cursos

TENTATIVE COURSE PROJECTION Fall 2010-Spring 2014

	Fall 2010	Spring 2011	Fall 2011	Spring 2012	Fall 2012	Spring2013	Fall 2013	Spring 2014	Fall 2014
Alberto Ameal AREA E		US Latino Lit. (500)		Teatro US Latino (600)	Latino Journalism in the US (500)		Intro to Lit. Theory (500)	Intro US Latino Lit. (500)
María Soledad Barbón AREA C		Colonial Festivities (600)		Cannibalism Colonialism (600)	New World Historiography (500)
Albert Lloret AREA A			Don Quixote (697DQ)	Old Catalan Literature (500)	Golden Age Lyric Poetry (600)		Early Modern Spanish Theatre (Spanish 597)		Fictions of Authorship, 1200-1650 (Spanish 697)
Luis Marentes AREA D, E				Spanish American Essay (500)		Viajes y fronteras (600)		México post- revolucionario (700)
Margara Russotto AREA D	Poesía y Modernidad (597)		Clarice Lispector (600)		Cuento latinoamericano (700)		Poesía y Modernidad (500)		Caribe (600)
Barbara Zecchi AREA B	Discursos de género (500)	Adaptaciones fílmicas (600-CINE)	Mujeres y cine (600-CINE)	sabbatical leave	Expanding lit. in New Media (Taught by Domingo Sánchez Mesa)	Pedro Almodóvar (700-CINE)	Teoría feminista Escritura femenina (600) (Taught by H. Freear-Papio)	Adaptaciones fílmicas (700-CINE)	Discursos de género (500)
José Ornelas				Latin America through Film (700)

AREAS of CONCENTRATION in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures:

A) Medieval/Golden Age Spanish Literature and Culture
B) Modern Spanish Literature and Culture
C) Spanish American Literature and Culture from the Encounter to 1820
D) Spanish American Literature and Culture from 1820 to the Present
E) U.S. Latino/a Literature and Culture

COURSES IN AREA A: Medieval/Golden Age Spanish Literature and Culture

LLORET-- Spanish 597 - Early Modern Spanish Theatre
This course will offer a survey of Spanish plays written between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and will consider theatrical genres, conflicting poetics, main themes, representation and publication practices, as well as staging venues and their socio-historical significance. Readings will include works by Gómez Manrique, Fernando de Rojas, Juan del Encina, Gil Vicente, Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Calderón de la Barca, and Agustín Moreto. Taught in Spanish.

LLORET-- Spanish 597 - Old Catalan Literature
Life in a medieval court entailed many social obligations, such as composing, hearing, and reading out loud love songs, hate poems, chivalric romances, and heroic histories for fellow court-mates, enemies, lovers, friends, and family. This course will look at examples of Catalan literature written in the courts of the Crown of Aragon between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and will study the cultural dynamics of such social setting. Readings will include songs of the Occitan troubadours, Ramon Llull's pious romance Blaquerna and his treatise on chivalry, the autobiography of King James I, soldier Ramon Muntaner's travel writing, lord Ausiàs March's poems, and the chivalrous adventures of Curial, Güelfa, and Tirant lo Blanc. Taught in English with texts in translation. Catalan students and daring readers of other Romance languages will be encouraged to read short fragments in Old Catalan.

LLORET-- Spanish 697DQ - Don Quixote
This course will provide a close reading of Cervantes' masterpiece in the context of early modern culture. Particular attention will be paid to Don Quixote's relationship with chivalric and pastoral romances, historiography, and the Byzantine novel. This course will also take into consideration the material existence and transmission of Cervantes' novel, as well as the history of its interpretation. Taught in Spanish.

LLORET-- Spanish 697 - Fictions of Authorship (1200-1650)
What is authorship? To what extent is authorship inscribed in a text? How does it change over time? How did it transform through the middles ages and the early modern period? Was it ever thematized in Spanish “literary” works? Did it matter to the text’s contemporary readers? Should it matter to us? This course will explore authorship as a problematic and defining feature of medieval and early modern textuality. A number of Spanish works will be considered, including the Cantar de Mio Cid, Gonzalo de Berceo’s works, Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor, Juan de Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna, Lazarillo de Tormes, Luis de Góngora’s Polifemo, Francisco de Quevedo’s Buscón, and Baltasar Gracián’s Criticón. Taught in Spanish.

