Courses

Course Listings

THREE-CREDITS

SPAN 87100 – The Many Faces of Resentment: Narratives from Argentina and Colombia
GC: Monday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapia

SPAN  80100 – Language Standardization and Social Inequality 
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m. – 1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle

SPAN  82100 – Cervantes and Don Quixote: Reading, Rereading, Visualizing 
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith 

SPAN 73100 – Introduction to Latino Studies 
GC: Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó

SPAN 87100 – Transpacific Encounters
GC: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 pm., Prof. Araceli Tinajero 

see also

SPAN  88800 – Dissertation Workshop
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m., Prof. José del Valle 
 

One-Credit Mini-Seminar

SPAN  87200– Los “Años Radicales” del Cine Catalán (1968 - 1978)
GC: 10:00 am – 12:30 pm, April 11 – April 14, 2022, Prof. Esteve Riambau Möller
(Rodoreda Chair)

Course Descriptions

Three-Credits
 

SPAN  87100 – The Many Faces of Resentment: Narratives from Argentina and Colombia
GC: Monday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Silvia Dapia

Resentment appears as a floating signifier in today’s political and cultural imaginary, articulated in heterogeneous context such as a neoliberalism, post-fascism, right-wing and left-wing populisms, human rights and politics of memory-acquiring thus radically different meanings.  In the traditional narrative of resentment, initiated by Friedrich Nietzsche and developed by Max Scheler, in a world divided into the noble and powerful versus the weak, the latter represents the former, in many cases creating new moral systems by simply inverting the hegemonic values.  Rather than power and action, weakness and passivity, so this narrative goes, become virtues in a new system that allegedly has envy, vengeance, and negation at its core.  Yet several questions arise out of this traditional narrative resentment to “the psychic vicissitudes of weakness” (to phrase it in Wendy Brown’s terms)? What happens if we shift the focus from resentment as a “too psychological” feeling to its historical materiality and regard it as a more complex embodied feeling? What particular nuances does the “weak” and its resentments acquire within the neoliberal narrative and its emphasis on the entrepreneurship? What differentiates the resentment that fuels “the revolt of the excluded” from the resentment that channels the “revolt of the included”, those who were once part of the system and feel pushed to the margins (“dethroned white masculinity”, for example)? Given the resurgence of the problem of resentment in the political and cultural arena, I propose to discuss these questions from a Latin American perspective. 

Framed within critical theory, philosophical anthropology, political theory, and memory studies, we will explore diverse theoretical approaches to resentment (such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Scheler, Jean Améry, Albert Camus, Gilles Deleuze, Wendy Brown, Didier Fassin, Martha Nussbaum, Rahel Jaeggi, Katherine J. Cramer, Peter Sloterdijk, and Slavoj Žižek). Within this framework we will discuss essays and narratives of 20^th and 21^st century Argentine and Colombian authors such as Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Witold Gombrowicz, León Rozitchner, Gabriel Cabezón Cámara, Laura Restrepo, Santiago Gamboa, and Pablo Montoya.  In addition, we will also discuss films such as Lucrecia Martel’s Zama (2017), Ciro Guerra’s La sombra del caminante (The Walker’s Shadow, 2004), and Alejandro’s Landes’s Monos (2019).  The course will be conducted in Spanish.

SPAN 80100 – Language Standardization and Social Inequality 
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m. – 1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle

In this seminar, using Ayres-Bellamy and Bennet recent handbook (2021) as a reference for the state-of-the-art in language standardization studies, we will discuss the currency of various theories developed over several decades.  We will approach these theories with a view to understanding standardization's implication in the construction of different forms of social inequality and its potential to support emancipatory efforts.  First, we will focus on the analysis of the classic paradigm as represented by Einar Haugen (1972).  We will examine its connections to the historical emergence of the public sphere (Habermas 1962) and the nation-state (Anderson 1983, Gellner 1983, Hobsbawm 1990); and we will identify the ideal representations of citizen and community explicitly or implicityly invoked in this model.  Secondly, we will focus on critical approaches to language standardization, as a site of power struggles (Joseph 1987), as an ideological process (Milroy and Milroy 1985/2012), as a colonial undertaking (Parakrama 1995), and as an expression of social anxiety (Cameron 1995/2012. We will consider the extent to which these critical approaches offer a better understanding of standardization as a potenially emancipatory strategy.  And we will conclude by assessing the degree to which current research has furthered (or not) the research and views of classic and decades-old-work. 

SPAN  82100 – Cervantes and Don Quixote: Reading, Rereading, Visualizing 
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Paul Julian Smith

This couse involves three aspects to be treated each week: first, a close collective reading of the text of Cervante's masterpiece; second, an analysis of the rereading of Don Quixote by later authors from Proust and Nabokov to Lukacs, Primo Levi, and García Márquez; and, finally, an introduction to the varied audiovisual versions of Cervantes' original text, from different periods and counties.  The course will be graded by final paper (50%), midterm exam (25%), and final presentation, weekly positings to course website, and oral contribution to class (25%).  

