COURSE LISTINGS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70100 [55077] – Spanish as a Historical Problem
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
SPAN 70200 [55066] – Critical Theory
GC: Thursday, 4:15 pm-6:15 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
SPAN 80000 [55070] - Glottopolitical Approaches to Latin American
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
SPAN 80100 [55073] – The Sociolinguistics of Computer-Mediated Communication
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Matt Garley and Prof. Cecilia Cutler
(cross listed with LING79300)
SPAN 85000 [55079]– The City in Contemporary Spanish Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith
(Cross-listed with CL 86500 and Film Studies 81000)
SPAN 87000 [55069] -- Theorizing Latin American Masculinities
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapía
SPAN 87100 [55076] – Cuerpos letrados: performance y política en América Latina
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Fernando Degiovanni
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 [62311] - La planificación lingüística contemporánea de la lengua catalana
GC: Dates: November 30 – December 4, 2020
Time: TBD, Prof. Miguel Ángel Pradilla Cardona
(Rodoreda Chair)
SPAN 87200 [62310] – La creación literaria de Bernardo Atxaga: memoria y escritura
GC: Dates: October 26-30, 2020, Time: TBD, Prof. María José Olaziregi
(Atxaga Chair)
See Also
SPAN 88800 [55078] – Dissertation Seminar
GC: Tuesday, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, Prof. Fernando Degiovanni
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70100 [55077] – Spanish as a Historical Problem
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
Este curso propone un recorrido por varias articulaciones de la lengua española y la historia; una lectura a contrapelo –por momentos acaso irónica– sobre las estrategias de constitución del objeto "lengua española" bajo condiciones disciplinarias y políticas diversas. La perspectiva glotopolítica que aquí se adopta invita a aproximarse de manera reflexiva y crítica a las conceptualizaciones del lenguaje y a las formas de producción de conocimiento que configuran como objetos –y objectos de estudio– legítimos, por ejemplo, la emergencia histórica del español como “lengua”, su evolución orgánica, su forma correcta y las circunstancias de su propagación por la Península Ibérica, por el continente americano and beyond. La propuesta consiste en abordar discursos culturales, órdenes disciplinarios y proyectos políticos a través del estudio de la lengua española como práctica social y de sus representaciones ideológicas.
SPAN 70200 [55066] – Critical Theory
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
Students will be introduced to the main concepts, debates, and currents within contemporary theory central to the study of literary texts and other cultural objects. We will discuss and contextualize the latest developments with regard to Memory and Human Rights, Performance and Subjectivity, Empire and Coloniality, and State and Nation--the four critical areas of our graduate program’s required First Examination--exploring the fundamental assumptions at stake. Our studies may include theorists and thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Linda Alcoff, Aleida Assmann, Judith Butler, Enrique Dussel, Roberto González Echevarría, Marianne Hirsch, Pierre Nora, Anibal Quijano, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Diana Taylor, among others. We will use Latin American literary texts and other cultural objects to test the theories under discussion. The course attempts to give students the tools to continue their own explorations in this field of study.
SPAN 80000 [55070] – Glottopolitical Approaches to Latin America
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
In this seminar, we will examine the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of glottopolitical studies. We will follow the pathway drawn by works such as Guespin / Marcellesi (1986), Elvira Arnoux (2000), Burke, Crowley / Girvin (2000), Joseph (2006), Del Valle (2007 y 2013), Del Valle / Arnoux (2010), Arnoux / Nothstein (2013) in order to examine how research in the humanities and social sciences may benefit from taking a glottopolitical perspective on society and social change. The seminar will focus on Latin America (though we will make some incursions into the US and Spain) in order to identify and analyze the glottopolitical dimensions of phenomena such as the spread of neoliberalism, neo-nationalism and neo-colonialism, processes of regional integration, the political activation of indigenous cultures, the advancement of feminism, and the tactics of social revolt against capitalism.
SPAN 80100 [55073] - The Sociolinguistics of Computer Mediated Communication
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Matt Garley and Prof. Cecilia Cutler
(cross listed with LING 79300)
This course examines recent quantitative and qualitative sociolinguistic research on language use, attitudes, ideologies, and practices in computer-mediated communication (CMC) with a special focus on Spanish language data. It explores research on topics such as multilingualism, creative orthography, script choice, language play, stance-taking, expressions identity and other topics across various CMC platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, online fora, blogs, microblogs, YouTube, SMS/texting, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The course will provide students with the chance to collect a small corpus of data and analyze it using sociolinguistic methods and frameworks.
SPAN 85000 [55079] – The City in Contemporary Spanish Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts
GC: Wednesday, 4.15-6.15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith
(Cross-listed with CL 86500 and Film Studies 81000)
This course, which is taught in Spanish, examines the modern Spanish city. It addresses the media of novel (Martín Santos, Laforet, Goytisolo), visual art (painter Antonio López, web artist Marisa González), and, especially film (Almodóvar, Amenábar, Alex de la Iglesia, Montxo Armendáriz, Ventura Pons) and television (TVE’s classic serials Fortunata y Jacinta and La Regenta, El Deseo's urban dramedy Mujeres, Antena 3's sitcom Aquí no hay quien viva).
Each class examines an urban theorist (e.g. Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Manuel Castells), a work of criticism by a scholar of Spanish urbanism, and one or more creative works.
The learning goals of the course are thus to familiarize students to the representation of the Spanish city in visual media; to train them in textual and formal analysis; and to integrate urban theory into media studies.
Grading is by written exam (25%), student oral participation, weekly web posting, and presentation (25%) and final paper (50%).
SPAN 87000 [55069] -- Theorizing Latin American Masculinities
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapía
Framed within new materialism, posthumanism and the affective turn, we will study diverse theoretical approaches to masculinity informed by feminist, queer and other critical gender scholarship (Amícola, Archetti, Bourdieu, Connell, Foucault, Halberstam, Kiesling, Molloy, Mosse, Muñoz, Preciado, Reeser, Rocha, Salessi, Sedgwick, Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Viveros-Vigoya, etc). Within this framework we will explore young masculinities, fatherhood, rural masculinities, military masculinities, revolutionary masculinities, gay masculinities, and trans masculinities, among others—all of them complicated by race, class, and sexuality—as they appear in 20th and 21st century Cuban and Argentine works of literature and visual culture. We will discuss the transformation of “el hombre nuevo” as a normative notion of heterosexual masculinity in the works of Edmundo Desnoes, Abel González Melo, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Eduardo Heras León, Senel Paz, and Virgilio Piñera, while the works of César Aira, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Copi, Witold Gombrowicz, Osvaldo Lamborghini, among others, will serve as the basis for an investigation of problematic masculinities. In addition, tango lyrics and films such as De cierta manera by Sara Gómez (1997) and Memorias del Desarrollo (2000) by Miguel Coyula will also be discussed.
