Course descriptions for courses offered in recent year
Peninsular LiteratureSpan 5111 - Fall 02
Contemporary Spanish Literature since 1913
This course examines major literary works and movements in Spain fro 1915 to 2000. It includes discussion of neomodernism, surrealism, social realism, literatures of dictatorship and exile, postmodernism, and problems of literary history. The genres to be studied include poetry, novel, drama, essays, film, and video/TV.
Span 5106 - Fall 03The Literature of the Reconquest and Feudal Spain
This course surveys the medieval literary canon, from the jarchas to Celestina. Our study of these texts will be grounded in a complex sociohistorical context: the conflictive “convivencia” of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish culture, the struggle for power between the aristocracy and the monarchy and between clerical and secular/court culture, and the complex interaction of orality and literacy. We will focus on the gradual emergence of a national identity founded on Christian and Castilian hegemony and achieved through the exclusion of stigmatized Others. A consideration of modern refashionings of the medieval, e.g., Borges’ retelling of a Don Juan Manuel story or Becquer’s use of medieval settings, will foster an understanding of both the alterity and continuity of medieval culture.
Span 5107 - Spring 04The Literature of the Spanish Empire and Its Decline
This course is conducted in Spanish and is directed to graduate students and exceptional undergraduate honors students who may register with permission of the instructor. The focus is on the literature and culture of the Spanish 16th and 17th centuries, of the Renaissance and Baroque periods respectively. Texts chosen for analysis and discussion include chivalry and pastoral romances; chronicles of conquest; picaresque narratives; cervantine and post-cervantine novellas;, a variety of poems illustrative of several poetic movements; plays composed under the aegis of the so-called “arte nuevo,” sacramental plays, dreams, emblems and aphorisms. General topics of discussion include: "Novel and Experience; "Renaissance Humanism and the issue of Poverty"; "Letters and Empire"; "The Culture of Crisis of Baroque Spain"; and, "Baroque Subjectivity".
Class time: 50% lecture, 50% discussion/ student presentations
Work load: 200 pages of reading per week; written reviews of books/ essays; extensive take-home exam (approximately 30 pages)
Grade: 50% final exam; 25% in-class presentation(s); 25% participation in class discussions
Exam format: Essay
Don Quixote
Cervantes' DON QUIJOTE (1605;1615) is examined in connection with the following issues: 1) the critical/theoretical questions connected to the reception of several types of fiction during the Renaissance and early Baroque periods ; 2) the novel's complex dialogue with the dominant sociopolitical discourses of its time and the inclusion within the narrative of various kinds of hybrid cultural forms, including languages, gender, ethnicity, and race; and, 3) present-day debates between scholars who adhere to traditional humanist and/ or historicist readings and critics whose work is informed by avant-garde, poststructuralist theory.
In addition to reading DON QUIJOTE and some select bibliography, students are also be expected to comply in timely fashion with the following, additional, requirements:
1) Review of either a major book or several essay(s) focusing on one or more of the topics to be discussed in class (approximately 7-8 pages). A format for reviews as well as a precise schedule of presentation (oral and written) will be discussed at our first meeting. (15%)
2) Participation in class discussions. (20%)
3) Delivery of a fifteen-minute summary of reflections on the course (approximately 7-8 pages) during the last two weeks of classes. A final version of the same should be handed in to the instructor with the final exam. (15%)
4) A take-home final examination consisting of two questions (10 pages per question) which should reflect a careful reading of DON QUIJOTE and the theoretical/ critical issues surrounding it. (50%)
*This class is geared to graduate students and exceptional undergraduates (honors only)
Span 5109 - Spring 05The Crisis of the Regime: Spanish Literature of the Enlightment and Romanticism
LITERATURA ESPAÑOLA DE LOS SIGLOS XVIII Y XIX
Este curso sirve de introducción a la literatura de los siglos XVIII y XIX en España. Se estudiarán textos representativos de los diferentes movimientos literarios y culturales de estas épocas, tales como la ilustración, el romanticismo, el costumbrismo, el realismo, el naturalismo, etc. Se analizará a fondo la manera en que los textos que leemos reflejan no sólo estos movimientos culturales, sino también los contextos históricos, políticos, sociales e ideológicos en los que surgieron. Se leerán textos de diferentes géneros, incluyendo ensayo, teatro, poesía, novela y relato breve, y se explorará el desarrollo de estos diferentes géneros en estas épocas. Con cada lectura principal, se leerán, también, lecturas secundarias de teoría o crítica literaria que servirán para enmarcar la discusión de los textos, y que se usarán como ejemplos del tipo de lectura crítica que se espera que los estudiantes desarrollen a lo largo del curso.