SPAN  73100 – Introduction to Latino Studies 
GC: Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó 

Cross-listed with 
MALS  78300 – Introduction to US Latino Studies 
GC: Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Carlos Riobó (criobo@gc.cuny.edu)

This seminar examines the complex history of the multiple Latino communities across the United States. Students will explore the literature, politics and culture of the diverse social groups linked to the greater legacy of Latin American societies in the United States.  A special emphasis will be given to pursuing the specificity of the Latino experience and the historial and political coordinates of each community.  The seminar will employ a strong interdisciplinary approach to analyze issues ranging from race, class and gender relations, cultural productions, linguistics differences, identity politics, civil rights, and the rise of the Latinx communities in current political struggles and debates.  The seminar will combine methdologies of research from the fields of literary studies, linguistics, history political science, sociology and anthropology. Taught in English, the reading will feature works by Gloria Anzaldúa, María Lugones, Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, Ernesto Quiñónez, and Richard Rodríguez.  

SPAN 87100 - Transpacific Encounters 
GC: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m., Prof, Araceli Tinajero 

This course will analyze Oriental representations in Peninsular and Latin American literature and in the Portuguese-speaking world.  Students will read stories, poems, essays, book chapters, and travel stories to understand diverse approximations to the cultures of the Middle and Far East.  We will read full texts or passages from Cervantes, Balbuena, Fernández de Lizardi, Eça de Queirós, Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Darío, Gómez Carrillo, Tablada Malba Tahan, Borges, Paz, Lolita Bosch, Roberto Bolaño and Alberto Olmos.  Students Will also benefit from the opportunity to see a movie and to appreciate Orientalist-themed artwork.  A wide bibliography will be available so that students can research and prepare a final paper or produce a creative piece (in Spanish, English or Portuguese) related to a work not read as part of the class.

see also

SPAN 88000 - Dissertation Workshop
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m., Prof. Jose del Valle

One-Credit Mini-Seminars
 

SPAN 87200 – Los Años Radicales del Cine Catalán (1968 - 1978)
GC: Monday, April 11, 2022 through Thursday, April 14, 2022
Time: Prof. Esteve Riambau Möller
(Ramon Llull Institut)

La muerte del general Franco, en noviembre de 1975, puso fin a cuarenta años de dictadura en España y se erigió en el punto de inflexión de una transición que abarca desde la radicalización de la oposición al franquismo hasta la constitución de un nuevo estado democrático.  Este período que va desde las repercusiones de mayo del 68 a las primeras elecciones plurales en 1978, tuvo su reflejo en el cine catalán.  Filmaciones clandestinas documentaron manifestaciones y asambleas estudiantiles u obreras mientras la censura actuaba férreamente contra películas que denunciaban la dictadura.  Un incipiente marco de libertad permitió en cambio, que cineastas como Pere Portabella, Antoni Ribas, Jaime Camino, Joaquím Jordà o Ventura Pons explorasen el legado de la Guerra Civil, la inmigración social, la identidad nacional o la liberación sexual.  Este curso, que contextualiza el período e incluye la proyección de fragmentos de los films de referencia, analiza el período desde la perspectiva de films indistintamente documentales y de ficción, procedentes de los archivos de la Filmoteca de Catalunya.    

English translation: The Death of General Franco, in November 1975, put an end to forty years of dictatorship in Spain and became the turning point of a transition that ranges from the radicalization of the opposition to Francoism to the Constitution of a new democratic state. This period, which goes from the repercussions of May 68 to the first plural elections in 1978, was reflected in Catalan cinema.  Clandestine footage documented demonstrations and student  or workers assemblies while the censors acted fiecely against films that denounced the dictatorship.  An incipient framework of freedom, on the other hand, allowed filmmakers such as Pere Portabella, Antoni Ribas, Jaime Camino, Joaquím Jordà  or Ventura Pons to explore the legacy of the Civil War, social immigration, national identity or sexual liberation.  This course contextualizes the period, includes footage of the main films quoted and analyzes the period from the perspective of indistinct documentary and fiction films from the archives of the Filmoteca de Catalunya.  

COURSE LISTINGS

Three-Credits
 

SPAN 87400 – Contemporary Latin American Cultural Theory
GC: Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Degiovanni

SPAN 78200 – Introduction to Literary Translation Studies
GC: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Prof. Allen

SPAN  80000 – Writing for LAILaC Publics
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. José del Valle

SPAN  80100 – Language in Late Capitalism
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m. – 1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle

SPAN 80200 – Critical Pedagogy and Language Learning
GC: Thursdays, 2:00 - 4:00 pm., Professor Beatriz Lado

SPAN 85000 - Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: Theater, Cinema, Painting
GC: Wednesdays, 4:15 - 6:15 pm., Professor Paul Smith 

SPAN 86300 – Contemporary Latin American Theater and Performance (1960-Present)
GC: Wednesday, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Prof. Graham-Jones

SPAN 87000 – The Neoliberal Promise of Happiness and Ugly Feelings: Post-Utopic Fiction and Film from Central America
GC: Tuesday, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Prof. Perkowska

SPAN 87000 – Slavery, Gender, and Resistance on Hispaniola
GC: Monday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Marinez

SPAN  87100 – Visualidad, "Mujeres", y Archivo
GC: Thursday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Donoso Macaya

see also

SPAN  88800 – Dissertation Workshop
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m., Prof. Degiovanni 