SPAN 87100 [55076] – Cuerpos letrados: performance y política en América Latina
GC: Tuesday, 4:15pm-6:15pm, Prof. Fernando Degiovanni
Este curso se propone como una exploración de la noción de intelectual más allá de su producción escrita. Trabajando aspectos usualmente marginalizados en el abordaje de su figura, tales como intervenciones en espacios públicos y masivos, nos planteamos la posibilidad de pensar la actividad intelectual como una práctica corporizada, dependiente de la voz y el gesto y formulada para un público que ve y oye. La historia del cuerpo letrado se puede rastrear en salones y cafés, tours de conferencias, discursos en asambleas masivas e intervenciones urbanas (entre muchos otros espacios), y plantea interrogantes distintos a los que presupone el abordaje del intelectual como productor de textos destinados a ser leídos. Nociones tales como espectacularización, populismo y género serán claves en este curso. El calendario de lecturas alternará textos primarios con perspectivas teóricas y críticas pertinentes a la problemática abordada, así como un trabajo sobre archivos
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 [62310] – La creación literaria de Bernardo Atxaga: memoria y escritura
GC: Dates: October 26-30, 2020
Time: TBD, Prof. María José Olaziregi
(Atxaga Chair)
La celebración del décimo aniversario del Bernardo Atxaga Chair nos sirve de pretexto para volver a adentrarnos en la obra del escritor vasco más premiado y traducido de todos los tiempos, Bernardo Atxaga. Es el suyo un universo que gusta de reflexionar sobre la literatura y dialogar con los maestros contemporaneos del cuento, dando voz a esa cultura minorizada y a ese Otro subalterno en obras universales como Obabakoak (1988). Otros textos del autor han recalado en nuestros conflictos politicos más recientes, en esa memoria histórica que inunda muchas de las creaciones ibéricas actuales para denunciar las injusticias ocurridas en el pasado y contribuir a la pacificación. Tal es el caso de novelas como la aclamada El hijo del acordeonista (2003). Una obra, en definitiva, que celebra el misterio de la vida y que juega con los límites de los géneros literarios, apostando en Diás de Nevada (2013) o en Casas y tumbas (2020), por la autobiografía y desplegando estrategias textuales próximas a la autoficción. Serán los cuatro textos de ficción mencionados los que guíen nuestro itinerario de lectura y los que establezcan un diálogo con la literatura vasca más reciente así como con las adaptaciones fílmicas de las novelas de Atxaga.
SPAN 87200 [62311] - La planificación lingüística contemporánea de la lengua catalana
GC: Dates: November 30 – December 4, 2020
Time: TBD, Prof. Miguel Ángel Pradilla Cardona
(Rodoreda Chair)
COURSE LISTINGS
Three-Credits
SPAN 76200 – Colonial Inquisition: The Dogs of God in the New World
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Mariana Zinni
SPAN 87000 – Todo nuevo bajo el sol. Re-Shaping Spanish Identity at the End of the 20th Century
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Alvaro Fernandez
SPAN 80200 – Critical Pedagogy and Language Learning
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Beatriz Lado
SPAN 87100 – The Neoliberal Promise of Happiness and Ugly Feelings: Post-Utopic Fiction and Film from Central America
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Magdalena Perkowska
SPAN 87100 – Raiding the Archive: Strategies from the Latin American Narrative Tradition
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87300– Women, Censorship, and the Nation: Gender and Cultural Production in the Early Franco Regime
GC: Monday, March 9 – Friday, March 13, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., Prof. María Elena Soliño
(Delibes Chair)
SPAN 87200 Consensus and Conflict in Catalan Culture (from 1898 to 1978)
GC: April 20-24, 2020, Professor Javier Krauel (Rodoreda Chair)
SPAN 80100- A roda hidráulica. Poéticas e políticas da contracultura en Galicia na transición postfranquista
GC: Monday May 4-8, 2020; 11:00 – 1:00pm, Professor Germán Labrador Méndez (González Millán Chair)
See Also
SPAN 88800 – Dissertation Seminar
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Three-Credits
SPAN 76200 – Colonial Inquisition: The Dogs of God in the New World
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Mariana Zinni
The Spanish Inquisition is not the well-oiled institution we assume at first time, nor the cruelest and bloodiest one. This course proposes an in-depth study of the ideology and practices of the Inquisition in the New World. We will study the influence of the Holy Office in four mayor fields: its conflictive relationship with the native population, its actions as major censorship agency and regulator of Catholic orthodoxy, its intervention on public and private lives, and its internal affairs. Paying attention to the lives and trades of unknown men and women whose names came to us only through their presence as plaintiffs or victims in legal and inquisitorial records, we will study the sometimes failing repressive apparatus of the Holy Office. By examining inquisitorial and legal documents and secondary literature, we will start to view the collective mentality of the era and its ideological formation. By doing so, we will analyze the influence of the Inquisition on multiple aspects of colonial life -- race, blood purity, sex -- and also the people under its fuero -- Crypto-Jews and heretics, witches and women healers, bigamists, gamblers, curas solicitantes, and false priests, among others. We will pay attention to the inner logic of the Holy Office in order to illuminate its effects on the political, economic, and social realms of colonial life.
We will read original Inquisition records such as AHN 1640, on false wedding celebrated by a false priest, AHN 1030 on bigamy, AHN 1028 on false holy mass and penance, AAL IIA12, on mass simulacrum, documents on spells and love magic, satanic possession and mystic experiences, adultery, sodomy and lovemaking with demons, the trials and punishments of the infamous auto-da-fe celebrated in Lima in 1639, Indian prosecutions –i.e. the polemic one on don Carlos Ometochtzin-, secondary bibliography on Holy Inquisition in both, Mexico and Peru (Greenblat, Alberro, Burns, Castañeda Delgado, Griffiths, Gubovich, Nesvig, Tavárez, among others), as well as critical articles on cases pertinent to the four major topics proposed.
SPAN 87000 – Todo nuevo bajo el sol. Re-Shaping Spanish Identity at the End of the 20th Century
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Alvaro Fernandez
Following the fall of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, Spain underwent a process of cultural re-imagining, supported both by the political class and the cultural industry. The Francoist image of an authoritarian, conservative society, bearing the marks of 40 years of ultra-catholic fascist dictatorship was actively re-shaped by the political and cultural élite in order to demonstrate that Spain succeeded in conquering its past and turned into a model society of 'modernity'. For the last four decades of the 20th century, the country went through a period of Transition, a process which amounted to the intellectual erasure of the memory of the previous regime. Spain became part of the European Union, which stands for a cosmopolitan, open society, and invested heavily in developing and concentrating its cultural industry. It actively engaged in the economic reconquest of Latin America, and at the end of the century faced the re-emergence of political discussions in the form of historical memory debates.
This course will consist of reading, watching and analyzing cultural products that were created along this transitional socio-political process. It will provide an opportunity to the students to examine and critically evaluate the social, political and cultural aspects of the Transition period and to examine the intersection of culture and politics in reshaping Spanish national identity.
Among other readings, the course will analyze: Aub’s La gallina ciega, Patino’s Nueva cartas a Berta, Espinosa’s La fea burguesía, Rosa’s El vano ayer and Marías’ Corazón tan blanco.
SPAN 80200 – Critical Pedagogy and Language Learning
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Beatriz Lado
This course provides students with a solid foundation in critical pedagogy in relation to the teaching of L2, L3, Ln, local, heritage, and foreign languages. The course includes a critical overview of language acquisition theories and teaching methods, and reflects on where Critical Pedagogy stands within Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching.
Students will examine how language teaching and testing often reproduce ideologies, politics, and social hierarchies, and will discuss classroom strategies to resist these practices. An important part of the course will be devoted to creating teaching materials (syllabi, lesson plans, tests) that help teachers and learners understand the socio-cultural, political, and ideological dimensions of language, and make them more sensitive to critical and social justice issues.
SPAN 87100 – The Neoliberal Promise of Happiness and Ugly Feelings: Post-Utopic Fiction and Film from Central America
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Magdalena Perkowska
In The Promise of Happiness (2010), Sara Ahmed critically addresses the promise of happiness that circulates in globalized society, defining people’s attitudes and expectations. She argues that, as on object of individual and social desire, happiness may mean agreement, going along or even willfully submitting to social norms. In this way, happiness can be used as a shield against the recognition of and engagement with political and social alternatives. In contrast, unhappiness and negativity are affective points of disagreement and, as such, judgmental and non-conforming.