Span 5910 - Fall 02
Topics in Spanish Peninsular Literature
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Spanish- American Literature
Span 5526 - Fall 03
Creole Consciousness and Mercantilist Culture (Colonial)
Description not available
Span 5528 - Spring 04
Popular Literary Consciousness: 1900 - 1950
Relevant, and drawing on the theoretical perspectives and methods used in a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as on the established field of Cultural Studies, this course will focus on the critical assessment of current Latin American popular and consumer cultures through an array of interdisciplinary perspectives, including cultural theory, history, literature, music, and dramatic performance. Ranging from traditional textual analysis to ethnographic observation, this pluralistic approach will also build up coursework and further examination of cultural trends deeply ingrained in Latin American visual and written everyday life texts, generated by the immense popularity of pseudo-historical television miniseries, expensive soap operas / radionovelas, controversial stand up comedy, cursi romance novels, comics, and by the recent success of the detective fiction genre.
Through the consideration of bona fide materials extracted from television or cinema, music, advertisements, print media, leisure events of all kinds, and other public performances, students will confront topics concerning the understated importance of rural / urban everyday life and their relationship with issues of identity, popular memory, and resistance, as expressed through ritual, the body, social movements, urban myths, and by canonical literature. Although it is apparent that all themes and subject matters addressed here will emphasize both historical and contemporary familiar perspectives since the sixties, the main focus of our attention will attempt to answer questions dealing with the imposition of mainstream ideology and the reinforcement of power relations; the construction of civic spaces for negotiation and contestation between people of unequal power; the fabrication of themes expressed by popular culture throughout history; the uneasy invention of modern consciousness molded by the encounter between Popular Culture and Human and Civil Rights movements in Latin America (state violence and impunity, rights of indigenous peoples, women, and ethnic and gender minorities); and the adoption and adaptation of what is considered new to the current Iberoamerican cultural context.
Students will be exposed to texts that present particular viewpoints of the above mentioned questions, applying the insights of some discourses against others to challenge, extend, or simply reorganize them in a better fashion. The ultimate goal is to help us better understand the crucial role popular literatures and cultures play in shaping the way Latin Americans, and somehow U.S. Latinos, perceive and interpret the world.
Grades will be determined by:
Mid-term (Take-home) Exam: 30%.
Essay: 30%.
Oral presentation: 20 %.
Participation: 20 %.
Tentative readings: novels and Critical work
APARICIO, FRANCES and Candida Jaquez, eds., Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America, 2003.
BEEZLEY, W. and L. Curcio-Hagy, eds., Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction, 2000.
DORFMAN, Ariel and A. Mattelart, How to read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, 1975.
FOSTER, D. W., From Mafalda to Los Supermachos: Latin American Graphic Humour as Popular Culture, 1989.
FRANCO, Jean, 'What's in a name? Popular culture theories and their limitations', in Critical Passions: Selected Essays, 1999, pp. 169-80. See also pp. 208-20.
GARCIA CANCLINI, Néstor, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity [1992], trans. 1995.
PUIG, Manuel, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth 1984; Heartbreak Tango 1987; Kiss of the Spiderwoman 1976.
ROWE, William and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America 1991.
RUBINSTEIN, Anne, Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation: A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico, 1998.