One-Credit Mini-Seminars
 

SPAN 87200– Catalan Sociolinguistics
GC: Monday, September 20, 2021 through Friday, September 24, 2021
Time: TBD; Professor Hawkey
(Ramon Llull Institut)

SPAN 87200 – Interseccionalidad y small cinemas Relatos y modelos audiovisuales: las periferias en el centro (Intersectionality and small cinemas—Audiovisual stories and models: Peripheries at the center)
GC: October 25-29, 2021, Prof. Iratxe Fresneda
Time: TBA
(Etxepare Basque Institute)

SPAN 87200  Cuerpo y alma: Las elegías de Federico García Lorca y Luis Cernuda (Body and Soul: the Elegies of Federico García Lorca and Luis Cernuda)
GC: November 11-13, 2021, Prof. Noël Valis
Time: TBA
(Delibes Chair)

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Three-Credits
 

SPAN  87400 – Contemporary Latin American Cultural Theory
GC: Wednesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Degiovanni

This seminar will address key theoretical and critical texts that have defined the field of Latin American cultural studies in recent decades. By analyzing the politics of academic knowledge in the global theoretical market, our goal will be to reconstruct both the genealogical lines as well as the epistemological frameworks that have played a crucial role in the region’s current intellectual production. The first part of the course will focus on a corpus of canonical authors that, since the 1980s, contributed to the definition of notions of modernity, coloniality, globalization and the role of the popular in Latin America. The second part will explore paradigms that have emerged over the last decade, in particular regarding notions of gender and sexuality, human and animal rights, cosmopolitism, as well as ecocultural criticism and theories of the sensible. In this final section, the course will function both as a seminar and as an academic writing workshop, and will focus on the theoretical interests of the students. The objective here will be to help them position their own research interests within contemporary theoretical currents. 

SPAN 78200 – Introduction to Literary Translation Studies
GC: Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Prof. Allen

In lieu of a welcome video, you’re invited to explore the 2020 online conference “Translating the Future”: https://www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/translating-the-future

Literature is unimaginable without translation. Yet translation is a disturbing, even paranormal practice, mysteriously conferring xenoglossy upon unwitting or suspicious readers. The literary cultures of English, in particular, have often been resistant to, even contemptuous of translation, or have used it as a tool of colonialism. The problem may lie with prevailing concepts of the original, but translation has often taken the blame. Among the aesthetic, ethical, and political questions it raises — questions increasingly crucial to practitioners of literature worldwide— are: Who translates? Who is translated? What is translated? And—yes—how? And also: what does it mean to think of literature prismatically rather than nationally? What constitutes an anti-colonial translation?

In this seminar, we’ll discuss theoretical and literary readings and engage with the contemporary translation sphere, both in the digital realm and in New York City. We’ll also welcome the perspectives of some notable guest speakers. Students will work towards and workshop a final project, either: 1) a discussion of a specific translation theory or set of theories; 2) an analysis of a specific translation, or comparison of multiple translations, or 3) an original translation into English (of a previously untranslated work) accompanied by a critical introduction and annotation. The class is taught in English, but students should have working knowledge of at least one other language.

SPAN  80000 – Writing for LAILaC Publics
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. José del Valle

In this seminar, students will explore a series of textual genres—such as the traditional essay, the prologue, the book review, the newspaper column, the blog, the posting or the tweet—through which scholars in the fields of linguistic, literary and cultural studies address publics beyond academia. The focus will be on Spanish-speaking Latin American countries and Spain as well as the United States—in as much as, in the latter, cultural systems grounded in both Spanish and English co-exist. One component of the seminar will identify and examine the non-academic publics with which Humanities scholars engage by considering their preferred medium and textual genres as well as the contextual conditions that trigger their public involvement. This part will be organized around readings and class discussions. The second component of the seminar will consist of students´ active production of texts through which they imagine and plot their own involvement with non-academic publics. It will be organized, workshop-style, around writing, peer-feedback and group discussions.

SPAN  80100 – Language in Late Capitalism
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m. – 1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle

In this seminar, we will examine language´s involvement in the development of late capitalism by using Monica Heller and Alexandre Duchêne’s (2007 and 2012) proposal to analyze the deployment of linguistic ideologies around the 'pride' and 'profit' tropes, Marnie Holborow´s (2015) overview of language´s relevance to neoliberalism, Thomas Ricento´s (2015) study of the political economy of language policy, and Monica Heller and Bonnie McElhinny´s (2017) approach to language from a political economy perspective. These studies will be placed in dialectic relation with each other and with alternative sociological and political views of language (e.g. Blommaert, Crystal or Phillipson) and they will be tested through the analysis of specific sociolinguistic spaces. These will include, but not be limited to, normalization policies on behalf of minority languages in Europe, language revitalization processes in the Americas, and the politics of language and ethnic and national identity in the United States. The core readings will be extracted mainly from: David Crystal, English as a Global language (2003); Monica Heller and Alexandre Duchêne, Discourses of Endangerment (2007) and Language in Late capitalism (2012); 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); Jacqueline Urla, Reclaiming Basque: Language, Nation, and Cultural Activism (2012) ; 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); Marnie Holborow, Language and Neoliberalism (2015); Serafín Coronel-Molina, Language Ideology, Policy and Planning in Peru (2015); Thomas Ricento (2015) Language Policy and Political Economy: English in a Global Context; Kathryn A. Woolard, Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia (2016); Monica Heller and Bonnie McElnihhy, Language, Capitalism, Colonialism (2017). [The seminar will be conducted in various forms of English]