Ugly feelings, as defined by Sianne Ngai in her eponymous study (2005), are “minor and generally unprestigious” emotions of a strong, diagnostic nature, because they have capacity of shedding light on “a real social experience and a certain kind of historical truth.” Central American cultural texts (novels, short stories and films) produced during the last two decades are full of such feelings: disenchantment, bitterness, anguish, anxiety, fear, disdain, frustration, sorrow, pain, melancholia, loss, and confusion are signifiers of disappointment with past utopias and present neoliberal restoration or reaffirmation of market capitalism. This course explores a selection of Central American fictions and films which will be read in conjunction with theoretical approaches to affect and emotions (Phillip Fischer, Sianne Ngai, Sara Ahmed, Ann Cvetkovich, Lauren Berlant, Ruth Leys, Martha Nussbaum, among others), neoliberalism (David Harvey, Wendy Brown), and politics and aesthetics (Rancière). We will examine unresolved tensions articulated through affects and emotions, and will fathom what commitments, if any, are encoded in these ‘feeling texts.’
SPAN 87100 – Raiding the Archive: Strategies from the Latin American Narrative Tradition
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó
In this course, we will analyze major theories concerning the archive (such as those by Foucault, Derrida, Guillory, González Echevarría, and those relating to biological and digital media--by Žižek, Lanier, and applications of Badiou) in order to understand how the archive figures in modern Latin American narrative. We will first examine passages from canonical works, such as Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab, Rivera’s La vorágine, Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara, and García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad, to understand the major intertexts embedded in our main corpus. We will then study eclectic notions of the archive as both repository and threat, in our main corpus of texts: archival dangers in Carlos Fuentes’s Aura, Kijadurías’s “De hijos suyos podernos llamar,” Ferré’s “La muñeca menor,” Sarduy’s Colibrí, and Borges’s “La biblioteca de Babel”/“El idioma analítico de John Wilkins”; archive of memory in Bolaño’s Nocturno de Chile and Padura Fuentes’s Adiós, Hemingway; and writing as punishment/pleasure in the archive in Puig’s El beso de la mujer araña and Sarduy’s Maitreya and “Omítemela más.” The course will be conducted in Spanish but students may participate in class and write their papers in English.
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 – Consensus and Conflict in Catalan Culture (from 1898 to 1978)
GC: Monday, April 20 – Friday, April 24, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., Prof. Javier Krauel
(Rodoreda Chair)
This seminar will investigate how consensus and conflict have played out in Catalan culture from 1898 to 1978. By focusing on momentous events in twentieth-century Catalan history, students will explore how cultural works (essay, narrative, poetry, and photography) respond to, and engage, social antagonisms. By paying special attention to social categorizations of class and nation, we will discuss works that will help us understand how some of Catalonia’s most prominent social theorists, novelists, poets, and visual artists responded to the crises and changes undergone by their societies (possible events include the Cuban-Spanish-American War of 1898, the deathly confrontations between the Spanish army and the Barcelona working class during the Tragic Week in 1909, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and the Spanish Transition to democracy in 1975-1978). The seminar will be conducted in Spanish, which will also be the main language of the readings.
SPAN 87300 – Women, Censorship, and the Nation: Gender and Cultural Production in the Early Franco Regime
GC: Monday, March 9 – Friday, March 13, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., Prof. María Elena Soliño
(Delibes Chair)
At the end of every war, official historians rush to codify the discourse that the victors will use to define the conflict for future generations. These politicized narratives will be used to convince their contemporaries that their version of events is the indisputable truth. These official histories are not limited to history books. Cultural productions, such as comics, films, novels, etc., reach a much wider audience.
The cultural productions of the early Franco regime exemplify how an authoritarian state uses the arts to attempt to indoctrinate its citizens into accepting restrictive roles in their new postwar realities. This is especially true with regard to issues of gender.
In this seminar, we shall examine: a. How women were portrayed in the war films of the early Franco regime b. How censorship was used to stifle female creativity c. How the regime attempted to codify acceptable female behavior through the use of popular culture. Taught in Spanish.
SPAN 80100- A roda hidráulica. Poéticas e políticas da contracultura en Galicia na transición postfranquista
GC: Monday May 4-8, 2020; 11:00 – 1:00pm, Professor Germán Labrador Méndez (González Millán Chair)
Este seminario quere estudar os movementos literarios e artísticos de carácter contracultural sucedidos en Galicia entre 1968 y 1986, atendendo en particular á súa dimensión poética. Así, pretende interrogarse polas loitas políticas, sociais, laborais e ecolóxicas do tardo-franquismo e da post-ditadura no contexto galego, interrogando os textos poéticos do underground vernáculo como un contrarrelato poético e político do período. As escrituras contraculturais fundarán daquela un arquivo de utopías, testemuñas e protestas, un laboratorio de formas de vida e de linguaxe. Entre os temas que os poetas galaicos elaborarán neses anos atoparase o terrorismo de estado, a emancipación literaria e subxectiva, a pantasma da Revolução dos Cravos, a politización da cultura popular, a literatura drogada, a memoria histórica e a imaxinación política de Galicia. Tamén reflexionaremos sobre a domesticación e subordinación da cultura galega tras 1978, no contexto da construción da Autonomía e do Fraguismo. Leremos textos de Méndez Ferrín, Novoneyra, Lois Pereiro, Xela Arias, Rompente, Carlos Oroza, Blanca Andreu e Xaime Noguerol, e analizaremos fanzines, super-8's, cómic, efémera, fotografías e outras formas poéticas e políticas da época. A nosa será, de novo, e con Pereiro, a pregunta pola interrupción do movemento perpetuo desa «roda hidráulica» «da historia universal da infamia».
COURSE LISTINGS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70100 – Spanish as a Historical Problem
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle, room 3306
SPAN 70200 – Critical Theory
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapía, room 4419
SPAN 80100 – Climate Change and Discursive Framing
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle and Prof. David Lindo Atichati, room 3309
SPAN 80100 - What’s in a Name?
GC: Thursday, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m., Prof. Ariana Mangual Figueroa, room 3305
SPAN 85000 – Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: teatro, cine, arte
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith, room 4422
SPAN 87000 – Contemporary Spanish & Mexican Cinema & Television
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith, room 4422
SPAN 87100 – Periodismo narrativo y ficción literaria en el México neoliberal: Políticas escriturales, estado de excepción y la industria cultural trasnacional
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala, room 4422
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 – Bullets and Letters: Post-ETA Euskadi and the Arts
GC: Monday, 10/7/2019 – Friday, 10/11/2019, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Annabel Martín, room 4116.18
(Atxaga Chair)
SPAN 87200 – Castellano y catalán en Cataluña: cuestiones normativas, estatus y actitudes lingüísticas
GC: Monday, 9/23/2019 – Friday, 9/27/2019, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Carsten Sinner, room 4116.18
(Rodoreda Chair)
See Also
SPAN 88800 – Dissertation Seminar
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapía
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70100 – Spanish as a Historical Problem
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
Este curso propone un recorrido por varias articulaciones de la lengua española y la historia; una lectura a contrapelo –por momentos acaso irónica– sobre las estrategias de constitución del objeto "lengua española" bajo condiciones disciplinarias y políticas diversas. La perspectiva glotopolítica que aquí se adopta invita a aproximarse de manera reflexiva y crítica a las conceptualizaciones del lenguaje y a las formas de producción de conocimiento que configuran como objetos –y objectos de estudio– legítimos, por ejemplo, la emergencia histórica del español como “lengua”, su evolución orgánica, su forma correcta y las circunstancias de su propagación por la Península Ibérica, por el continente americano and beyond. La propuesta consiste en abordar discursos culturales, órdenes disciplinarios y proyectos políticos a través del estudio de la lengua española como práctica social y de sus representaciones ideológicas.