VARGAS LLOSA, Mario, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter 1983; The Storyteller 1989.
WEISS, Judith, Latin American Popular Theatre, 1993.
Span 5529 - Fall 04
National Affirmation and Transnationalization. (1950 - 1970
This course will explore the Literary trends of the period (late 1950’s to present) as reaction to internal social demands for development of independent national cultures and conflicting influence of international economic system. Thus, we will study the construction, destruction, and resistance of human discourse in Latin American literature: fiction, drama and poetry, using a variety of sources, including ethnography, film, testimony, narrative fiction, and autobiography. The social energy of the collectivity and the essence of its life, its reality, its history, its cultural, social, and national myths have actively nourished—by reaction and rejection—the creative work of its poets, novelists, and artists. Only within this context, we may be able to understand the intellectual impact of the Cuban revolution in 1959 (the killing of patriarchal’s emblems in José Triana’s La noche de los asesinos), the narcissist literary devices of the “Boom Generation,” personified here by Vargas Llosa’s La ciudad y los perros; and the desperate search for economic and cultural independence encouraged by the rediscovery of the so-called national cultures, e.g., Galeano’s Las venas abiertas de América. Other topics will include the falling out of the Cuban revolution in the 70’s and 80’s (Reynaldo Arenas’ case, the dramatic nostalgia of Pedro Monge-Rafuls); the military repression in the seventies and mid-eithties; and the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979 (the poetic discourse of Ernesto Cardenal). In our way toward the 90’s we will review the recovery of the Colonial Heritage in contemporary narrative (the historical novel) and drama (Yuyachkani), the return of the exiles; the urban marginals and the neo-indigenist discourse depicted by José María Arguedas; the feminist writers, the authors from the insurgence areas (Chiapas’ Eraclio Zepeda) and the phantoms of globalism and privatization as identified in the work of Carlos Fuentes.
Course Requirements:
The course will function as a seminar with each student responsible for at least one weekly presentation (45-minute oral presentation) and about 250 pages of reading every week. One final 25-page research paper. No exams. Evaluations of students will be based on: 50% paper; 25% oral presentation; 25% class participation.
Span 5525 - Spring 05
Caribbean Literature: An intgral approach
Studying the literary and cultural production of the Caribbean as a region presents special challenges. Literatures of the Caribbean tend to be studied within a specific linguistic context (French, Spanish, English), with the result that the work of a particular group of Caribbean writers—say, West Indian writers—is primarily read in relation to other writing in English, whether that of the colonial metropolis or that of other former English colonies. It is less often read in relation to writing from Cuba or Puerto Rico. And, while in a Spanish department one might study the important relationships between Cuba and Puerto Rico within the context of Spanish-speaking Latin American (or U.S. Latino studies), too often the regional context that would place Cuba in relation to Jamaica or Haiti is absent. Thus, while a language-based focus still remains important for challenging and revising colonial versions of literary history, it tends to beg the question of thinking about the Caribbean as a cultural region across or among linguistic communities.
*Goals*: In this class, we will not attempt a comprehensive survey of Caribbean literatures, but we will ask a series of questions that will allow us to understand some of the commonalities and differences that characterize the Caribbean as cultural region with a common history, in particular, a regional history of colonialism, the complex relations of culture and power that produce creolization and the impact of the colonial legacy on Caribbean life today. We will also practice some techniques for active discussion, including the use of web-based tools for supporting in-class discussion. A brief, structured research project will allow us to practice important basic skills for conducting and presenting research.
*Themes: *Our discussion will begin with two essays separated by 100 years: José Martí’s “Nuestra América” and Stuart Hall’s “Negotiating Caribbean Identitites.” Using the problems of “myths of identity” and ”cultural identity as a political question” (Hall), we will look at a series of works by Caribbean writers as literary responses to a regional history. We’ll talk about the construction of the Caribbean as imaginary geography; Caribbean tropes of identity; the relation of writers to language and “the people” (el pueblo); slavery and the impact of the African legacy; sexuality and gender as discursive axes in Caribbean writing; home and exile, etc.
