlighted in the seminar are these three. First, the conflicted participation of an increasing number of Galician-monolingual authors in the well-established "estado das autonomías literarias," in which market success and critical validation obtained in Madrid powerfully influence production in the homeland and gradually push politically charged discourses to the fringes of the literary and cultural plurisystem. Second, the waning of agrarian and vernacular identities, which will be illustrated through Manuel Rivas's transculturation of Xosé Neira Vilas's classic Bildungsroman and Yolanda Castaño's deliberate avoidance of every theme and motif found in Rosalía de Castro's nation-building discourse. And third, the role of Galicia in some of the emerging paradigms which have shaped the present and will likely influence the future of our larger field of research: Iberian studies and transatlantic studies as well as World Literature, the new sociology of literature, and the new cosmopolitanism. Narrative texts will be read in Spanish translation while all poems will be made available in a bilingual text, whether this is Galician-Spanish (Castaño, Rosalía, Eduardo Pondal, Ramiro Fonte) or Galician-English (Chus Pato, Ana Romaní). Class discussions will be conducted in Spanish.

SEE ALSO:

MUSIC 86200 – Local and Global Perspectives in Spanish Music
GC: Wednesday, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Rm. 3389, 3 credits, Profs. Peter Manuel and Antoni Piza, [17447]
(cross-listed with SPAN 87000, 3 credits, [18107])

Local and Global Perspectives in Spanish Music explores selected topics in Spanish music. While providing a historical overview of music in Spain, special attention will be devoted to subjects including: flamenco (history, formal structures, sub-styles, and social status), the Hispanic legacy in the Americas, contemporary popular music (in Ibiza and elsewhere), the guitar and its repertoire, legacies of the cosmopolitan Moorish period (including Judeo-Spanish music and North African Andalusian music), and images of Spain in the European imagination. Genres and composers to be discussed include zarzuela, habanera, vihuela, art and vernacular song traditions, and the music of Falla, Albéniz, Soler, Victoria, Scarlatti, and other twentieth-century composers. Invited guests may include specialists in flamenco guitar and dance, classical guitar music, and North African Andalusian music. The course combines topics and approaches associated with ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and popular music studies.

Fall 2011

THREE-CREDIT COURSES

SPAN 70200 – Spanish Literary Theory
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4422, 3 credits, Prof. Perkowska, [15913]

SPAN 70300 – Introduction to Methods of Research
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4419, 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [15914]

SPAN 72900 – Spanish in Social Context
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 7395, 3 credits, Prof. Otheguy, [15915]
(cross-listed with LING 79400)

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Text Editing and Paleography
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3305, 3 credits, Dr. O'Neill, [15919]

FOUR-CREDIT SEMINARS

SPAN 80000 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Linguistics – Language and Citizenship in National and Transnational Contexts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3310A, 4 credits, Prof. del Valle, [15918]
(cross-listed with LING 79600)

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – South of the River, North of the Desert: Contemporary Mexican Narrative in the Margins of Modernity
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4433, 4 credits, Prof. Zavala, [15921]

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Beyond Tradition: Lyric Poetry and Colonial Criollismo
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Rm. 4422, 4 credits, Prof. Chang-Rodríguez, [15922]

SPAN 87200 – Seminar: Special Topics in Hispanic Literature – The Cinemas of Pedro Almodóvar and Guillermo del Toro
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 9105, 4 credits, Prof. Smith, [15923], (taught in English)
(cross-listed with FSCP 81000)

PORT 88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Portuguese Literature I – Modernismo or Vanguardias? Brazilian Modernism and Latin American Avant-garde
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3310B, 4 credits, Prof. Santos, [15924], (taught in Spanish)

ONE-CREDIT MINI-SEMINARS

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Novelistas españolas del siglo XXI y compromiso histórico
GC: Thursday, 9/22 & Friday, 9/23, 1:00-4:00pm, Saturday, 9/24, 10:00am-2:00pm, Rm. 5212,
1 credit, Prof. Diez de Revenga, [15920]
(Delibes Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Cultura y cambio político en Euskadi
GC: Monday, 9/12 – Friday, 9/16, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. Atxaga, [16617]
(Basque Institute & Bernardo Atxaga Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Dictadura, novela y memoria en Argentina
GC: Tuesday, 10/11 – Friday, 10/14, 1:30-4:00 p.m., Rm. 4116.18, 1 credit, Prof. de Diego, [16618]
(Argentine Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