SPAN 8020 - Critical Pedagogy and Language Learning
GC: Thursdays, 2:00 - 4:00 pm., Professor Beatriz Lado

This course provides students witha solid foundation in critical applied linguistics and critical pedagogy in relation to the teach of L2, L3, Ln, local, heritage, and foreign languages.  The course includes a critical overview of language acquisitin theories and teaching metthods and reflects on where Critical Applied Linguiscts and Critical Pedagogy stand within the fields of Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching.

Students will examine how language teaching and testing often repoduce ideolgies, politics, social hierarchies, and power dynamics, and will discuss classroom strategies to resist these practices, icluding developign critical linguistic awareness and antiracist pedagogies, gender inclusive and feminist approaches, or the use of critical techno-pedagogy in the classroom.  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 85000 - Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: Theater, Cinema, Painting
GC: Wednesdays, 4:15 - 6:15pm., Professor Paul Smith

This course, which is taught in English, treats the drama of Federico García Lorca, selected films of Buñuel, and some fine art works by Dalí. It 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 86300 – Contemporary Latin American Theater and Performance (1960-Present)
GC: Wednesday, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Prof. Graham-Jones

This course takes a “geochronological” approach to surveying contemporary Latin American theatre and performance. In other words, the course will be organized around the last six decades to examine theatre and performance practices of several countries within the context of each particular decade. Special attention will be paid to principal trends and movements of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century Latin American theatre and the cultural terms in play during each decade. We will study how Latin American theatre practitioners have adopted, adapted, critiqued, and rejected extra-Latin American traditions, as well as created, transformed, and questioned specifically Latin American theoretical and aesthetic models.

Course requirements and expectations:
Three 500-word responses, one 500-750-word summary of a recommended book or 2-3 of the grouped recommended articles, and a final research paper (15-20 pages).

SPAN 87000 – The Neoliberal Promise of Happiness and Ugly Feelings: Post-Utopic Fiction and Film from Central America
GC: Tuesday, 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Prof. Perkowska

TBA

SPAN 87000 – Slavery, Gender, and Resistance on Hispaniola
GC: Monday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Maríñez

This course examines the institution of slavery on Ayiti/Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It also explores the various modes of resistance that led to its abolition and how various authors have addressed it in their literary works. We begin with theoretical texts on what constitutes slavery, its history, legacy and contemporary forms so as to situate our focus on Hispaniola within a transhistorical, global, human rights context. We then examine the work of historians and critics addressing resistance strategies that took place on both sides of the island and which culminated with the Haitian Revolution, an event of enormous impact on the modern world and on the rise of human rights. Lastly, we analyze neo-slave narratives, that is, recent representations of the experience of the enslaved. Special attention is given to the role of gender and women’s resistance to enslavement through a close reading of novels by Haitian Marie Vieux-Chauvet and Evelyne Trouillot and the poetry of Dominican-American author Ana-Maurine Lara, among others. Readings, papers, and discussions will be in English but students are welcome to read primary texts in either French or Spanish.

SPAN  87100 – Visualidad, "Mujeres", y Archivo
GC: Thursday, 4:15 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., Prof. Donoso Macaya

What is rendered (in)visible when “women” are rescued from/in the archive? What does the category “women” name and erase? What does the gesture of “rescue” reproduce? Is it possible to articulate forms of feminist criticism that do not attend to the politics of identity and representation, to develop methodologies that do not reinforce patriarchal paradigms and discursive tropes? These questions are the starting point for this course (taught in Spanish), which proposes to critically reflect on the notions of “visuality,” “women,” and “archive,” as well as to consider theoretical and methodological problems that emerge when addressing these notions together. The reflection will be guided both by academic studies that intersect archive, historiography, visuality and a critical perspective of gender—Licia Fiol-Matta, Donna Haraway, Saidiya Hartman, Andrea Noble, Ann Stoler, among others—as well as by literary essays and theoretical and activists texts by South American (trans)feminist authors—Panchiba Bustos, Alejandra Castillo, Jorge Díaz, Val Flores, Verónica Gago, Olga Grau, Marlene Guayar, Julieta Kirkwood, Lina Meruane, Julieta Paredes, Nelly Richard, and Alia Trabucco Zerán, among others. 

see also

SPAN 88000 - Dissertation Workshop
GC: Tuesday, 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m., Prof. Degiovanni

One-Credit Mini-Seminars
 

SPAN 87200 – Catalan Sociolinguistics
GC: Monday, September 20, 2021 through Friday, September 24, 2021
Time: TBD; Professor Hawkey
(Ramon Llull Institut)

This short seminar (10 hours) will focus on theories of power and migration in the context of the Catalan language. After years of oppression, does Catalan now occupy a position of hegemonic dominance over Spanish in Catalan-speaking society? If so, how do these systems of linguistic power operate? How is Catalan represented in public policy, and how are these ideas of language and power discursively constructed, sustained and challenged by individuals?  And what about migrants to Catalan-speaking areas -how do they engage with this 'small' language when it exists alongside the colossus that is Spanish? You don't need a background in sociolinguistics or Catalan studies - just your curiosity and enthusiasm! Together, we'll share waht we know about power and migration, and learn more about this fascinating language.