While most of our texts will be from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, we will also consider some works from the English and French-speaking Caribbean. In particular, we will focus on the African presence in the Caribbean as theme, cultural matrix, and cultural strategy. Readings will include novel, essay, testimonial writing, poetry, and theory. Film, music, dance, and food will be important resources for the class as well.
Span 5532 - Spring 05
Literature and National Desintegration. (1970 - present)
Course description not available at this time.
Span 5920 - Spring 05
Topics in Spanish American Literature
Course description not available at this time.
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Hispanic Linguistics
Span 5985 - Fall 01
Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Span in the U.S.
Course description not available at this time.
Span 5711 - Spring 02
Structure of Spanish: Phonology
This course provides an intense introduction to some of the major topics in Spanish phonology and their treatments within the various models of generative phonology. A working knowledge of Spanish articulatory phonetics and a basic knowledge of phonological concepts are assumed. Throughout the course we will build on this previous knowledge and examine the ways in which modern phonological theory has been applied to topics in Spanish, the contribution that phonological theory has made to our understanding of Spanish, and the contribution that Spanish has made to phonological theory. While lecture will be used to introduce concepts, the majority of class time will be spent discussing the course readings.
Span 5714 - Spring 02Theoretical Foundations of Spanish Syntax
Course description not available at this time.
Span 5701 - Fall 02
History of Ibero-Romance
Course description not available at this time.
Span 5716 - Fall 02
The Structure of Modern Spanish: Pragmatics
Course description not available at this time.
Span 5930§8780 - Spring 03
Topics in Ibero-Romance Ling/Sem in Hisp Sociolinguistics
The focus of this course is on sociolinguistic variation and cross-dialectal diversity in different varieties of Spanish in Latin America and Spain. It includes a critical examination of the relationship between language use and social factors in the Spanish-speaking world. In addition, field methods appropriate for the investigation of sociolinguistic issues within Spanish-speaking communities will be analyzed. The two textbooks for this course, Silva-Corvalán's Sociolingüística y pragmática del español and Moreno Fernández's Principios de sociolingüística y sociología del lenguaje, will be supplemented with primary research articles focusing on current issues in Spanish sociolinguistics.
Span 5721 - Spring 03
Spanish Laboratory Phonology
Throughout this course we will study many of the ways that experiments of varying types (acoustic, perception, acquisition, etc.) can be used to investigate issues in Spanish phonology, from reconsidering traditional issues in Spanish phonology to examining issues not able to be considered without an experimental approach. We will read much of the (very recent) literature that takes an experimental approach to Spanish phonology, discuss the issues involved with conducting experiments, learn to design different types of experiments, and learn to critique experimental methods. Coursework will involve the in-class presentation of articles, periodic short assignments, and a course paper reporting the results of an experiment that you will design and carry out during the semester.
Span 5711- Spring 04
The Structure of Modern Spanish: Phonology
This course provides an intense introduction to some of the major topics in Spanish phonology and their treatments within the various theoretical models of phonology. The course will examine the ways in which modern phonological theory has been applied to topics in Spanish, the contribution that phonological theory has made to our understanding of Spanish, and the contribution that Spanish has made to phonological theory. By the end of the course the student will have a theoretical background for further study in phonology, will have a knowledge of a large chunk of the core phonological literature on Spanish, will be able to critically evaluate phonological analyses, and will be able to perform a phonological analysis of a data set. While lecture will be used to introduce concepts, the majority of class time will be spent discussing the course readings.