SPAN 70200 – Critical Theory
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapía
The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the main concepts, debates, and currents of contemporary theory central to the study of literary texts and other cultural objects while providing historical and philosophical understanding of those concepts, theories, and debates. We will discuss and contextualize the latest developments with regard to Memory and Human Rights, Performance and Subjectivity, Empire and Coloniality, and State and Nation, the four critical areas of the graduate program’s required First Examination, exploring the way in which fundamental assumptions are at stake. Our studies include theorists and thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Linda Alcoff, Aleida Assmann, Judith Butler, Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, Michael Rothberg, León Rozitchner, Edward Said, and Beatriz Sarlo, among others. We will use Latin American literary texts and other cultural objects to “test” the theories under discussion. The course attempts to give students the “tools” to continue their own explorations in this field of study.
SPAN 80100 – Climate Change and Discursive Framing
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle and Prof. David Lindo Atichati
This course examines how scientific literature on climate change is discursively framed, how it becomes reframed as it travels to the social spaces where public opinion is negotiated, and how those linguistic and textual strategies shape and are shaped by the political economy of climate debates, that is, by the specific geopolitical and social positions of the different stake-holders. The climate literature produced by the specialized sciences is vast and not easy to transfer, on one hand, to the academic realm of the humanities and, on the other, to the complex public sphere where issues of political importance are selected and debated. Moreover, when climatologists disagree on the best ways to define climate phenomena or even their actual existence, it is difficult for the main political and social actors to assess the merit of the scientific discourse. We provide a discussion-style class of key emerging issues related to climate change using a critical discourse approach. Capitalizing on two weekly readings, students will infer the discursive features of the climate change debate, aiming at understanding the concepts that revolve around climate change in different political and social contexts. To that end, students will compare the diverse discursive patterns regarding climate change published in scientific journals (e.g. Science) with those published in journals and newspapers oriented towards a wider audience (e.g., The New Yorker). These pairwise comparisons will be drawn synchronically and diachronically. We will also (1) analyze the discursive frameworks in the scientific and public spheres; (2) explore the different mechanisms used to transfer scientific knowledge and social knowledge; and (3) tackle the geopolitical meridional differences in climate change discourses by making students present and comment on specific manuscripts published both in the United States and Latin America.
SPAN 80100 - What’s in a Name?
GC: Thursday, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m., Prof. Ariana Mangual Figueroa
This seminar explores the significance of names and naming practices as they relate to the study of language and identity. Drawing on social theory from diverse intellectual traditions, we will consider the following questions: How do we reconcile the tension between essentialization and variation inherent in identifying and naming cultural practices? What is at stake in adopting or applying certain typifying labels over others, and how do these labels signify in the broader sociopolitical context? What term or terms have been, and could be, used to represent the shifting and growing population of Spanish-speakers living in the United States? Using these as guiding questions for shared inquiry, we will simultaneously explore the significance of names while naming those theories that we employ in our own scholarship. We will develop critical perspectives on the significance of names by considering contemporary debates across the domains of schooling, demography, and contemporary politics.
SPAN 85000 – Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: teatro, cine, arte
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith
This course treats the drama of Federico García Lorca, the silent and Spanish-language films of Buñuel, and some fine art works by Dalí. It also involves close reading of literary, cinematic and fine art texts and analysis of the voluminous and contradictory body of criticism on those texts. It also addresses such questions as tradition and modernity; the city and the country; and the biopic in film and television. The question of intermediality, or the relation between different media, will be examined in its historical and theoretical dimensions. The course will graded by final paper (50%), midterm exam (25%), and final presentation, weekly postings to course website and oral contribution to class (25%).
SPAN 87000 – Contemporary Spanish & Mexican Cinema & Television
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith
This course 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, cinematic genres and auteurism, gender and sexuality, and nationality and transnationalism; 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%).
SPAN 87100 – Periodismo narrativo y ficción literaria en el México neoliberal: Políticas escriturales, estado de excepción y la industria cultural trasnacional
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
Este seminario examinará la relación entre el periodismo narrativo y la escritura de ficción de las últimas dos décadas en México en el contexto de la “guerra contra el narco”, el neoliberalismo y la violencia de estado. Se considerarán estos objetos a partir de una crítica de la industria cultural trasnacional y las lógicas de consumo de investigaciones periodísticas y obras literarias. Se analizará también la construcción de formas hegemónicas de representación de la violencia y la manera en que son internalizadas por los campos de producción cultural.
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 – Bullets and Letters: Post-ETA Euskadi and the Arts
GC: Monday, 10/7/2019 – Friday, 10/11/2019, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Annabel Martín
(Atxaga Chair)
This mini seminar will focus on Basque culture produced in response to ETA terrorism. We will study the ideology that governs nationalist discourses, understand the relation between identity and violence, and find in the arts (literature, film, painting, and sculpture) a reason to make the humanities one of the legs upon which peace and reconciliation rest. Documents include interviews and writings by former ETA militants and victims.
Globalization has caused an important paradigmatic shift in how "small" cultures are studied and addressed. Small in number but not in significance in current European discussions on democracy and terrorism, the Basque context is proof that the postnationalist turn that tends to govern how we think about ourselves in an ever more interconnected world actually clashes with how we experience our lives on the smaller scale of the everyday. The persistence of ETA terrorism (1959-2009), its death toll of nearly 1000 lives, and a very special turn to reconciliation and memory by many political and cultural actors makes this a timely seminar give how cultural productions and their textual strategies are contributing in new and exciting ways to processes geared towards peace and coexistence. The following topics will be addressed: the underlying ideological paradigms that govern nationalist discourses, the gendered relation between identity and violence, and what the arts (literature, film, painting, and sculpture) and experiences of restorative justice share in regard to their efforts geared toward peace and reconciliation. Special emphasis will be placed on the Nanclares de Oca process and interviews by former ETA militants and victims. Texts include literature by Atxaga, Etxenike, and Zaizarbitoria; films and documentaries by Medem, Ortega, Merino, and Taberna; and artwork by Ameztoy and Ibarrola. We will also have the special opportunity of having Bernardo Atxaga, Luisa Etxenike, Helena Taberna, and Esther Pascual (ETA mediator) in conversation.
SPAN 87200 – Castellano y catalán en Cataluña: cuestiones normativas, estatus y actitudes lingüísticas
GC: Monday, 9/23/2019 – Friday, 9/27/2019, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Carsten Sinner
(Rodoreda Chair)
En el curso, se tratarán, partiendo de una breve historia del contacto lingüístico entre las dos lenguas románicas, el desarrollo de catalán y castellano en Cataluña y la formación de la arquitectura lingüística actual en esta región. Se analizarán la formación de normas de uso y el estatus de las diferentes variedades presentes en Cataluña y se estudiará el papel de las actitudes lingüísticas de los hablantes.