SPAN 87200 – Interseccionalidad y small cinemas Relatos y modelos audiovisuales: las periferias en el centro (Intersectionality and small cinemas—Audiovisual stories and models: Peripheries at the center)
GC: October 25-29, 2021, Prof. Iratxe Fresneda
Time: 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
(Etxepare Basque Institute)

Vivimos rodeadas de imágenes impregnadas de visiones del mundo que se nos muestran como naturales, a pesar de haber sido creadas culturalmente. Sin embargo, raramente analizamos los mensajes que estas imágenes contienen. ¿Cómo construimos los relatos audiovisuales, las imágenes? ¿Sobre la base de que universo simbólico, en base a qué modo de observar el mundo?

Este módulo propone un recorrido desde el estudio y el análisis de textos cinematográficos  y televisivos creados y producidos desde las periferias de los relatos. El País Vasco y los países nórdicos son dos buenos ejemplos para entender cómo desde los small cinemas es posible generar otras miradas que puedan llegar a un público universal. Mediante un acercamiento multidisciplinar y a través de estudios de caso, reflexionaremos en torno a el papel de los textos audiovisuales en la construcción de identidades y modos de ver.  Así mismo proporcionaremos herramientas para el análisis y la lectura crítica de los textos audiovisuales, orientaciones esenciales a la hora de construir todo tipo de relatos audiovisuales desde una perspectiva inclusiva.

English translation: We are surrounded by images offering visions of the world that depict us as natural, despite having been created culturally.  However, we rarely analyze the messages contained in these images.  How do we construct these audiovisual stories, these images? On the basis of what symbolic universe, what method of observing the world? 

This mini-seminar offers an overview of the study and analysis of film and television texts created and produced on the periphery of the storytelling world. The Basque country and the Nordic countries are two good examples for understanding how "small cinema" has made it possible to generate other viewpoints  that can reach a universal audience.  Taking a multidisciplinary approach and using case studies, we will reflect on the role of audiovisual texts in the construction of identities and ways of seeing.  In addition we will provide  tools for the analysis and critical reading of audiovisual texts, offering essential guidance for developing and building audiovisual stories from an inclusive perspective.

SPAN 87200  Cuerpo y alma: Las elegías de Federico García Lorca y Luis Cernuda (Body and Soul: the Elegies of Federico García Lorca and Luis Cernuda)
GC: November 11-13, 2021, Prof. Noël Valis
Time: TBA
(Delibes Chair)

Poema de lamentación, la elegía es un memento mori recordándonos que el dominio de la muerte es infinito, o como escribe Lorca: “¡También se muere el mar!” La elegía puede centrarse no sólo en la muerte de una persona célebre o un ser querido, sino también en otras ausencias, como la pérdida del amor o la destrucción de la convivencia. Dos poesías magistrales iluminan el alcance y profundidad de la tradición elegíaca en la época moderna: el “Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías” de Federico García Lorca y “A un poeta muerto (F.G.L.)” de Luis Cernuda. Hay otras elegías que también se leerán en este curso, como por ejemplo, de Lorca: “Elegía a Doña Juana la Loca”, “Elegía del silencio” y “En la tumba sin nombre de Herrera y Reissig en el cementerio de Montevideo”; y de Cernuda: “Elegía española I”, “Elegía española II” y “A Larra, con unas violetas (1837-1937)”, donde el poeta observa en plena guerra civil: “Escribir en España no es llorar, es morir”. Estos poemas elegíacos singularizan el poder transformativo de la muerte, que genera, como flores oscuras, otras cuestiones importantes, sobre la memoria, la historia, la violencia, el cuerpo, la sexualidad disidente y el espíritu. Este curso se impartirá en español.

English translation: A poem of lamentation, the elegy is a memento mori, reminding us that the dominion of death is infinite, or as Lorca writes: “Even the sea dies!” The elegy can focus not only on the death of a celebrated person or a loved one, but also on other absences, such as the loss of love or the destruction of social harmony. Two magisterial poems illuminate the reach and depth of the elegiac tradition in the modern period: the “Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías” by Federico García Lorca and “A un poeta muerto (F.G.L.)” by Luis Cernuda. There are also other elegies we will read in this course, such as Lorca’s “Elegía a Doña Juana la Loca,” “Elegía del silencio,” and “En la tumba sin nombre de Herrera y Reissig en el cementerio de Montevideo” and Cernuda’s “Elegía española I,” “Elegía española II,” and “A Larra, con unas violetas (1837-1937),” where the poet observes in the midst of civil war: “to write in Spain is not to weep, but to die.” These elegiac poems singularize the transformative power of death, as it generates, like dark flowers, other important questions, on memory, history, violence, the body, dissident sexuality, and the spirit. Taught in Spanish.