Span 5730§8780- Spring 04
Topics in Ibero-Romance Ling/Sem in Hisp Sociolinguistics
The topic of this course is Spanish language contact. We will examine theoretical and methodological issues relating to different types and results of contact on Spanish, taking into account the varying social conditions under which contact occurs. The course will begin with an analysis of the major theoretical frameworks for the study of language contact (Weinreich, Thomason & Kaufmann, Myers-Scotton). We will then analyze and discuss research articles in the following areas: Spanish-based creole languages, Afro-Hispanic language contact in Africa and Latin America, Spanish in contact with the indigenous languages of Latin America, Spanish in contact with Portuguese, Spanish in contact with the regional languages of Spain, and Spanish in contact with English in the U.S.
Span 5714 - Fall 04
Structure of Modern Span: Syntax
This course discusses linguistic notions present in the syntax of Spanish, such as: discrete and prototypic categorization, grammaticalization, grammatical relations, flow of information, transitivity. The discussion is centered in the possible explanatory role of these notions vis a vis syntactic phenomena in Spanish such as: word order, hypotaxis, parataxis, clitics. The content is theoretical and students are expected to come to class with an adequate knowledge of Spanish grammar. The target audience are graduate students.
Required readings: : Taylor. Linguistic Categorization. and excerpts from various authors.
Grading: Midquarter 30%, Final 30%, weekly assignments: 40%
Portuguese
Port 5520 -
Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies
Course description not available at this time.
Port 5540 - Fall 02
Literatures and Cultures of Lusophone Africa
A graduate-level introduction to the literature and cultures of Portuguese-speaking Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé & Príncipe). Through an interdisciplinary focus that includes history, literature, intellectual thought/critical theory, film, and popular music, students will become acquainted with the key cultural problematics related to Lusophone Africa as a whole and the various individual countries in question. Key topics featured, among others: colonialism, post- or neo-colonialism, Pan-Africanism, Negritude, liberation wars, national identity, periphery, democratization, race, gender, and sexuality. When pertinent, cultural links will be established with other regional or national realities such as Africa, Brazil, Portugal, Spanish-speaking America, and the United States. PORT 5540 is part of our three core-course sequence that includes PORT 5520 (Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies) and PORT 5530 (Brazilian Literary and Cultural Studies). This course will be taught in English with a supplementary discussion session in Portuguese.
Port 5530 - Spring 03
Brazilian Literary and Cultural Studies
"From URARICOERA to JARDIM BRASIL": Brazil through modernist and postmodernist narrative - Through a postcolonial perspective and in dialogue with the field of Cultural Studies, we will explore the images of Brazil and of Brazilian culture suggested by a series of modern and postmodern novels. The main objective in this course is to explore how such narratives offer a critical evaluation of the utopias of Romanticism and modernization as they pertain to Brazil, at the same time as we determine how these utopias bring Brazil into a transnational dialogue. We will also connect this discussion to the two main stages within the formation of the concept of the nation-state, from its origins in the eighteenth century in England and France until the era of globalization which is re-defining the map of the world today. This course will be taught by Visiting Professor Lucia Helena.
Class time: 60% lecture, 40% discussion
Work load: 300 pages of reading per week, 20-30 pages of writing per semester, 1 paper(s)
Grade: 50% written report(s)/paper(s), 20% in-class presentation(s), 30% class participation
Port 5910 - Fall 03
Topics in Lusophone Cultures
This interdisciplinary course entails a critical study of the experience of Portuguese colonialism in Brazil, Africa, and Asia between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. We will focus on key ideas and texts related to the formation and (early) development of Portugal, Brazil, and Lusophone Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé & Príncipe, and Mozambique). We will explore various theoretical questions and cultural debates related to the colonial fact, among others: the dynamic of power and knowledge which is central to colonial relationships; representation and alterity; the internal dialectic within colonial discourse; the relationship between national identity and empire (in the case of Portugal); the experience of slavery; the emergence of hybrid societies (in the cases of Brazil, Cape Verde, and Angola). A multiplicity of discourses, genres, and areas of knowledge will be covered, such as literature (poetry, novels, theater, travel literature, sermons), critical thought, history, cinema, painting, and contemporary popular music. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students. This course will be taught in Portuguese. However, discussion and writing can take place in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
Port 5930 - Fall 04
Topics in Brazilian Literature
This course will use as central categories of analysis the discourses of sex and sexuality as they are deployed in literary and filmic works from Brazil, Portugal and the Spanish-speaking world. As a theoretical basis, we will analyze key writings emanating from the field of GLBT studies (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) and/or queer theory in the United States (and other countries), as well as critical essays produced in the specific cultures contemplated. Our focus will be interdisciplinary (anthropology, sociology, history, literature, film) and cross-cultural as we look into the discursive practices of (homo)sexualities as they intersect with: nation-building; modernity; racial, cultural and gender identity formations; as well as AIDS. The purpose of this course is to posit sexuality and its theorizations as key hermeneutic tools for contemporary debates on cultural practices and identities in various parts of the globe, at the same time as we look critically at the interaction between global and local forces and how this interaction shapes the production of subjectivities and communities. The course will be taught in English and all reading material will be available in translation (films will be subtitled), as well as in the original Portuguese or Spanish, as the case may be. This course is aimed at graduate as well as advanced undergraduate students who are interested in Spanish and/or Portuguese-speaking cultures, and/or interested in cross-cultural studies of the discourses of sexuality.