CROSS-LISTED COURSES

RSCP 72100 – Introduction to Renaissance Studies: Cultural Exchanges in the Renaissance
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 3309, 3 or 4 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [15925], (taught in English)
(cross-listed with SPAN 82000)

UED 71100 – Bilingualism and Education: Global Sociolinguistic Perspectives
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Rm. 4419, 3 credits, Prof. Garcia, [15926], (taught in English)
(cross-listed with SPAN 80100)

Course Description

THREE-CREDIT COURSES

SPAN 70200 – Spanish Literary Theory
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Perkowska, [15913]

The twentieth century has witnessed the development of a wide range of theories of literature that have influenced our reading, understanding, and criticism of both genres and works. This course is an introduction to the history and practice of modern literary and cultural theory. We will examine the issues of meaning, interpretation, criticism, and ideology from different theoretical perspectives, focusing on Post-structuralism and Deconstruction, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Feminism and Gender Studies, Marxism and New Historicism, and Postcolonial Theories. Discussion of each approach will focus on theoretical premises and implications, and will investigate argumentation and ground for critique. In addition, we will apply these theoretical models to a variety of selected texts in order to illustrate how theory models our understanding of a literary work.

SPAN 70300 – Introduction to Methods of Research
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, [15914]

In this course the purpose is to study the methods and techniques developed for the annotation of Hispanic texts written in all literary periods, from the Middle Ages to our times. Problems to be addressed are: the multicultural and multinational characteristics of the Spanish language; the different approaches to textual annotation that exist - grammatical, rhetorical and lexical notes, their nature and scope; historical and cultural elements. The history, characteristics and uses of dictionaries, vocabularies, concordances and grammar books as well as more contemporary technological resources. This course was structured as a workshop. Students will be asked to annotate specific works assigned in advance and should be ready to discuss their research in class. There will be a required annotation of a different text given three days in advance to each student as a form of final examination.

SPAN 72900 – Spanish in Social Context
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Otheguy, [15915]

The course will address issues of Spanish as seen from the point of view of the sociolinguistics of language and the sociolinguistics of society (or, as these two approaches are also known, variationist sociolinguistics and the sociology of language). Under the first approach, we will study variable features of Spanish phonology and morphosyntax, as these are conditioned by external factors (personal and socio-demographic) and internal factors (morphosyntactic and communicative). We will also consider some of the classic issues of Latin American and Peninsular dialectology. Under the second approach, we will ask the root sociology-of-language question, that is, who speaks what to whom where and for what purposes, as it applies to Spanish-speaking settings in Latin America, the Peninsula, and the Hispanic communities of the United States. Classes will be conducted in Spanish (but questions can be asked, and will be answered, in English). Some readings will be in Spanish, others in English. Exams and papers are written in Spanish or English, according to the student's choice.

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Text Editing and Paleography
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Dr. O'Neill, [15919]

The course will present an introduction to paleography, lexicography and the transcription of manuscript material. We will focus on manuscripts from the medieval, colonial and Golden Age periods. Students will gain firsthand experience working with original material selected from the collections of The Hispanic Society of America. We will also study the theory of editing early modern texts and the place of the manuscript in the intellectual and cultural environments of early modern Spain.

FOUR-CREDIT SEMINARS

SPAN 80000 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Linguistics – Language and Citizenship in National and Transnational Contexts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. del Valle, [15918]
(cross-listed with LING 79600)