COURSE LISTINGS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70100 – Spanish as a Historical Problem
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle, []
SPAN 82000 – The Humanistic Comedy in Renaissance and Baroque Spain
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Lía Schwartz, []
SPAN 87100 – When Narrative and Image Interact: Intermedial Spaces in Latin American Writing and Photography
GC: Tuesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Magdalena Perkowska, []
SPAN 87100 – Havana in Contemporary Cuban Literature
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó, []
SPAN 87200 – Human Rights and Literature in the Americas
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Vanessa Perez Rosario, []
SPAN 87200 – The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar y Guillermo del Toro
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith, []
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 80100 – Language Attitudes
GC: Monday, 3/25/2019 through Friday, 3/29/2019, Prof. Loureiro-Rodríguez, []
(Galician Chair)
SPAN 87200 – Condición póstuma y emancipación. Una mirada desde el sur de Europa
GC: Monday, 2/25/2019 through Friday, 3/1/2019, Prof. Garcés, []
(Rodoreda Chair)
SPAN - Pensar el futuro: narrativas distópicas en el siglo XXI
GC: Thursday, 5/9/2019 through Saturday 5/11/2019, Prof. Antonio Orejudo []
(Delibes Chair)
See Also
SPAN 88800 – Dissertation Seminar
GC: Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle, []
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70100 – Spanish as a Historical Problem
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle, []
Este curso propone un recorrido por varias articulaciones de la lengua española y la historia; una mirada acaso irónica sobre las estrategias de constitución del objeto bajo condiciones disciplinarias y políticas diversas. Nos detendremos en la “Gramática Histórica”, en la “Historia de la Lengua”, en la “Historia Social” y en la “Historia Política de la Lengua”, que, aunque vislumbran objetos lingüísticos sólo parcialmente coincidentes, los encuadran sin embargo en una misma cronografía que va desde los tiempos en que el latín fue introducido en la Península Ibérica hasta el momento actual, cuando aún el valor de la unidad y el significado simbólico del español en el mundo reciben atención privilegiada dentro y fuera de las disciplinas que se ocupan del estudio del lenguaje. Por lo tanto, este curso no se plantea reproducir la descripción de la historia de la lengua como un proceso de evolución lineal de unidades y sistemas fónicos, morfológicos y sintácticos; no se propone tampoco señalar los hitos culturales y políticos que puntúan el proceso de la cristalización de la lengua. La perspectiva aquí adoptada invita a aproximarse de manera reflexiva y crítica a las articulaciones de lenguaje e historia, a las disciplinas mismas que configuran como objetos de estudio la emergencia histórica del español como “lengua”, su evolución orgánica y las circunstancias pasadas y presentes de su propagación por la Península Ibérica y por el continente americano. Pero nuestro objeto además abarcará representaciones del idioma producidas afuera de las fronteras del campo académico y en abierta confrontación con una variedad de discursos y procesos históricos.
SPAN 82000 – The Humanistic Comedy in Renaissance and Baroque Spain
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Lía Schwartz, []
TBA
SPAN 87100 – When Narrative and Image Interact: Intermedial Spaces in Latin American Writing and Photography
GC: Tuesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Magdalena Perkowska, []
Since the discovery of photography in 1839, and despite its long association with the mechanical reproduction of reality, the photographic image has increasingly assumed the role of participating in or indeed embodying literary projects. This course explores different modalities of interaction between photography and literary texts in contemporary Latin American writing, and between photography and narrativity in mixed works: fictional questioning of photographic practice, meaning, and ethics (Rodolfo Walsh, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Bolaño, Norah Lange), fiction with photographs (Eduardo Belgrano Rawson, Mario Bellatín), the photographic essay (Diamela Eltit, Eduardo Lalo), the photo-book and the photographic narrative (Susan Meiselas, Juan Manuel Echavarría), a photograph as (a source of) narrative (Marcelo Brodsky). We will examine these intermedial spaces in conjunction with theoretical readings on photography and literature in relation to affect, memory, ethics, and politics (Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, W.J.T. Mitchell, Jacques Rancière, Marianne Hirsch, Ariella Azoulay). The crossing of medial boundaries produces an imagetext (Mitchell) or sentence-image (Rancière), a site of tension, slippage, transformation, displacement or interference, which impugns the notion of a single, fixed meaning; challenges representation, revealing its inescapable heterogeneity; reorganizes textual-visual visibilities and hierarchies; and posits questions about ethics of reader- and spectatorship.
SPAN 87100 – Havana in Contemporary Cuban Literature
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó, []
As Cuba prepares to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana, we will examine the origins of the capital city and its discursive formations, from an urban planning perspective, in literature and cartography. We will consider Havana as archive as we analyze 20th and 21st-century Cuban fiction in which the cityscape, its inhabitants, its lingo, and its history feature prominently. We will first study notions of the archive and the counter archive and then examine works by Reinaldo Arenas (Viaje a La Habana), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (La Habana para un infante difunto), Alejo Carpentier (La ciudad de las columnas), Leonardo Padura (Adiós, Hemingway), Ena Lucía Portela (Cien botellas en una pared), Severo Sarduy (De donde son los cantantes), and Karla Suárez (Habana año cero). This course will be taught in Spanish.
SPAN 87200 – Human Rights and Literature in the Americas
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Vanessa Perez Rosario, []
Human Rights carry one set of popular meanings, that their protections will safeguard the human person from abuse, torture, pain, suffering, and other corporeal deprivation. Despite their immense promise, human rights discourses and norms remain fraught with paradox. Virtually since their inception, critics have decried the many contradictions that trouble human rights and the mechanisms of their internationalization and application. Although some of these paradoxes ensue from legal and other practical challenges of rights enforcement, the philosophical architecture of human rights norms and the definition of the human that organizes them are also composed of structural tensions and inconsistencies. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the convergence of human rights and theories of the human, violence, feminicide, dissent, censorship, vulnerability and precarity, and migration and mobility in theoretical and literary texts. We will think about the politics of reading, literature’s relationship to social justice, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Some theoretical readings will include works by Hannah Arendt, Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Elaine Scarry, Achille Mbembe, Lauren Berlant, and Giorgio Agamben, among others. We will read literary texts by Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx authors such as Los rendidos (2015) by José Carlos Agüeros, “Las orquídeas negras de Mariana Callejas”(1998) by Pedro Lemebel, Tell Me How it Ends (2017) by Valeria Luiselli, Fuera del juego (1968) and La mala memoria (1989) by Heberto Padilla, The Water Museum (2018) by Luis Alberto Urrea, and Under the Feet of Jesus (1995) by Helena Viramontes, among others.
SPAN 87200 – The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar y Guillermo del Toro
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith, []
This course examines the works of contemporary Spain and Mexico's most successful filmmakers, critically and commercially. 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.
Grading is by written exam (25%), student oral participation and presentation (25%) and final paper (50%).
This course is taught in English.
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN – Language Attitudes
GC: Monday, 3/25/2019 through Friday, 3/29/2019, Prof. Loureiro-Rodríguez, []
(Galician Chair)
The main aim of this seminar is to introduce students to key theoretical approaches and methodologies to study language attitudes. The assigned readings and class discussions are intended to encourage students to reflect on how attitudes and beliefs about non-standard (and standard) linguistic varieties emerge and develop. We will also explore the connection between accent, language use and identity in monolingual and multilingual contexts.