LLORET-- Spanish 797 - Print Culture and Authorship-Making
This seminar will study how the hand printing press became a powerful agent in the construction of poetical authorship during the Spanish Renaissance. The first editions of the poetry of medieval Valencian author Ausiàs March will be used as a touchstone to study how poets, in conjunction with editors, printers, communities of readers, Humanistic imitative practices, and Italianate and Classical poetics, decisively shaped both the material form and the meaning of poetical works in sixteenth century Spain. Taught in Spanish.

COURSES IN AREA B: Modern Spanish Literature and Culture Back to Top

ZECCHI-- SPAN 597HA - Gendered Discourses and the Canon in Modern Spain
During the 19th century, liberalism and romanticism provided the grounds for the flourishing of “feminine writing” to the point that, between 1840 and 1860, women clearly were the protagonists of the literary landscape. Such predominance started to dissipate as the century advanced, and the feminine presence in the canon became more and more sporadic. This course will focus on the struggle of Spanish women throughout the 19th century to maintain a literary space from where to undermine the patriarchal construction of a female identity and launch her own subjectivity, express her own desires, denounce the violence women must undergo, and ultimately search for the terms of her own identity

ZECCHI-- SPAN 797BA - La Belle Époque: Spanish Culture from 1898 to the Civil War
This course will examine the Spanish cultural production during a concrete historical period in which Spain experienced not only the revolutionary momentum that was sweeping Europe (in politics as well as in science, economics, or social habits) but also an artistic revival of such intensity that some critics have labeled it the “Silver Age.” The fields of cinema, painting, music and, of course, literature offered names of unquestionable international transcendence, such as Buñuel, Picasso, Dali, Falla, Unamuno, Alberti, Lorca, and so forth. We will focus on the artistic production of the period paying particular attention to the formal characteristics of the works as well as to the their socio-historical implications—including gender issues.

ZECCHI-- SPAN 797GR - Spanish Realisms.
Costumbrismo, naturalism, verismo, social realism and neo-realism are different versions of what Aristoteles had defined as “mimesis.” After a theoretical introduction with readings on the “imitation of nature” by Aristoteles, Auerbach and Lukacs, among others, this class will address the so-called “cuestión palpitante” through texts written by a broad selection of nineteenth-century writers (such as Zola, Valera, Pereda, Clarín, Pérez Galdós and Pardo Bazán,). It will then address the resurfacing of this trend in the twentieth-century literature with the “realismo social” of authors such as Miguel Delibes and Carmen Martín Gaite and in cinema, with the Italian neorealist movement and his Spanish version by Bardem, Berlanga and Ana Mariscal.

LLORET-- Catalan 597 - Modern Catalan Literature
In spite of the Spanish Civil War, two hostile dictatorships, a crushing exile, and the threatening shadow of one the most widely spoken languages in our global world, a rich literature has been written in the Catalan language since the late nineteenth-century. This course will study a selection of modern Catalan authors in their historical context, and in relationship to cultural movements and aesthetic tendencies (symbolism, modernism, noucentisme, avant-garde, kitsch, camp, postmodernism). Readings will include texts by Maragall, Català, Carner, Salvat-Papasseit, Riba, Espriu, Calders, Foix, Ferrater, Rodoreda, Perucho, Fuster, Villalonga, Porcel, Marçal, and Monzó. Taught in English with texts in translation. Catalan students and daring readers of other Romance languages will be encouraged to read short fragments in Catalan.

ZECCHI-- SPAN 797BB - Women and Film (this course counts also for the Grad Certificate in Film Studies)
A close examination of the evolution of Spanish cinema by women directors through the viewpoint of gender and feminist film theories. This class will highlight women’s mainly gynocentric cinematic scope and engage several of the most recurrent topics that shape women’s films (such as violence against women, the depiction of the female body, and the rejection of traditional female roles, among others) in comparison with how these same themes surface in hegemonic cinema (i.e. both Hollywood and Spanish male-authored production). Furthermore this class will outline the historical evolution of female cinema: 1) Film-makers who worked before the Civil War and were silenced by Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, 2) Those who had to negotiate their production within the regime’s censorship, and 3) A third group that, in democracy, contributes to a “boom” of women behind the camera. By tackling the so-called gender-genre debate, this class will analyze how each group uses (or subverts) different male-dominated cinematic forms (such as neo-realism, the road movie, the film noir, etc.), thus shaping a female discursive “difference” in each period. Taught in Spanish.

ZECCHI-- SPAN 697SP – From Paper to Celluloid: Spanish Film (this course counts also for the Grad Certificate in Film Studies)
This class will study Spanish literary works and their cinematic adaptations. It will address the fundamental differences between written words and visual image, measure the fidelity of the recreation and reflect upon the implications of ideology and gender for reinterpretation. Movies include the two versions of María Lejárraja's Canción de cuna, Juan de Orduña's and Josefina Molina's recreations of Machado's La Lola se va a los puertos, and Garci's adaptation of Galdós's El abuelo, among others.