In this seminar, we examine the politics of language representation in the Spanish-speaking world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the various nation-building processes undertaken by Spain's former colonies, in Spain's own efforts to develop as a homogeneous modern nation, and in the tensions generated by divergent conceptualizations of a transatlantic Spanish-speaking community, we often find language taking center stage either as a tool or as an object of political action. We will review the nature and implications of policies that aimed at the construction of culturally and linguistically homogeneous communities – both national and transnational – as well as metalinguistic discourses in which questions of citizenship and cultural autonomy – again, in national and transnational dimensions – were being worked out. We will analyze Andrés Bello's Gramática castellana, the orthographic controversies in Chile, Spain's officialization of the Royal Spanish Academy's orthography, the creation of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, the polemic between Juan Valera and Rufino José Cuervo over the fragmentation of Spanish and the unity of the cultural field, Pedro Henríquez Ureña's racialization of Dominican Spanish, the debates surrounding "el idioma nacional de los argentinos" and the constitution of a national literature, the scholarly treatment of Spanish by the Madrid School of Spanish philology, and more recent policies aimed at affirming a pan-Hispanic community. The theoretical backdrop will be provided by discussions of classical (Haugen, Fishman) and critical (Canagarajah, Crowley, Milroy/Milroy, Parakrana) theories of language standardization, of both historiographical and anthropological approaches to linguistic ideologies (Joseph/Taylor, Schieffelin/Woolard/Kroskrity, Kroskrity), and of treatments of language, citizenship and modern subjectivity in Latin America (Julio Ramos, González Stephan, Narvaja de Arnoux). Students will write two-page reaction papers on a bi-weekly basis, do an in-class presentation of an assigned article, and take mid-term and final take-home exams. [The course will be conducted in Spanish but students are free to speak and write in English].

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – South of the River, North of the Desert: Contemporary Mexican Narrative in the Margins of Modernity
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Zavala, [15921]

Seminar description: The north of Mexico, and especially the border with the U.S., has been portrayed either as a region of a problematical but celebrated cultural hybridity, or as an expansive slum of extreme poverty and senseless violence. An essential objectification of the border seems to be articulated out of these two radical poles without assessing practices of cultural agency and resistance, which in turn reveal dynamics of power constituting hegemonic and centralized discourses of nationalism. In the last two decades, however, a trend in Mexican narrative has emerged challenging these notions while privileging the north as the complex space for political, historical, economical and sociological (re)narration of the nation. This seminar analyzes the works of narrators as they search for counterhegemonic representations and (re)narrations of this region: Daniel Sada, Roberto Bolaño, David Toscana, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Yuri Herrera, Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda, and Élmer Mendoza. These authors' works will be examined vis-à-vis debates on modernity and national identity through selections by Alfonso Reyes, Octavio Paz, Carlos Monsiváis, Roger Bartra, Claudio Lomnitz and Joshua Lund, and theoretical approaches by Homi Bhabha, Walter Mignolo, Alberto Moreiras, Slavoj Zizek, Jacques Rancière, and Alain Badiou. Course requirements: Each week students will write a one-page response paper to a question posed by the professor. All students will deliver an individual in-class presentation covering one text or topic discussed. Students will write a term paper that expands on their class presentation.

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Beyond Tradition: Lyric Poetry and Colonial Criollismo
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Chang-Rodríguez, [15922]

The aim of this course is to explore how New World poets in viceregal America assimilated and often subverted Spanish poetic tradition. The discussions will include the manner in which Spanish themes and models were appropriated to produce a singular vision of America and its colonial subjects. The analyses will underscore how the New World poet, when expressing their concerns and interests, contributed to developing a "conciencia criolla." Authors to be discussed include: the anonymous women poets from Peru, Bernardo de Balbuena, Silvestre de Balboa, Juan del Valle y Caviedes. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz will receive special attention in order to highlight the concerns of women and other marginalized subjects. Among the objectives of the course are: to situate the writers in a historical and literary grid, to study their work as paradigmatic texts of a "mestizo" poetic tradition, and to pay special attention to understudied authors through individual research projects. Discussions will be illustrated with images and communication facilitated through the use of Blackboard. The specific bibliography will be distributed in class. Among General Requirements: Oral presentations; term essay (MLA Style); written class exercise. Active class participation is expected and it should reflect previous reading of the assigned texts and critical material. Texts to be purchased: 1) "Aquí, ninfas del sur, venid ligeras." Voces poéticas virreinales. Ed. R. Chang-Rodríguez. Madrid/Fráncfort: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2008; 2) Bernardo de Balbuena, Grandeza mexicana (any ed.); 3) Silvestre de Balboa, Espejo de paciencia. Ed. Raúl Marrero Fente. Madrid: Cátedra, 2010.

