Spanish

Open to undergraduates with an interest in 21st Century Film and the social reality of Spain nowadays.  Explores how Spain has evolved from being one of the most undeveloped European countries to become a first mover in social issues such as gay marriage or women's public role. Topics include racism, migration, the reconstruction of the past and the vision of the other.  Themes are analyzed through movies directed by Spanish and American filmmakers such as: Cesc Gay, Bollain, Bigas-Luna, González-Iñárritu and Woody Allen. Class taught in Spanish, readings both in Spanish and English.

Discusses the different artistic avatars exercised by Latin American modernistas at the turn of the 19th century in the context of growing capitalism, technological innovation and social transformation. We focus on how modernistas as poets, journalists and collectors explored and transgressed the limits of the individual and his/her situation. We consider topics like cosmopolitanism, dandysm, autonomy of art, and the aesthetic cultivation of the self. Authors include: Delmira Agustini, Rubén Darío, Julián del Casal, Leopoldo Lugones, José Martí, Manuel Gutierrez Nájera, José Enrique Rodó, José Asunción Silva, and Abraham Valdelomar. Spanish proficiency required.

What is productive life? How is life aesthetically and politically valued? This course explores the inscription of life in changing political and aesthetic regimes of the Andean South in the turbulent decades of the 1920s-1940s. Based on theories of biopower and soveregnity, we explore topics such as domination, domestication, appropriation, exclusion, facism, solidarity, tellurism, race, mestizaje, and human/nature relations. We will consider poetry, narrative, journals, and the visual arts. Authors include: Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, Alcides Arguedas, Augusto Céspedes, Franz Tamayo, Leopoldo Marechal, Roberto Artl, Jorge Luis Borges, César Vallejo, José Carlos Mariátegui, Ciro Alegría, and José María Arguedas. Spanish proficiency required.

A survey of Iberian cinema in the second half of the 20th century. Traces the slow making of an international success with directors like Saura, Almodóvar, Amenábar, Medem, Pons, Bollaín and Villaronga. Starting with the early Buñuel, the course examines cinema's shaping of the national imaginary and its articulation of collective memories suppressed during the Franco dictatorship, as well as the challenges of cultural continuity. Taught in Spanish.

Latin American literary theory through the works of José Carlos Mariátegui, José Enrique Rodó, Alfonso Reyes, Antonio Candido, Roberto Schwartz, Angel Rama, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Antonio Cornejo Polar, Josefina Ludmer, Flora Sussekind. This course will focus on the concepts of "the lettered city", "hybridization", "psychoanalysis", "marxist theory", "class struggle", "literary politics", "latinamericanism". In sum: Literary theory from the inside of Latin American culture, considering also its Western influences. Taught in Spanish.

Enrollment limited. Spanish and Spanish American short stories approached through narrative theory and craft. Assignments are creative in nature and focus on the formal elements of fiction (e.g. character and plot development, point of view, creating a scene,etc.). Students will write, workshop, and revise an original short story throughout the term. No previous experience with creative writing is required. Readings may include works by Ayala, Bolaño, Borges, Clarín, Cortázar, García Márquez, Piglia, Rodoreda, and others.

Preference for graduate students, majors are welcome. Course will focus on six major authors (Unamuno, Baroja, A. Machado, J R Jiménez, Valle-Inclán, García Lorca) and representative works, written between 1898 and 1930, dealing with an historical period of crisis and transition, and displaying major aesthetic innovations in both poetry and theater. Fundamental themes include the decline of feudal Galicia, the Spanish-Amrican War of 1898, the emergence and social activism of new social forces, and the struggle for and betrayal of democracy, expressed through the various genres of the novel, poetry, and theater. Taught in English. 

An exploration of women's novels as an intellectual counterculture of the male-dominated Latin American literary canon. Latin American women's writing and thought will be considered in a regional and global context of feminism and feminist theory. Authors include Gómez de Avellaneda, Bombal, Castellanos, Lispector, Eltit, Oloixarac, de Beauvoir, Kristeva, Engels, Cixous, and Butler. Course discussion in Spanish. Prerequisite: SPANLANG 3 or equivalent.

Combines primary texts of Chican@ literature with a metacritical interrogation of key concepts informing Chican@ literary criticism, the construction of Chican@ literary history, and a Chican@ literary canon.  Interrogates the resistance paradigm and the ¿proper¿ subject of this literature, and critiques established genealogies and foundational authors and texts, as well as issues of periodization, including the notion of ¿emergence¿ (e.g. of feminist voices or dissident sexualities). Considers texts, authors and subjects that present alternatives to the resistance paradigm.

An analysis of the literature written in Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries dealing with the empire post 1808. Authors discussed include Blanco White, Baroja, Avellaneda, and Rusiñol, among others