SPAN – Condición póstuma y emancipación. Una mirada desde el sur de Europa
GC: Monday, 2/25/2019 through Friday, 3/1/2019, Prof. Garcés, []
(Rodoreda Chair)
TBA
COURSE LISTINGS
Three Credits
SPAN 70200 – Hispanic Critical & Cultural Theory
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
Room 3305
SPAN 80000 – Language, Identity and Political Economy
GC: Tuesday, 11:45-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle,
Room 3305
SPAN 80200 – Teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Beatriz Lado,
Room 3308
SPAN 85000 – The City in Contemporary Spanish Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith,
Room 4422
SPAN 86300 – Theatre and Society: Contemporary Latin American Theatre and Performance (1960-present)
GC: Wednesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Jean Graham-Jones,
Room 5382
SPAN 87000 – In-Between Worlds & Traditions: Rereading the “Crónicas de Indias”
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Raquel Chang-Rodríguez,
Room 3310A
SPAN 87100 – Del espacio de aca: Photographic Discourses & Practices in/about Latin America
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Angeles Donoso Macaya,
Room 4433
SPAN 87100 – Cuerpos letrados: Intelectuales, política y performance
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Fernando Degiovanni,
Room 8202
SPAN 88800 – Dissertation Seminar GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. José del Valle,
Room 4116.18
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 – Escuela e ideologías lingüísticas en España y Cataluña, en particular. Siglos XIX y XX
GC: Monday, 9/24/18 through Friday, 9/28/18, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Jenny Brumme, []
(Rodoreda Chair)
SPAN 87200 – ‘La batalla del relato’ y el conflicto de identidades nacionales en España
GC: Tuesday, 10/9/18 through Friday, 10/12/2018, 10:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Gorka Mercero Altzugarai, []
(Atxaga Chair)
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Three-Credits
SPAN 70200 – Hispanic Critical & Cultural Theory
GC: Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
SPAN 80000 – Language, Identity and Political Economy
GC: Tuesday, 11:45-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle
In this seminar, we will examine language´s involvement in the contemporary construction and mobilization of ethnic and national identities as well as in the development of late capitalist forms of economic organization. The sociolinguistic objects and specific case-studies examined throughout the seminar will include, but not be limited to, language revitalization processes in Latin America, the politics of language and ethnic and national identity in the United States, the promotion of Spanish in global linguistic markets, and normalization policies and discourses on behalf of minority languages in Europe -mainly in Spain-.
The seminar´s narrative and theoretical footing -anchored in critical sociolinguistics and glotopolítica- will be established through Monica Heller and Alexandre Duchêne’s proposal to analyze the deployment of linguistic ideologies around the 'pride' and 'profit' tropes (Language in Late capitalism, 2012). The studies and the interpretive frameworks put forth in this book will be placed in dialectic relation with each other and with other sociological and political views of language´s interface with capital and labour, identity and citizenship, and politics and power. Various approaches to language and identity will be introduced through John E. Joseph´s Language and Identity (2004); critical approaches to language and political economy will be discussed through Marnie Holborow´s Language and Neoliberalism (2015) and Monica Heller and Bonnie McElnihhy´s Language, Capitalism, Colonialism (2017); and the articulation of language and politics will be studied through John Joseph´s Language and Politics (2009) and Bentivegna, del Valle, Niro and Villa´s Anuario de Glotopolítica 1 (2017).
As the seminar proceeds, discussion of each topic will be informed by the following readings among others: José del Valle, La lengua, ¿patria común? (2007); Norma Mendoza-Denton, Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practices among Latina Youth Gangs (2008); Jan Blommaert, The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (2010); Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism Continued (2010); H. Sami Alim and Geneva Smitherman, Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S. (2012); Angela Reyes, Language, Identity, and Stereotype among Southeast Asian American Youth (2012); Jacqueline Urla, Reclaiming Basque: Language, Nation, and Cultural Activism (2012); Elvira Arnoux and Susana Nothstein´s Temas de glotopolítica: Integración regional sudamericana y panhispanismo (2014); Serafín Coronel-Molina, Language Ideology, Policy and Planning in Peru (2015); Kathryn A. Woolard, Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia (2016); Jonathan Rosa, Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2018). [The seminar will be conducted in various forms of Spanish and English; so, receptive knowledge of both languages is required; class participation and papers may be in any language or languages I think I can understand.]
SPAN 80200 – Teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Beatriz Lado
This course is an introduction to the field of heritage language education, with an emphasis on the teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-English learners in the US. We will explore different areas that are relevant for the field, such as the definition of a heritage speaker/language; heritage language acquisition, development, and maintenance; historical, socio-cultural, political, and ideological dimensions of heritage language learning and teaching; and current pedagogical approaches to teaching Spanish as a heritage language (e.g., critical, multiliteracies). An important part of the course will be devoted to curriculum development and assessment. The course will be conducted in Spanish with readings in both English and Spanish.
SPAN 85000 – The City in Contemporary Spanish Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith
This course, which is taught in Spanish, examines the modern Spanish city in the media of novel (Martín Santos, Laforet, Goytisolo), film and TV (Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia, TVE’s Fortunata y Jacinta and La Regenta), 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.
SPAN 87000 – In-Between Worlds & Traditions: Rereading the “Crónicas de Indias”
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Raquel Chang-Rodríguez
This course will study a diverse group of testimonies from the early contact period and beyond. Generally grouped under the label “crónicas de Indias,” they will include letters, histories, relaciones, and chronicles written by men and women of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity. These works will be situated in their historical and literary contexts in order to analyze the objectives of their authors and understand their meaning in the shared culture and history of Europe and the Americas. Among the issues to be discussed are: 1) how these texts became “literature;” 2) alphabetic culture vis-à-vis native traditions; 3) the polemics about the indigenous population; 4) the eye-witness and the construction of history; 5) the indigenous perception of the conquest; 6) gender issues; 7) Sor Juana’s view of the conquest. Class discussions will be illustrated with images and communication facilitated through Blackboard. There will be ample time for discussion and pursuing individual projects
Readings will include: selections from letters by Colón, Isabel de Guevara, 2da carta de relación, Cortés* [Castalia or Porrúa]; Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias * (Cátedra), Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales (Biblioteca Ayacucho, on-line), Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (selection; Royal Library Copenhagen, on-line), La monja alférez, Catalina de Erauso (Cátedra)*. Other material will be electronically distributed. *Purchase text.
Among the general requirements are: team work, exam, research essay (MLA Style, latest edition; written in English or Spanish), active class participation in English or Spanish reflecting reading of assigned material.
The specific bibliography will be distributed in class.
SPAN 87100 – Del espacio de aca: Photographic Discourses & Practices in/about Latin America
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Angeles Donoso Macaya
Traditional histories of photography return again and again to France, England and the United States to investigate the origins of the photographic apparatus, explain the birth of the documentary genre, elucidate the links between control, surveillance and the advent of photographic archives, or explore issues related to the circulation of photographs. Although images produced in Latin America & the Caribbean played a central role in these processes (Poole 1998), regional photographic practices have been persistently ignored (or rendered invisible) in traditional histories of photography. This postcolonial erasure is even more startling if one considers that the birth of photography was the product of a relentless sequence of displacements and disseminations (Azoulay 2008, Cadava 2013). If photography is both an entangling and de-territorializing civil practice (due to its capacity for circulation and movement), it is necessary to critically examine the histories of photography and elucidate the (ignored, silenced, invisible) place of Latin American photographic practices within these same discourses.
The title of this course refers to Ronald Kay’s essay Del espacio de acá: señales para una mirada americana (1980). Kay’s ideas and recent contributions by visual studies and postcolonial and decolonial criticism will serve us to elucidate the notion of colonial visuality (in opposition to that of modern visuality) and to examine the voids and silences of the histories of photography vis-à-vis the photographic practices from the 19th century. We will also review theories about the documentary and the document, the archive, and forensic aesthetics in order to explore and reconsider the prevalent linkage made by photography criticism between 20th-century Latin American documentary photography and humanist ideologies.