SPAN 87200 – Seminar: Special Topics in Hispanic Literature – The Cinemas of Pedro Almodóvar and Guillermo del Toro
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Smith, [15923], (taught in English)
(cross-listed with FSCP 81000)

This course, which will be taught for the first time in Fall 2011 and requires no knowledge of Spanish, examines the works of contemporary Spain and Mexico's most successful filmmakers, critically and commercially. These two figures might appear to be very different and, indeed, have formally collaborated only when Almodóvar produced del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, shot and set in Spain. Although he has greater transnational projection than perhaps any other European filmmaker, Almodóvar has filmed all seventeen features in his home country and language; while del Toro, with just seven films, has made for himself a nomadic career in two languages and three countries. Yet it can be argued that the pair has a great deal in common. For example, both directors have embraced transmedia, going beyond the feature film. Almodóvar's production company has expanded into television and theater; del Toro is a respected creator in the fields of the comic book and novel. Their internet presence is also substantial. The aims of the course are industrial, critical, and theoretical. First, Almodóvar is placed in the context of audiovisual production in Spain, while del Toro (as director and producer) is contextualized within the 'golden triangle' of Mexico, Europe, and the US. Second, both cineastes are interrogated for signs of auteurship (a consistent aesthetic and media image), sharing as they do a self-fashioning that takes place, unusually, within the confines of genre cinema (comedy/melodrama and fantasy/horror, respectively). Finally, the course explores how English-language critics have assimilated these two Spanish-speaking directors to debates in Anglo-American film studies that draw on psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, and the transnational.

PORT 88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Portuguese Literature I – Modernismo or Vanguardias? Brazilian Modernism and Latin American Avant-garde
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Santos, [15924], (taught in Spanish)

The course offers a contrastive comparison between Brazilian Modernismo and Latin American Vanguardias. Although both nominations refer to the same chronological period – the 20s of 20th Century, rarely they are recognized as such by Brazilians and Spanish speakers Latin Americans. Contrasting the poetry of Mario de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira with poets such as Cesar Vallejo o Nicolas Guillén, the prose of Oswald de Andrade and Martin Adan, among others, aims to fulfill the gaps of knowledge of the literature written in this period in Latin American, in Portuguese and in Spanish. On the other hand, the exposure of the students to the works of writers of both languages aims to broad the knowledge of the literatures written in each one of these specific languages. Avant-garde theories will be use as a theoretical support.Textbook: Las Vanguardias Latinoamericanas (Tierra Firme) (Spanish Edition) Jorge Schwartz (Author). The original edition, in Portuguese, is also available.
ONE-CREDIT SEMINARS

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Novelistas españolas del siglo XXI y compromiso historíco
GC: Day:TBA, 1 credit, Prof. Diez de Revenga, [15920]
(Delibes Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

Numerosas novelistas españolas actuales han publicado, en la primera década del siglo XXI (2001-2010), narraciones en las que forma parte de los materiales narrativos un importante componente basado en hechos de la reciente historia de España y de Europa, de manera que personajes y tramas se ven mediatizados por las reacciones ante acontecimientos dramáticos de la realidad histórica del siglo anterior. Las nuevas escritoras, al contrario que los novelistas, expresan así su compromiso con la historia reciente, que afecta especialmente a mujeres protagonistas y otros personajes femeninos.

1. Las secuelas de la Guerra de España.
2. España durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
3. El franquismo y sus consecuencias.
4. La España de la transición: de la esperanza al desengaño.
5. La España actual: terrorismo, crisis económica, crisis social.