ZECCHI-- SPAN 597CI - Spanish Cinema and Auteurism (this course counts also for the Grad Certificate in Film Studies)
In the context of the discussions on the “politique des auteurs” and the “auteur theory,” this class concentrates on films by one or two directors (such as Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar, Pilar Miró or Isabel Coixet, among others), and aims to highlights his/her cinematic models, distinctive style and recurrent themes. Taught in Spanish

ZECCHI-- SPAN 597T - Catalan Cinema (team taught with Júlia Llompart, this course counts also for the Grad Certificate in Film Studies)
Spanish cinema started in Catalunya with two important schools: the realistic school led by Fructuós Gelabert; and the fantastic trend represented by Segundo de Chomón. After the silence forced upon Catalan cinema during Franco’s dictatorship in the 40’s and 50’s, it started to regain an important role in the film industry with the Barcelona School in the mid 60’s. Presently Catalan Cinema enjoys a strong recognition thanks to the works of well-known Catalan directors such as Bigas Luna, Ventura Pons and Isabel Coixet, among others. Class meets once a week for three hours. Students are in charge of twenty minutes film introductions and to moderate discussions. Attendance is mandatory. Offered in combination with the Catalan Film Festival. 1 credit, Pass-Fail. Films are shown in the original language (Catalan or Castilian) w/ English subtitles.

COURSES IN AREA C: Spanish American Literature and Culture from the Encounter to 1820 Back to Top

BARBÓN-- SPAN 797CA - Cannibalism and Colonialism. The question we will address in this course is not so much whether cannibalism as a practice really existed (or still exists), but the fascination this topic has exerted on the European mind and the responses it has provoked. The purpose of the course is twofold: first, to introduce the student to the study of the textual and iconographic representations of American “cannibalism” from the sixteenth until approximately the eighteenth century: chronicles, literature, legal discourses on the one hand, and map sheets, single drawings, book illustrations, on the other. The second objective will be to discuss the research produced by literary critics, anthropologists and within colonial/postcolonial studies during the last two decades on cannibalism as a trope and as a discursive practice within colonialist discourse. A good reading knowledge of Spanish is required.

BARBÓN-- SPAN 697CM - Indigenous and Mestizo Chroniclers in early modern Peru. (Barbón) This course aims at introducing the student to the study of ethnographies and chronicles penned by indigenous Latino and Mestizo writers in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After reading selections form early modern Spanish historians in order to better work out the differences, we will carefully examine the works of Andean writers focusing on their particular conceptions of time, space, gender, and ritual. Furthermore, we will discuss critical works produced in the field of early modern Andean studies and subaltern studies.

BARBÓN-- SPAN 697FT: Fiestas Coloniales/Festivals and Rituals in Colonial Spanish America. (Barbón) This course studies religious and civic celebrations in colonial Spanish America, in particular Corpus Christi, the inaugural entry of the new viceroy and those festivities following the announcement of the death and coronation of a monarch. We will focus on four interrelated aspects: first, the images of the different ethnic groups projected during these festivals; second, the discourse of loyalty; third, the exaltation of the city and the symbolic use of space in the ritualized processions; and fourth, the relationship between panegyric literature and censorship. Student will be exposed to a great amount of archival material.

COURSES IN AREA D: Spanish American Literature and Culture from 1820 to the Present Back to Top

MARENTES-- SPAN 597A - Culture and Revolution in Latin America. (Marentes) This class studies the relationship between revolution and culture in Latin America from different angles. The first weeks are dedicated to considering the different meanings of the term “revolution” and the relationship of this concept to that which we understand as culture. With this in mind, we will study a variety of cultural representations of revolutionary processes in three specific regions – Mexico, Cuba and Central America. For this study we will consider a variety of “texts” that include essays, poems, movies, songs and paintings.

MARENTES-- SPAN 558 - Spanish American Essay. (Marentes) This class studies the different manifestation of the Spanish American essay, paying particular attention to the way this genre has been used to imagine an American identity.

MARENTES-- SPAN 697B - Travels and Borders in Latin American and US Latina/o Literature. This class studies the way in which Latin American and US Latina/o writers have constructed and complicated notions of ethnic and/or national identity through narratives of travel or border experience. We understand borders in a broad and flexible manner, considering not only political divisions between nation-states, but also geographical borders and cultural “contact zones.” For that reason, we consider a broad range of travels, including tourism, migration, exploration, deportation, exile and the quotidian movement between different geographical and/or cultural spaces.