COURSE LISTINGS

Three-Credits

 
SPAN 76200 – Theater and Fiestas in Colonial Spanish America: Religion, Politics, and History in Plays and Popular Celebrations
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Beatriz Peña

SPAN 80000 – Language & Identity
GC: Monday, 2:00 – 4:00 pm., Prof. Cecilia Cutler
 
SPAN 80100 – Transatlantic Polemics and the Panhispanic Cultural Field
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle 
 
SPAN 82000 – Maurofilia e islamofobia en la temprana modernidad española, 1492-1614
GC: Thursday, 4:15p.m.-6:15p.m., Prof. William Childers

SPAN 86300 - Transatlantic Theatre and Performance: Golden Age Spain and Pre-Conquest/Colonial Latin America (cross-listed with Theater)
GC: Wednesday, 2:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m., Prof. Jean Graham-Jones
 
SPAN 87100 – La frontera México-Estados Unidos en la imaginación neoliberal: Comunidades sacrificiales, geopolítica, militarización y guerra
GC: Monday, 4:15p.m.-6:15p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
 
SPAN 87100 – Culturas de guerra en el siglo XIX
GC: Tuesday, 4:15p.m.-6:15p.m., Prof. Fernando Degiovanni
 
SPAN 87100 – New Directions in Latinx Literary Studies
GC: Thursday, 6:30p.m.-8:30p.m., Prof. Vanessa Pérez Rosario
 
SPAN 88800 – Dissertation Seminar
GC: Wednesday, 4:15 – 6:15 pm., Prof. Carlos Riobó

One-Credit Mini-Seminars

SPAN 87200 - Cultura, creatividad, Cataluña
GC: April 12, 2021 - April 16, 2021, Prof. María Delgado
(Rodoreda Chair)

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Three-Credits

SPAN 76200 – Theater and Fiestas in Colonial Spanish America: Religion, Politics, and History in Plays and Popular Celebrations
GC: Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Prof. Beatriz Peña

Plays and accounts of public celebrations conform a rich corpus for the scholars of the history of ideologies and mentalities as well as for the history of artistic and literary forms. Colonial celebrations solemnized Corpus Christie; extoled the prestige and the magnificence of the city; memorialized canonizations; honored births, deaths, and weddings in the Spanish royal family; and saluted viceroys and other political figures. These events incorporated plays, rituals, parades, costumes, mythological figures, and indigenous dances, among other elements, that effectively radiated messages and projected the legitimacy and self-justification of the organizers, while also showing their aspirations and pretensions. Moreover, sometimes the authors of plays and the participants in fiesta’s sequences managed to voice resistance and criticisms against the entities in power. The study of surviving plays and accounts of fiestas, set and represented in the cities of Colonial Spanish America, such as Mexico, Lima, Quito, Potosí, and Santo Domingo, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (Llerena, Ocaña, Estrada Medinilla, Rodríguez Urbán de la Vega, sor Juana Inés, Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela) will allow us to delve deeper into both the imaginary worlds these events put forth and the historical, political, and religious ideas they meant to transmit. The course will also track how earlier celebrations mark the way for the fiesta barroca. The analysis of the encoded political and social imperatives of the primary texts will be supported by works from Maravall, Redondo, De la Flor, Mínguez, Rodríguez Moya, Dean, among others. The class will be taught in Spanish.

SPAN 80000 – Language & Identity
GC: Monday, 2:00 – 4:00 pm., Prof. Cecilia Cutler
 
The course explores the relationship between language and identity by introducing students to the theoretical, methodological, and ideological developments in sociolinguistics for studying how subjects construct, project, and perform different aspects of their identities in interaction. How much agency do people have in choosing and projecting their gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, class, and identities through linguistic, discursive, and other semiotic devices in interaction? How do individuals linguistically and discursively contest the ways in which they are imagined, defined and labeled by others? How can we bring in multimodal semiotic analysis to the study of how individuals construct and project identity? The course will analyze how speakers enact, project, and contest their culturally specific subject positions through communicative interactions and discourses. Topics to be explored include theories and methods for studying language and identity and contemporary topics such as embodiment, racialization and transracialization, stylization, passing, crossing, multilingual identities, second language learner identities, post-coloniality, indigeneity, and race.
 
SPAN 80100 – Transatlantic Polemics and the Panhispanic Cultural Field
GC: Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m., Prof. José del Valle 
 