SPAN 87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature – Cultura y cambio político en Euskadi
GC: Monday, 9/12 – Friday, 9/16, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 1 credit, Prof. Atxaga, [16617]
(Basque Institute & Bernardo Atxaga Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

Muchos lingüistas del pasado afirmaron que la lengua vasca o euskara desaparecería a mediados del siglo XX. Pero, muy al contrario, tanto la lengua vasca como su literatura se hicieron cada vez más fuertes, hasta el extremo de tener hoy un espacio propio entre las culturas de Europa. La primera parte del curso tratará de explicar este "misterio". En la segunda, se hablará fundamentalmente de literatura tratando de responder a preguntas básicas como: ¿Qué es tradición? ¿Qué es plagio? ¿Qué función cumple el espacio geográfico en las novelas? ¿Qué lugar ocupa hoy la poesía? En general, el curso tratará de ser una sucesión de casos prácticos evitando el discurso meramente teórico.

SPAN 87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Dictadura, novela y memoria en Argentina
GC: Tuesday, 10/12 – Friday, 10/14, 1:30-4:00 p.m., 1 credit, Prof. de Diego, [16618]
(Argentine Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

Este mini-seminario examinará debates político-intelectuales en Argentina entre 1970 y 1990, puestos en relación con las novelas más sobresalientes producidas en años de la dictadura, como Respiración artificial (1980) de Ricardo Piglia, Nadie nada nunca (1980) de Juan José Saer, La vida entera (1981) de Juan Martini o El vuelo del tigre (1981) de Daniel Moyano.

CROSS-LISTED COURSES

RSCP 70100 - Introduction to Renaissance Studies: Cultural Exchanges in the Renaissance
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 or 4 credits, Prof. Schwartz, [15925], (taught in English)
(cross-listed with SPAN 82000)

This course will examine some Italian encounters with the ancient classics, which fostered the invention of new literary forms and new literary voices, and their impact on sixteenth-century French and Spanish literature. It will focus on the shaping of this movement promoted by Petrarch, and on its development in the following centuries with the works of Alberti, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus and other famous humanists. Special attention will be given to the function fulfilled by translators of texts written in Greek into Latin, and of both Greek and Latin into the modern languages, who helped disseminate philosophical theories and literary forms of expression after the invention of the printing press, thus becoming mediators between classical and Renaissance authors. Translation will be also considered in its propaedeutic function as a first step in the practice of imitation, which ruled the composition of artistic works and constituted a main tenet of Renaissance aesthetics. New literary voices and cultural figures to be explored will encompass the Neoplatonic lover, the humanist and the courtier; among new literary forms, Menippean satire, as composed after the model of Lucian, which became very influential after the fifteenth century. Readings will include poems by Petrarch, Ronsard, Garcilaso de la Vega and Herrera; Ficino's Dell'amore; Alberti's Momus; Erasmus's Colloquies; Castiglione's Il cortegiano, and Cervantes's exemplary novels.

UED 71100 – Bilingualism and Education: Global Sociolinguistic Perspectives
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Garcia, [15926], (taught in English)
(cross-listed with SPAN 80100)
This seminar will explore how theories of bilingualism/multilingualism can be a lens to think about policies, programs and practices to meaningfully educate the increasing number of bilingual children throughout the world. In reviewing theories of bilingualism/multilingualism, the seminar will put special emphasis on post-structuralist sociolinguistic approaches to the topic, and how these can lead to a re-imagining of education for all bilingual children in the 21st century. Taking a global approach, the seminar will include international contexts, but will also pay close attention to the education of bilingual children in the United States, especially of Latino children.

SPAN 70200    Spanish Literary Theory
3 credits, Prof. Childers

This course will survey major trends in twentieth-century literary theory, beginning with formalist approaches and continuing with varieties of historicist/ideological analysis. During the last third of the semester, we will examine theoretical questions of particular interest to Hispanists, such as the Baroque and Neobaroque, or cultural hybridity and magical realism. The primary focus will be on the use of theory to illuminate individual texts. To that end, each student will choose a single, canonical text to work on from a variety of theoretical viewpointsover the course of the semester.

SPAN 70300    Introduction to Methods of Research
3 credits, Prof. Lerner

The purpose of this course is to study the methods and techniques developed for the annotation of Hispanic texts written in all literary periods, from the Middle Ages to our times. Problems to be addressed are the multicultural and multinational characteristics of the Spanish language; the different approaches to textual annotation that exist – grammatical, rhetorical and lexical notes, their nature and scope; historical and cultural elements; the history, characteristics and uses of dictionaries, vocabularies, concordances and grammar books as well as more contemporary technological resources. This course is structured as a workshop. Students will be asked to annotate specific works assigned in advance and should be ready to discuss their research in class.