MARENTES-- SPAN 796L: Mexico in the 1920s and 30s. This seminar will explore the Mexico of the 1920s and 30s in many of its manifestations. The 1920s are marked by the institutionalization of the postrevolutionary regime. The decade begins with the ascendancy of the Sonoran faction that would, by 1929, create the Partido Nacional Revolucionario – the current PRI’s predecessor. By the 1930s, under Cárdenas, the revolutionary regime reaches its most radical stage, with the growth of official syndicalism, the height of land redistribution and the nationalization of the oil industry. It is a period, to a great degree, characterized by introspection, marked by the growth of an official nationalism. It is, nevertheless, also a period marked by major international connections. In the broadest of terms, the previous decade of armed struggle displaced many, sending thousands to the United States. Among the elites, many were exiled. The revolutionary struggle and its institutionalization attracted intellectuals and political activists from throughout the world to Mexico. It is also a period of cosmopolitan experimentation with groups such as Contemporáneos and the Ulises Theater. The estridentistas published their manifesto, as did Diego Rivera with Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky. The 1930s saw the arrival of thousands of refugees of the Spanish Civil War. Beginning with the notions of transculturación in Angel Rama, hybrid cultures in Nestor García Canclini and traveling cultures in James Clifford, we will approach this period as a moment of particularly interesting intersections between the local and the foreign, the modern and the past in the development of an image of Mexico; modern and traditional, regional and cosmopolitan. In the seminar we will develop a broad bibliography of primary and secondary sources for the study of the period. The seminar as a whole will read and discuss a common bibliography throughout the semester, while each individual student will be expected to provide the class with sample primary texts relevant to the group discussion. The final paper will be an introduction to the selected texts.

RUSSOTTO--SPAN 597-- READING THE CANON: LATIN AMERICAN NOVEL
Intensive Seminar of research on the 20th century Latin American narrative fiction. We will read, analyze and discuss the masterpieces of canonical authors, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, José María Arguedas, Augusto Roa Bastos, Gabriel García Márquez, among others. We will consider some specific and problematic notions, like "Realismo mágico", "Novela de la selva", "Novela del dictador", "El boom", among others. Intensive participation is expected from students: there will be oral presentations, commented bibliography, book reviews and a research paper on topics in accord with the instructor. TAUGHT IN SPANISH.

RUSSOTTO-- SPAN 797HA - IMAGINARIOS FEMENINOS EN LATINOAMÉRICA
Intensive Seminar of literary and cultural research. The purpose of the seminar is to explore and discuss the work of Latin America women painters, writers, photographers, poets and artists in the 20th century. We will explore recurrent topics in their work: body and aging, historiographic fiction, illness, authorship, social violence, autobiography, “self” representation, and others. We will also explore the influence of psychoanalysis and Surrealism in the novels, and the works of women artists that lived in Mexico during the 1920s to 1950s (such as Khalo, Izquierdo, Varo, Modotti). Intensive participation is expected from students: there will be oral presentations, books reviews, commentated bibliography, paper reactions, and a research paper on primary sources. Of particular interest to students in Humanities, Women´s Studies and Social Science.

RUSSOTTO-- SPAN 597CB – CUBAN LITERATURE IN THE 19th and 20th CENTURY: A LIMITLESS ITINERARY
Re-reading of the Cuban literary canon through the analysis and discussion of its main authors and tendencies, from the early Romanticism of the mid-1800s and the anti-slavery literature, to today's post-revolutionary works. We will study different authors, literary genres, and topics of the Cuban imaginary such as "cubanía", "mestizaje", "transculturación", “negritud”. This course explores Cuban literature in its double significance: as part of the development of Cuban society and as a construction of a specific aesthetic sensibility. Therefore, studying the relationship between history, culture and literature will be a constant in this course, taking into consideration the different contexts that determine this dialogue (Africa, Spain, the United States of America and Latin America). Nonetheless, emphasis will be given to the literary text as the highest expression of a cultural identity that refers to its own tradition. Students will be expected to participate intensively: oral presentations, book reviews, a midterm exam, and a research paper. Open to advanced students, graduate and undergraduate.