There is one text in which Foucault states that he does not like polemics (Foucault/Rabinow). He passes moral judgment on a genre that, in his view, interferes with the search for truth and the relationship with the other. In a less negative vein, a number of discourse analysts (Angenot, Amossy) have underlined not only the complex communicational structure of this discursive genre but also its role in the development of public opinion and its entanglement in various realms of political life. In this seminar, we will assess the part played by language-ideological debates (Blommaert, Kroskrity, Woolard et at.) in the tensions surrounding the articulation of a disputed panhispanic public sphere. We will focus on the following (among others): disputes over orthographic reform in Chile (c.1843); Juan Valera and Rufino José Cuervo’s clash over the quality of Spanish literature and possible fragmentation of Spanish (c. 1900); the polémica del meridiano between Spanish and Latin American intellectuals over Madrid’s status as a cultural beacon (c.1927); Jorge Luis Borges’ response to Américo Castro’s perception of the River Plate’s linguistic and socio-cultural profile (1941); Martín Luis Guzmán’s proposal, at the first conference of academies of the Spanish language, to reorganize the current institutional arrangement (1951); and Luis Fernando Lara and Concepción Company’s rift over the Diccionario de Mexicanismos (2011). The careful analysis of each polemical engagement will be informed by discussions of the interaction between categories such as the intellectual (Moraña and Sánchez Prado, Said), polemic (Angenot, Foucault/Rabinow, Dascal), public sphere (Habermas, Calhoun), and pan-Hispanism (Sepúlveda, Del Valle). By its very nature, the course will examine the potential of Hispanic transatlantic studies (Moraña, Ortega), that is, the identification of the Atlantic as a dynamic organizing principle in cultural analysis; a topic whose currency in our disciplines was made even greater by the recent publication of Transatlantic Studies: Lantin America, Iberia, and Africa (2019). Room will be made for other polemics that students will be encouraged to identify and discuss. The course will be conducted in Spanish.
 
SPAN 82000 – Maurofilia e islamofobia en la temprana modernidad española, 1492-1614
GC: Thursday, 4:15p.m.-6:15p.m., Prof. William Childers
 
Exploraremos las tensiones culturales desatadas por la Conquista de Granada en 1492 y la imposición del cristianismo en la Península Ibérica a principios del siglo XVI. Empezaremos con el mudejarismo preexistente, manifestado en los romances fronterizos y en prácticas culturales como la zambra y aspectos artesanales: la seda, la yesería, la carpintería, la cerámica y la jardinería. Luego veremos la evolución de la representación de los musulmanes granadinos y sus descendientes a lo largo del siglo XVI, concentrándonos en el período clave entre la Guerra de las Alpujarras (1568-1571) y la expulsión de los moriscos de la Corona de Castilla (1610). Para este período, plantearemos la “cuestión morisca” con cierta complejidad. Leeremos textos de la boga maurófila en varios géneros: novela (El Abencerraje, Guerras civiles de Granada, Ozmín y Daraja); poesía (romances de Lope, Góngora y Lobo Lasso de la Vega); y teatro (El remedio en la desdicha). Yuxtapondremos con ellos documentos de archivo que reflejan el alcance popular del fenómeno, a la vez que los esfuerzos de la Monarquía y la Inquisición por mantener a la minoría vigilada y controlada. Nos asomaremos a ver algunos ejemplos de la resistencia de los propios moriscos: textos aljamiados, los llamados “libros plúmbeos”, y La historia verdadera del rey don Rodrigo de Miguel de Luna. Hablaremos del tema morisco en ambas partes del Quijote y en otros textos cervantinos, irónicamente contrastados con el discurso apologético en defensa de la expulsión (Aznar Cardona, La expulsión justificada, Gaspar de Aguilar, Expulsion de los moros de España y Jaime Bleda, Crónica de los moros de España). Finalmente haremos algunas calas en la historiografía posterior y la actualidad, viendo como la maurofilia resurge constantemente, pero sigue enfrentada hasta el día de hoy con una islamofobia que también es una dimensión permanente, al parecer, de la huella hispanoárabe en la Península. Nos orientaremos partiendo de conceptos teóricos de Bourdieu, Foucault, Pierre Nora, James C. Scott y Stuart Hall, pasados por el filtro de la teoría postcolonial (Said, Bhabha), del colonialismo interno (Aníbal Quijano), y de la “formación racial” (Omi y Winant). Aprovecharemos también los planteamientos de las generaciones de hispanistas que han estudiado estos temas desde distintos enfoques teóricos y empíricos. Este curso se impartirá en español.

SPAN 86300 - Transatlantic Theatre and Performance: Golden Age Spain and Pre-Conquest/Colonial Latin America (cross-listed with Theater)
GC: Wednesday, 2:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m., Prof. Jean Graham-Jones

This course focuses on theatre and performance produced in Spain and Latin America during, primarily, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rather than treating Latin America as a colonial extension of the Spanish-speaking metropolis, we will respond to the "transatlantic turn" in Latin American and Peninsular studies and examine the two regions through their nearly constant (albeit often conflicted) dialogue with each other. To do this we will discuss, apply, and critique the sociocultural, political, linguistic, literary, theatrical, and performance theories of coloniality.
After a transatlantic introduction to the period, we will look at theatre / performance practices in place in both regions before the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas and then proceed to an examination of Spain’s “Golden Age” of theatre as well as colonial theatre and performance in Latin America. We will read autos sacramentales in addition to entremeses and comedias from both sides of the Atlantic; study accounts of Corpus Christi processions in Madrid and Cuzco in addition to reconstructions of pre-Hispanic performance-scripts in Meso-America and Canada; and seek out specific examples of cultural encounter, such as the translation of a Spanish evangelical drama into Nahuatl or a colonial loa intended for a madrileño audience. Among the authors whose texts we will study are Rojas, Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca, Cervantes, Ruiz de Alarcón, sor Marcela de San Félix, Ana Caro, and sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Special consideration will be given to the role of translation in our own study of theatre and performance.