SPAN 72100    Medieval Prose: From the Exemplum to the Novela
3 credits, Prof. Di Camillo

SPAN 72900    Introduction to Spanish Sociolinguistics
3 credits, Prof. Otheguy, (cross listed with Ling 76100)

The course will address issues of Spanish as seen from the point of view of the sociolinguistics of language and the sociolinguistics of society or, as these two approaches are also known, variationist sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. Classes will be conducted in Spanish. Some readings will be in English, others in Spanish. Written work and class discussion will be in the language chosen by the student. Under the first approach, we will study variable features of Spanish phonology and morphysyntax as these are conditioned by internal and external factors and studied in multivariate analyses. Under the second approach, we will ask the classic sociology-of-language question, who speaks what to whom where and for what purposes, as it applies to Spanish-speaking settings in Latin America, the Peninsula, and the Hispanic communities of the United States.

SPAN 76700    Spanish-American Novel since 1960: The Rewriting of the 19th Century
3 credits, Prof. Filer

In the second half of the 20th Century many Spanish American novelists reached back into the past in search for the roots of the political and cultural crisis that affected their countries at the time of their writing. The19th Century, a period that covers the struggles for independence and for national organization, became the object of frequent reinterpretation. By questioning the official texts, and writing apocryphal alternative histories, the novelists created a space for reflection and criticism, and enhanced the historical consciousness of their readers. While new authors and literary strategies have emerged, and we are now in the 21rst Century, the production of novels that dwell on the past continues unabated. The course offers an analysis of representative novels by Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Juan José Saer, César Aira and María Rosa Lojo.

SPAN 77600    Spanish-American Theatre: Theatre and Performance in, about, and around Buenos Aires
4 credits, Prof. Graham-Jones, (cross listed with Theater 86000)

This course will survey the history of theatre and performance in Buenos Aires, from (and before) the city's two foundings to the present high level of activity.  We will look at related theatrical production taking place around Buenos Aires, especially in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, in order to situate the city's theatre and performance within a larger River Plate context.  Finally, this course will also include productions about Buenos Aires, such as the work produced by Argentinean expatriates and exiles as well as plays and performances in which Buenos Aires appears as subject.  Thus we will look closely not only at the complex relations of "immigrant" and "native" cultures present in the earlier traditions of the drama gauchesco, sainete criollo, and grotesco criollo; we will also trace the various currents in twentieth- and twenty-first-century practices through some of the key individual and group practitioners. There will be a series of required online responses and interventions, as well as a final research paper.  Please note that this course has a prerequisite: all students are expected to have reading knowledge of Spanish.  While every effort will be made to provide the texts in English translation, not all of the plays, transcripts, or secondary materials have been translated into English.  The final research paper may be written in English or Spanish; class discussion will be conducted in English.

SPAN 80000    Studies in Spanish Linguistics
4 credits, Prof. Otheguy, (cross listed with Ling 82100)

The purpose of the course is for students (a) to become familiar with the literature on variable linguistic phenomena, (b) to learn to discuss this literature critically and to evaluate the role of variability within linguistic theory, (c) to understand the effect of social factors on linguistic phenomena, (d) to understand and learn to develop social and linguistic constraint hierarchies for the analysis of variable linguistic phenomena, (e) to learn the basic statistical tools used in variationist research (correlation, anova, multiple regression, and logistic regression) using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and (f) to design a variationist research project using data from the language of their choice. In preparation for the course, students may want to read Chapter 8 of Ralph Fasold’s The sociolinguistics of language, entitled ‘Linguistic Variation’, as well as some of the papers in J.K. Chambers et al.’s, The handbook of language variation and change, which will be used in the course.

SPAN 86200    The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
4 credit, Prof. Gottlieb

An examination of Neruda’s major poetic works, the most significant critical studies of his work, and the influence of his work on contemporary Latin American poetry. Required Readings:Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, Residencia en la tierra, Canto general, Odas elementales, Estravagario, Los versos del capitán, Cien sonetos de amor, Memorial de Isla Negra, and  Confieso que he vivido.


