Vincent Barletta
Vincent Barletta
Associate Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
Focal Groups: RenaissancesContact:
Pigott Hall 225
650 723 4921
vbarletta@stanford.edu
Office Hours:
T,R 12:55-2:30PMOVERVIEW:
Vincent Barletta is Associate Professor of Iberian and Latin American cultures; Co-Chair of the Renaissances Focal Group in the DLCL; Co-Chair of the "Tangible Thoughts in Luso-Brazilian Literature" Research Unit (DLCL); Research Associate at Stanford's Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Interim Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies; and Interim Director of the Mediterranean Studies Forum at Stanford University. His research focuses on Iberian literatures and cultures of the medieval and early modern periods, with an emphasis on Iberian Islam, Portuguese literature, the Valencian segle d'or, early European imperial expansion into Africa and Asia, and the anthropological, ethical, linguistic, and philosophical implications of this process.
Vincent Barletta's most recent book is Death in Babylon: Alexander the Great and Iberian Empire in the Muslim Orient (U of Chicago P, 2010). This book examines the often conflicting image of Alexander the Great in late medieval and early modern narrative works that deal with imperial expansion into Muslim North Africa and Asia. He is also the author of Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (U of Minnesota P, 2005) and editor/translator of Granadan Morisco Francisco Núñez Muley's A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada (U of Chicago P, 2007). In recent years, he has published essays on figures such as Ramon Llull, João de Barros, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, António Vieira, Fernão Mendes Pinto, and Alfonso X; he has also published widely on Aljamiado literature and developed the Alhadith: Morisco Language and Culture website.
Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2007, Vincent Barletta taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the recipient of the La corónica International Book Award (2007) for Covert Gestures, and he has received fellowships from the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States Universities and the Del Amo Foundation. He received an MA and PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures, both from UCLA, and he also carried out two years of post-doctoral study in linguistic anthropology at UCLA.
EDUCATION:
1999-2001: Post-doctoral study, UCLA, Linguistic Anthropology
1998: Ph.D., UCLA, Hispanic Languages and Literature
1989: BA with honors, Saint Mary's College of CA, English
Courses
-
DLCL2232011-12
The Renaissances Group brings together faculty members and students from over a dozen departments at Stanford to consider the present and future of early modern studies (provisionally framed as a period spanning the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries) within the humanities. Taking seriously the plural form of the group's name, we seek to explore the early modern period from the widest range of disciplinary, cultural, linguistic, and geographical perspectives possible.
-
DLCL309Spr2011-12
Prepares graduate students in DLCL departments to teach literature at the undergraduate level. Topics include: the opportunities and problems of transposing a research project into a feasible course; the logic of syllabi and reading lists; the structuring of a course from week to week; and other matters relevant to first-time teachers of literature. Supervised by the graduate affairs committee of the DLCL. May be repeated for credit.
-
ILAC323Win2011-12
Focus is on how authors and readers from this period theorize various historical processes: the rise of European imperialism; religious conflicts and revolutions; new understandings of the self and the world; and the rise of the novel. Authors: Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Martorell, Rabelais, Camões, Cervantes, Montaigne, and Shakespeare.
-
ILAC215Win2011-12
Focus is on literature related to Portugal's early modern empire in Muslim Africa and Asia. Readings in Portuguese. Authors include Luís de Camões, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Miguel de Castanhoso, Frenão Mendes Pinto, and João de Barros.
-
ILAC105NSpr2011-12
In 2002, a panel of writers from over 50 countries named Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote the "most meaningful book of all time." Along with Dante's Commedia and Shakespeare's Hamlet, it was chosen by the same panel as one of the three greatest works of the Western canon. Such praise from one's peers is no small achievement for an author who spent more time in prison than in school, and it speaks to the lasting impact of a 400-year-old work aimed as much at confounding as delighting its readers. In this course, students will engage in a close reading and discussion of this "modern classic," examining both its many "meanings" and the ways in which it works to elude meaning altogether.
-
ILAC157Aut2010-11
(Same as Portlit 157) Topics may include: lyric and epic poetry; Jewish and Muslim literatures; the development of Castilian Catalan and Portuguese prose; the Valencian golden age; texts of the Renaissance and Baroque; the literature of imperial expansion into Africa Asia and the Americas.
-
ILAC159Win2010-11
Focus is on a close reading of the original Spanish text of Miguel de Cervantes's prose masterpiece. The rise of the novel the problems of authorship and signification modes of reading the status of Muslim and Jewish converts in early modern Spain the rise of capitalism masochistic desire. The course will be conducted entirely in Spanish.
-
ILAC214Win2010-11
What is known about the secret religious practice and culture of the Moriscos Spain's large minority community of Muslim converts to Christianity (1500-1609)? What role did their handwritten literature (largely Islamic texts written in Castilian but copied out in Arabic script) play in the formation and maintenance of their culture? What can these Crypto·Muslim communities teach us regarding the place of Muslim culture in Western Europe today? The course will be taught in English; knowledge of Spanish and/or Arabic script is useful but not necessary. (Same as Religious Studies 220B)
-
ILAC328Spr2010-11
Greek hegemon Asian emperor student of Aristotle Qur'anic hero and Mediterranean legend. In this seminar students explore the various manifestations of Alexander the Great in Iberian literature during the medieval period. What is Alexander's place in the development of theories of empire? In the formation of (always fuzzy and shifting) distinctions between East and West (and life and death)? Readings include: Quintus Curtius Rufus, Pseudo-Callisthenes, Libro de Alexandre, the Aljamiado Rrekontamiento del rrey Alixandere, Secretum secretorum, and selected Qur'anic suras.