Evaluation will be based on engaged, prepared participation, the posting of multiple short responses, an in-class contextualization of an individual theorist, and a final research paper (15-20 pages).

SPAN 87100 – La frontera México-Estados Unidos en la imaginación neoliberal: Comunidades sacrificiales, geopolítica, militarización y guerra
GC: Monday, 4:15p.m.-6:15p.m., Prof. Oswaldo Zavala
 
Más allá de las gastadas metáforas de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos como una “cicatriz abierta” de sujetos liminales que dominaron a lo largo del siglo XX, este seminario examinará la construcción del imaginario cultural fronterizo en la era neoliberal a partir de la década de 1990 y hasta el presente. Se analizará una multiplicidad de objetos de estudio de ambos lados del borde geopolítico: literatura de ficción (Roberto Bolaño, Cristina Rivera Garza, Benjamín Sáenz, Cormac McCarthy) cine (Savages, Traffic, B films), televisión (Bordertown, The Bridge), fotografía (Julián Cardona, Fernando Brito, Don Barletti), crónica periodística (Luis Alberto Urrea, Charles Bowden, Juan Villoro), arte conceptual (Guillermo Gómez Peña, Teresa Margolles) y música popular (Los tigres del norte, Manu Chao, Lila Downs). La discusión se enmarcará en un amplio debate teórico, problematizando nociones de hibridez y mestizaje (Gloria Anzaldúa, Néstor García Canclini, Carlos Monsiváis), teoría sobre la frontera (Thomas Nail, Sandro Mezzadra, Étienne Balibar), historiografía fronteriza (Greg Gradin, Rachel St. Johns, Roger Bruns), militarización, extractivismo y guerra (Wendy Brown, David Harvey, Todd Miller), entre otras aproximaciones conceptuales.
 
SPAN 87100 – Culturas de guerra en el siglo XIX
GC: Tuesday, 4:15p.m.-6:15p.m., Prof. Fernando Degiovanni
 
Revolutionary wars, civil wars, regional wars; wars against imperial armies, wars against native populations, wars against political opponents, wars against neighboring countries: the deployment of military force and the militarization of life are recurrent facts in nineteenth-century Latin America—and, therefore, topics persistently discussed by writers. Carl von Clausewitz famously wrote: “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means” (On War); inverting von Clausewitz’s formulation, Michel Foucault argued that civil peace “must be interpreted as a continuation of war.” This course will focus on the role that technology, labor, travel, medicalization, gender and desire played in narrating subjects and territories. Readings will include works by Domingo F. Sarmiento (Facundo; Viajes), Juana Manuela Gorriti (short stories), José Hernández (Martín Fierro), Jorge Isaacs (María), Lucio V. Mansilla (Una excursión a los indios ranqueles), and theorists Michel Foucault (Society Must Be Defended), Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (One Thousand Plateaus), Paul Virilio (Pure War), and Fredic Jameson (“War and Representation”), among others. The seminar will be conducted in Spanish.
 
SPAN 87100 – New Directions in Latinx Literary Studies
GC: Thursday, 6:30p.m.-8:30p.m., Prof. Vanessa Pérez Rosario
 
What are the contours of the field of Latinx literary studies? What are the newest trends and theoretical moves in the field? Which critical journals publish the most exciting work in the field.  In this course we will read a selection of recent books of Latinx literary criticism to understand new directions in the field of Latinx literary and cultural studies.  We will look at recent books published by literary critics such as Yomaira Figueroa, Ralph Rodríguez, Cristina Pérez-Jiménez, and Dixa Ramírez, among others, alongside some of the literary works they examine, to understand new theoretical turns and critical directions in the field.  Some of the trends that emerge are the engagement of critical race studies and its relationship to Latinx bodies.  Ralph Rodríguez, in his recent book, questions the capaciousness of the category "Latinx literature" an dwonders whether there are other more engagin ways to approach the work written by Latinx authors.  Together we will think about where this still relatively young field has been and where it is headed. The course will be taught in Spanish.

One-Credit Mini-Seminars

 
SPAN 87200 - Cultura, creatividad, Cataluña
GC: April 12, 2021 - April 16, 2021, Prof. María Delgado
(Rodoreda Chair)

Catalonia is known for its culture but as Covid hits and shapes the present and the future, this seminar series engages with a number of artists whose work has shaped understandings of culture, agency and nationhood in Catalonia. This seminar series gives space to key artists to discuss what culture means in contemporary society, and how they work, and what might culture look like in the performing arts and film post-Covid Invited guests to be announced!
Cataluña es conocida por su cultura, pero a medida que Covid golpea y da forma al presente y al futuro, esta serie de seminarios se relaciona con varios artistas cuyo trabajo ha dado forma a la comprensión de la cultura, la agencia y la nacionalidad en Cataluña. Esta serie de seminarios brinda espacio a artistas clave para discutir qué significa la cultura en la sociedad contemporánea, cómo trabajan, y cómo podría verse la cultura en las artes escénicas y el cine después de Covid….. ¡Se anunciarán los invitados!

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 20^th and 21^st-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 19^th 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 20^th-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.