SPAN 87100 – Cuerpos letrados: Intelectuales, política y performance
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Fernando Degiovanni
Este curso se propone explorar la noción de intelectual más allá de su producción escrita. Trabajando aspectos usualmente marginalizados en el abordaje de su figura, como sus intervenciones en espacios públicos y masivos, nos planteamos la posibilidad de pensar la actividad del escritor como una práctica corporizada, dependiente de la voz y el gesto y formulada para un público que ve y oye. Esta historia del cuerpo letrado se puede rastrear en salones y cafés, tours de conferencias, discursos en asambleas masivas, entre otros espacios, y plantea interrogantes distintos a los que presupone su análisis como productor de textos destinados a ser leídos. Nociones tales como espectacularización, populismo y género serán claves en este curso. Entre los eventos que trabajaremos se encuentran la campaña presidencial de Macedonio Fernández, el tour latinoamericano de Manuel Ugarte, los banquetes de Norah Lange, y las performances de Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Omar Viñole. El seminario supone el abordaje de estos cuerpos letrados desde la teoría contemporánea como desde la investigación misma de los archivos en los cuales se documentaron sus prácticas. El curso dedicará especial atención a las intervenciones de Omar Viñole, figura sobre la cual convergen algunos nombres citados más arriba. Entendido como un seminario dentro del seminario, el estudio de la producción de Viñole (quien a mediados de la década de 1930 realizó numerosas intervenciones escandalosas en Buenos Aires y Montevideo acompañado por una vaca) permitirá explorar los desafíos específicos que plantea el análisis de la performance en circunstancias históricas y culturales atravesadas por la política de masas, la institucionalización letrada y la emergencia de nuevos debates sobre el cuerpo y la sexualidad.
SPAN 86300 – Theatre and Society: Contemporary Latin American Theatre and Performance (1960-present)
GC: Wednesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Jean Graham-Jones
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87200 – Escuela e ideologías lingüísticas en España y Cataluña, en particular. Siglos XIX y XX
GC: Monday, 9/24/18 through Friday, 9/28/18, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Jenny Brumme, []
(Rodoreda Chair)
El curso pretende ofrecer una aproximación histórica al llamado hecho diferencial catalán partiendo de las ideas que las distintas fuerzas políticas propagaron a lo largo de los siglos xix y xx sobre las lenguas de España y el papel del catalán en la escuela. A partir de ejemplos concretos que marcaron los altibajos en la recuperación del catalán como lengua culta y escrita, se observará la inseparable relación entre las ideologías adoptadas y ciertos modelos escolares. Cabe destacar que las conclusiones que se sacarán del estudio de los documentos aportados (discursos, apologías, prefacios, etc.) serán extrapolables a situaciones lingüísticas que presentan cierto paralelismo con el caso catalán. Se fomentará el acercamiento crítico a las diversas realidades e ideas lingüísticas que existen en el mundo hispánico.
SPAN 87200 – ‘La batalla del relato’ y el conflicto de identidades nacionales en España
GC: Tuesday, 10/9/18 through Friday, 10/12/2018, 10:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Prof. Gorka Mercero Altzugarai, []
(Atxaga Chair)
En el debate político actual en España, la expresión la batalla del relato se refiere a la necesidad de que el grupo armado ETA – disuelto definitivamente en mayo de 2018 tras 60 años de existencia – se recuerde exclusivamente como una muestra más de la deplorable capacidad humana para el daño y la destrucción. Pero esta visión deja peligrosamente de lado el hecho de que para muchos ETA fue la consecuencia directa de un conflicto político. Diversas obras literarias han ofrecido su visión sobre este asunto, algunas tan conocidas como El hijo del acordeonista (2003) de Bernardo Atxaga o Patria (2016) de Fernando Aramburu. El curso pondrá dichas obras en su contexto, analizará su posición respecto a la batalla del relato y evaluará su contribución a la prolongación o resolución de un conflicto negado por unos, señalado por otros, y que entre todos debemos intentar resolver.
COURSE LISTINGS
Three-Credits
SPAN 80000 – Todo nuevo bajo el sol: Re-shaping Spanish Identity at the End of 20th Century
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Alvaro Fernandez, [38050]
SPAN 80100 – Analyzing Discourse Data
GC: Monday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Cecelia Cutler, [38048]
SPAN 82200 – The Invention of Love in Early Modern Spanish Poetry
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Lía Schwartz, [38053]
SPAN 87000 – Archival Subversions in Cuban Literature (XX-XXI Centuries)
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó, [38054]
SPAN 87000 – Ugly Feelings: Post-Utopic Fiction and Film from Central America
GC: Tuesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Perkowska, [38055]
SPAN 87100 – To Love & To Sin: Sexual Practices in Colonial Latin American
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Mariana Zinni, [38051]
SPAN 87300 – Language and Politics
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Juan Rodríguez, [38049]
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN 87500- Elegies Without Consolation: Territory, Language and Conflict in Contemporary Galician Culture
GC: Monday, 3/5/2018 through Friday, 3/9/2018, Time: TBA, Prof. Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, [38747]
(Xunta de Galicia Chair)
SPAN 87200– Palabra e historia. La poesía de Jaime Gil de Biedma
GC: Dates: May 3 (10:00- 1:30 pm), May 4 (10:00- 1:30 pm), May 5 (10:00 am -1:00 pm) 2018, Prof. Luis García Montero, [38748]
(Miguel Delibes Chair)
SPAN 87200- Nuevas visiones del parentesco y de la comunidad desde la literatura y el cine
GC: Dates: April 9-13, 2018, Time: 11:00 - 1:00 pm. Prof. Marta Segarra [38919]
(Cátedra Rodoreda)
See Also
SPAN 88800 – Dissertation Seminar
GC: Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala, [38052]
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
Three-Credits
SPAN 80000 – Todo nuevo bajo el sol: Re-shaping Spanish Identity at the End of 20th Century
GC: Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Fernandez, [38050]
Following the fall of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, Spain underwent a process of cultural re-imagining, supported both by the political class and the cultural industry. The Francoist image of an authoritarian, conservative society, bearing the marks of 40 years of ultra-catholic fascist dictatorship was actively re-shaped by the political and cultural élite in order to demonstrate that Spain succeeded in conquering its past and turned into a model society of 'modernity'. For the last four decades of the 20th century, the country went through a period of Transition, a process which amounted to the intellectual erasure of the memory of the previous regime. Spain became part of the European Union, which stands for a cosmopolitan, open society, and invested heavily in developing and concentrating its cultural industry. It actively engaged in the economic reconquest of Latin America, and at the end of the century faced the re-emergence of political discussions in the form of historical memory debates. This course will consist of reading, watching and analyzing cultural products that were created along this transitional socio-political process. It will provide an opportunity to the students to examine and critically evaluate the social, political and cultural aspects of the Transition period and to examine the intersection of culture and politics in reshaping Spanish national identity.
Among other readings, the course will analyze: Aub’s La gallina ciega, Patino’s Nueva cartas a Berta, Espinosa’ La fea burguesía, Rosa’s El vano ayer, and a selection of Latin American literature affected by the Spanish publishing companies’ dominance.