SPAN 87000    Special Topics in Spanish Literature: The Theory and Practice of Editing Hispanic Text
3 credits, Dr. O'Neill

The course will study the development and evolution of the printed text in the Hispanic world from its beginnings to ca. 1830, with special emphasis on the medieval and Golden Age periods. We will also study the theory of editing early modern printed texts and will transcribe various texts.

SPAN 87000    Special Topics in Spanish Literature: El Barroco español y la Generación del 27 (Delibes Chair)
1 credit, Prof. Aurora Egido (University of Zaragoza), (mini-course, 10 hours)

SPAN 87100    Evolución de la prosa femenina hispanoamericana (siglos XIX y XX)
4 credits, Prof. Guiñazú

This course examines the writing of Spanish American Women from the 1850’s to the present. Since they began writing professionally, women writers have questioned and confronted traditional ideologies concerning gender, class, race, women rights, and the power of institutions. In their texts, the creative process becomes a way to explore social reality and its incidence on identity. We will pay special attention to the historical evolution brought about by political and social change. We will also include discussion of the critical and theoretical texts that frame their work. Texts may include works by the following authors: Juana Manuela Gorriti, Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, María Luisa Bombal, Elena Poniatowska, Marta Traba, Laura Restrepo, Sara Sefchovich, Teresa Porzecanski, and others.

SPAN 87500    Studies in Galician Literature: La diversidad lingüística en España: realidades, ideologías y discursos
1 credit, Prof. Anxo Lorenzo, (mini-course, 10 hours)

Spain’s political transition from dictatorship to democracy came hand in hand with a linguistic transition: from a de facto ban on the usage of autochtonous languages other than Castilian to their partial legal recognition in the 1978 Constitution – which adopted a model that established the monolingualism of the center and the bilingualism of the periphery. This “linguistic transition” revolved around the organization of political, legal, and administrative instruments that turned language policy into a terrain for government intervention on behalf of the dignity and recovery of autochtonous languages. The objective of this seminal is to analyze three aspects of this glottopolitical and sociolinguistic process: first, to assess the outcome of language policy in autonomous communities; second, to identify the Spanish State’s policy with respect to linguistic diversity in Spain as well as its consequences; and third, to analyze discourses and ideologies surrounding language and language policy as were deployed during this period.

PORT 73400    Brazilian Fiction of the 20th Century: Latin American Essay/Brazilian Criticism in Comparative Perspective
3 credits, Prof. Santos

During this course the students will examine the Brazilian essay in a contrastive comparison with Spanish American essay. From Colonial to contemporary authors, the readings point to the nation-building process and its contemporary deconstruction. Essays written by Antonil, José de Alencar, Joaquim Nabuco, Machado de Assis, Gilberto Freyre, Mário de Andrade and Haroldo de Campos will be compared with Spanish American texts authored by Clavijero, Sarmiento, Rodó, José Vasconcelos and  Octavio Paz, among others.


See Also:

IDS 81640    New World Baroque: Film & Fiction from the Americas
3 credits, Prof. Jerry Carlson & Prof. Lidia Santos

This course will investigate films and literary narratives from the USA, Brazil and the Caribbean from the last 70 years of the 20th century. The concept of Baroque as applied here refers to the broad inclusion of different artistic and cultural elements as well as multiple constructive principles within the same work.  Historical and cultural events such as the Good Neighbor Policy and the appearance of new cultural identities will be treated within a hemispheric perspective. Filmmakers include Orson Welles, Glauber Rocha. Olivers Stone, and Tomas Gutierrez Alea, among others. Alejo Carpentier, William Faulkner, Vinicius de Moraes and Senel Paz are some of the writers to be examined. The Brazilian cultural movement Tropicália will also be discussed. Attention will  be paid to theories of the New World Baroque proposed by Carlos Fuentes, Jose Lezama Lima, Edouard Glissant, Lois Zamora, and others.

FSC 81000    Contemporary Hispanic Cinema
3 credits, Prof. Nora Glickman