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SpPt 8920 - Fall 01
Cross-Cultural Issues in Hispanic an Luso-Brazilian
Course description not available at this time.
SpPt 5930 - Fall 01
Selected topics in Hispanic Cultural Discourse
Course description not available at this time.
Span 8900 - Fall 04
Spanish Seminar
Seminar on Peninsular/Latin-American literature and culture for advanced MA/ Ph.D. students. Substantial amount of reading and precise calendar of presentations. Basic theoretical/critical readings to be available in the reserve room of Wilson library. Flexibility with research papers and areas of emphasis. For additional information, please check directly with instructor.
Span 8960 - Fall 04
Workshop: Research in Hispanic Cultural Issues
Textual Anchors:
Mary Louise Prat. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation
Walter Mignolo. Global Designs, Local Histories.
Span 8100 - Spring 05
Research in Sociohistorical approaches to Spanish Literature
Course description not available at this time.
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Seminars in Hispanic Linguistics
Span 8750 - Fall 01/03
Seminar in Spanish and Portuguese Pragmatics
Topic: Language and Gender
Gender is a system of meaning, a way of constructing male and female, and language is the primary means to maintain or contest meanings. Until recent times mainstream linguistics was not theoretically able to deal with the issue of gender, since the standard linguistic focus on a formal static linguistic system obscures the gender dimensions of language. A relatively recent shift, the discourse turn, enables the treatment of gender since it emphasizes both the historical and dynamic characters of language. This course deals with the different ways in which language participates in gender practice. The topics encompass the relationship between gender and the organization of conversation, speech acts, politeness, speaking directly and indirectly. Also, as much of what is communicated is implied rather than explicitly stated, we will examine the ways in which gender ideologies are part of the assumed conversational background. We will deal with the issue of categorization which allows those in power to dictate categories to the rest of the society. We will examine how people utilize linguistic features (among them pronunciation) to present themselves as different kind of women and men. The activities will consist of oral presentations by the Seminar participants followed by class discussion. A research paper on any topic dealing with language and gender will be required. We will utilize the book Language and Gender by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet published in 2003 by Cambridge University Press, as well as papers from various authors.
Span 8780 - Spring 03/04
Seminar in Hispanic Sociolinguistics
The focus of this course is on sociolinguistic variation and cross-dialectal diversity in different varieties of Spanish in Latin America and Spain. It includes a critical examination of the relationship between language use and social factors in the Spanish-speaking world. In addition, field methods appropriate for the investigation of sociolinguistic issues within Spanish-speaking communities will be analyzed. The two textbooks for this course, Silva-Corvalán's Sociolingüística y pragmática del español and Moreno Fernández's Principios de sociolingüística y sociología del lenguaje, will be supplemented with primary research articles focusing on current issues in Spanish sociolinguistics.