SPAN 80100 – Analyzing Discourse Data
GC: Monday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Cutler, [38048]
Discourse Analysis: Studying discourse is more than examining language use; it entails studying the use of language as a form of social practice, and a way of reflecting and shaping society. This course explores socially informed and critical approaches to analyzing language at the level of discourse (beyond the level of the sentence), including an overview of current theories and methods (e.g. Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversation analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis). With this set of tools, students will gain experience analyzing different forms of spoken and written texts such as conversations, service encounters, computer-mediated interaction, print/online news and other forms of public discourse. Students will develop their own projects and present their research at the end of the semester focusing on (but not limited to) examinations of micro structural patterns across texts, coherence, turn-taking, lexical choices, and translanguaging, or macro level phenomena such as speaker intentions, and socio-cultural meanings in relation to ideology, identity, power, and gender.
SPAN 82200 – The Invention of Love in Early Modern Spanish Poetry
GC: Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Schwartz, [38053]
The development of Humanism led to the rediscovery of Italian poetry in the Renaissance, which became a main model for different conceptions of love at the time, and of Greek and Roman poetry. The example of Petrarch’s Canzoniere and his Italian followers in the sixteenth-century, Bembo among others, combined with the enthusiastic reception of Neo-Platonism after the translations of Plato and the philosophical writings of Marsilio Ficino, promoted a vision of love that was going to be recreated by Spanish Renaissance and Baroque poets for two long centuries. The purpose of this course will be to examine the relations between literary and philosophical theories and their recontextualization in poetic texts, focusing on the constitution of the voices of the lover and on the portraits of the beloved, as they appear in individual poems, and in the collections built as “cancioneros” after the example of Petrarch. Garcilaso de la Vega’s and Fernando de Herrera’s works, historical precedents of Góngora’s and Quevedo’s poetry, will be studied in conjunction with readings of Neo-Platonic theory, Marsilio Ficino’s treatises and those composed by his most important mediator in Spain, León Hebreo in the famous translation of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, with references to other important texts in the transmission of Neo-Platonic ideas.
SPAN 87000 – Archival Subversions in Cuban Literature (XX-XXI Centuries)
GC: Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Riobó, [38054]
This course will examine notions of subversive archives and XX and XXI-century Cuban writers who incorporate them in their narratives. We will analyze works by Reinaldo Arenas, Alejo Carpentier, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Achy Obejas, Leonardo Padura, Antonio José Ponte, Ena Lucía Portela, and Severo Sarduy. This course will be taught in Spanish.
SPAN 87000 – Ugly Feelings: Post-Utopic Fiction and Film from Central America
GC: Tuesday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Perkowska, [38055]
Ugly feelings, as defined by Sianne Ngy in her eponymous study, are “minor and generally unprestigious” emotions of a strong, diagnostic nature because they have the capacity to shed light on “a real social experience and a certain kind of historical truth.” Central American cultural texts (novels, short stories and films) produced during the last two decades are full of such feelings: disenchantment, bitterness, anguish, anxiety, fear, disdain, frustration, sorrow, pain, melancholia, loss, and confusion are signifiers of disappointment with past utopias and present neoliberal restoration or reaffirmation of market capitalism. This course explores a selection of Central American fictions and films which will be read in conjunction with theoretical approaches to affect and emotions (Phillip Fischer, Sianne Ngy, Sara Ahmed, Ruth Leys, Martha Nussbaum, among others), neoliberalism (David Harvey, Wendy Brown), and politics and aesthetics (Jacques Rancière). We will examine unresolved tensions articulated through affects and emotions, and will fathom what commitments, if any, are encoded in these ‘feeling texts.’
SPAN 87100 – To Love & To Sin: Sexual Practices in Colonial Latin American
GC: Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., Prof. Zinni, [38051]
In this class we will examine different sexualities, love relationships and sexual practices in Colonial Latin America. We will focus our attention in three major topics: cohabitation, marriage and homosexuality regarding the Spanish Law and mores. All these three fields point out distinct problems and outcomes that we will explore through the reading of Spanish chronicles, Confesionarios de Indios, satirical poems by Juan del Valle y Caviedes, sections of Juan Rodríguez Freyle’s El Carnero, the autobiography of the Monja-Alferez, inquisitorial testimonies, and archival materials.
The course will be taught in Spanish.
SPAN 87300 – Language and Politics
GC: Thursday, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Prof. Rodríguez, [38049]
This course addresses the study of political language in linguistic anthropology. The course surveys classic anthropological works on political oratory, political discourse, rhetoric, as well as ethnographic cases that explore how linguistic phenomena are intrinsic to political systems. This is a writing intensive course in which the students will be required to develop a final project of their interest.
One-Credit Mini-Seminars
SPAN – Elegies Without Consolation: Territory, Language and Conflict in Contemporary Galician Culture
GC: Monday, 3/5/2018 through Friday, 3/9/2018, Time: TBA, Prof. Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, [38747]
Galician culture and politics are marked today by discourses of loss and collapse, which are often related to the idea that Galician identity is on an irreversible course towards disappearance. The historical split of the Galician nationalist party in 2012 and the appearance of new political parties have given way to new discourses about national construction in the region. Galician language planning continues to reap meagre results in terms of language revitalization, with a 2014 study showing that first-language Galician speakers have now dropped below 50% for the first time in history. Current criticism of heritage policies is often linked to the idea that the Galician natural and built landscape has suffered a decades of social and institutional neglect. How is Galician culture registering these trends? And what consolation does it bring about, if any? This course will try to answer these questions and others through an engagement with contemporary Galician poetry, fiction, essay and film.
SPAN – Palabra e historia. La poesía de Jaime Gil de Biedma
GC: Dates: TBA, Time: TBA, Prof. Luis García Montero, [38748]
Jaime Gil de Biedma (1929-1990) es uno de los poetas más importantes de la literatura española en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Su figura se proyectó en la generación de los años 80 con la misma fuerza que Juan Ramón Jiménez dejó su magisterio en la generación del 27. Este tipo de herencias tienen su razón de ser no sólo en la calidad estética, sino en la configuración de una personalidad capaz de reunir buena parte de los debates más serios en el horizonte lírico de su tiempo. Heredero de Jorge Guillén, el mundo poético de Gil de Biedma se concibió a sí mismo como una superación del simbolismo y como acercamiento al realismo crítico y a la poesía meditativa. Para este tránsito buscó un diálogo fecundo con la tradición anglosajona (Eliot y Auden, sobre todo).
Los poemas de Jaime Gil de Biedma son una indagación en la historia literaria, en la historia social de España y en su propia identidad homosexual. Su estudio se abre por ello a cuestiones como la intertextualidad, la ironía, el compromiso político y el carácter histórico de la intimidad. El silencio prematuro de Gil de Biedma, analizado por él mismo, supone uno de los síntomas literarios más lúcidos de lo que significó para la escritura el proceso culturas y social de la Transición española.
SPAN 87200- Nuevas visiones del parentesco y de la comunidad desde la literatura y el cine
GC: Dates: April 9-13, 2018, Time: 11:00 - 1:00 pm. Prof. Marta Segarra [38919]
(Cátedra Rodoreda)
Durante el último medio siglo, los conceptos tanto de “comunidad” como de “parentesco” han sufrido profundos cambios en las sociedades occidentales. Desde los estudios de género y sexualidad se abogó por una extensión de la “familia” a grupos de personas unidas por lazos distintos a los de sangre. Paralelamente, diversas líneas de pensamiento han problematizado la noción de “comunidad” y de “lo común”. Analizaremos en este seminario diversas formas que toman estas nuevas visiones del parentesco y de la comunidad en textos literarios y cinematográficos, pertenecientes a la cultura catalana y europea.