RUSSOTTO-- SPAN 697: CLARICE LISPECTOR and THE ESSENTIAL CATEGORIES OF FICTION
Research seminar on Brazil’s most important female writer. An exploration of her unique poetic and of the classic notions of narratives (Narrator, Character, Epiphany/Satori, Referent, Koan and many more). Her works will be studied, in its original language and/or in translation to other languages, including paintings and films. Requirements: Active participation in class discussion, oral presentations, book reviews and a final paper.
Aimed at students of Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American Studies and Women's Studies; and also at those interested in mastering the anatomy of the novel and short-story, in knowing the roots of the Brazilian culture, in identifying the paradoxes of critical reception and, lastly, in enjoying the iconoclastic sense of Latin American literature as the heart of its culture.
The seminar will be given in Spanish and/or Portuguese. Students may submit written work in Spanish and/or Portuguese.

RUSSOTTO-- SPANISH 597 – CARIBBEAN SHORT STORY
This seminar focuses on the works of the masters of the Caribbean Short Story. Short story is the most popular literary genre in Latin America, and it is considered to be ‘protean’ due to its ability to morph into any number of forms. We will read selected representative texts by authors from Venezuela, Cuba, Costa Rica, Colombia, Puerto Rico, among others, in order to identify intersections between the aesthetic movements, the regional history, and the traditional conflicts with the peripheral Modernity. We will spend the first few sessions on the theory of the Short Story. Students will be expected to participate intensively: there will be oral presentations, book reviews, a midterm exam, and a research paper on primary sources.
The seminar is open to advanced students, graduate and undergraduate.
TAUGHT IN SPANISH.

RUSSOTTO-- SPANISH 553 - THE LONG POEM IN LATIN AMERICA
Intensive seminar of poetic research. This seminar focuses on the long poem through the analysis and discussion of some of the most important Latin American poems of the 20th century. As a hybrid form that is essentially connected with Modernity, the long poem reveals a structural paradox since it rejects the epic structure and its didactic exposition, and at the same time it revisits the sources of tradition. We will explore the formal characteristics of that paradox (time and development, space representation, allegories of cultural tensions, status and role of the “self”, among other topics). We will include authors from Hispanic America and from Brazil (in bilingual versions Portuguese/Spanish). The first sessions will be dedicated to the theoretical problems of this particular literary form, its historic background and current research on this subject.
Among the possible readings are: Altazor by Vicente Huidobro, Muerte sin fin by José Gorostiza, O cão sem plumas (El perro sin plumas) by João Cabral de Melo Neto, El amor desenterrado by Jorge Enrique Adoum, Agua by Carmen Boullosa, Canto cósmico by Ernesto Cardenal, Últimos días de una casa by Dulce María Loynaz, Lamentación de Dido by Rosario Castellanos. Also representative texts of literary and cultural criticism.
Intensive participation is expected from students: there will be oral presentations, book reviews and a research paper on primary sources.
TAUGHT IN SPANISH.

COURSES IN AREA E: U.S. Latino/a Literature and Culture Back to Top

MARENTES-- SPAN 597W - US Latina/o Literature and Culture. Focusing mainly on Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, we study manifestations of Latina/o culture in the United States in different spaces and moments. Among the topics covered are migration, urban organizations, popular culture, globalization, transnationalism and the recent Latina/o “boom.”

AMEAL--Spanish 697- Hispanic Newspapers in the United States: ¡Extra! ¡Extra!
The purpose this seminar is the study of the history of the Hispanic newspapers since 1800 until present. This course will focus on the socio-historical development of the Latino/a community within the United States; as well as the pursuit of their identity within the cultural and geographic borders of a multicultural nation. The theoretical framework follows the three main manifestations of periodical publication: exile, immigration and nativism. This class will study how these manifestations reflect the nature of Hispanic culture in the United States.

AMEAL--Spanish 697- US Latino/a Theatre: Arriba el telón
This course focuses on the contribution to the Latino performing arts in the United States by members of other representative groups (Venezuelans, Dominicans, Peruvians, Colombians and so on) that coexist with the three major groups: Mexicans-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Cuban-Americans. Their artistic production occupies a multicultural space where different and dissimilar cultural markers are intertwining each other. The class goal is to acquaint the students with a history of the US Latino/a theatre and the conditions in which this movement was produced.

AMEAL-- Spanish 597- US Latino/a Literature and culture: Oye cómo va
In this century, Latinos/as have become more visible in the American public scene. On popular culture, mass-media, politics and other activities, Latinos/as have achieved essential roles. This course is an introduction to US Latina/o literature, culture and history. The class incorporates their stories across national origin groups: Mexican-Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans and Latin Americans in general. This class will provide students with an opportunity to make critical evaluations across historical events and geographical borders. By using interdisciplinary tools we will approach the complexities of the Latina/o identity answering questions such as How far back does the historical presence of Latinas/os stretch in the United States?; How did they become part of the American nation?.

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