FRENCH 5000 Intensive Translation for Graduate Students I

The first part of a two-semester course sequence in reading and translating French. For graduate students in the humanities, social and natural sciences. Must be followed by French 5001.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

FRENCH 5001 Intensive Translation for Graduate Students II

Continuation of French 5000. For graduate students in the humanities, social and natural sciences. Prereq: French 5000. Credit for Frech 5000 is contingent on completion of French 5001.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

FRENCH 5010 Seminar in the Teaching of Romance Languages

A practical and theoretical introduction to teaching second languages. The theoretical component incorporates historical and contemporary theories of language pedagogy. The practical component focuses on developing a teaching persona, a relationship with students, and classroom organization and presentation skills. It offers approaches to communicative language teaching and to teaching culture and literature. It suggests varied instructional materials and use of multimedia. Students have an opportunity to teach with supervision, observation, and follow-up conferences. Open to teaching assistants in the Romance Languages, for whom this is a required course; open to other teaching assistants by permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5020 Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy: Integrating Technology Into Language Instruction

This seminar will transform knowledge about second language acquisition and pedagogy into practice while focusing on technology. The course fosters professional development as participants formulate critical skills for assessing, creating and integrating technology into the classroom. Course formats include readings, discussion, demonstrations and hands-on sessions with technologies. Students accepted into the certificate program in Advanced Language Instruction can enroll whenever it suits their course planning, but non-certificate students need to take it after completing all Ph.D. courses. Students with questions regarding eligibility should consult with the professor.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5030 Introduction to Graduate Study in French

This course will serve as an introduction to graduate study in French. 

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

FRENCH 5040 Literary Theory

Taught in English. After a brief review of some of the most important moments and figures in the history of aesthetic theory from Antiquity to the present, this course will focus on the development and expansion of literary theory and critical methodologies in the 20th century. We begin with an examination of the linguistic innovations of Saussure and their utilization in Russian formalism, phenomenology and structuralism. We will then examine many different forms of poststructuralist and postcolonial thought, treating in detail important areas of theoretical activity in gender/queer studies, New Historicism, and other contemporary approaches to texts and culture. The primary goal of the course is to make students critically aware of and professsionally comfortable with the rich diversity and usefulness of a wide range of contemporary literary theories. Required for all graduate students in French.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5070 Classical Identities: The Power of Word and Image

We will study a variety of texts and images that show how seventeenth-century France not only documented its own glory but also its power to invent and control identities. IDENTITIES here refers both to the reputation of individuals at court, including most prominently the king himself, and to the characteristics of things in the world as they are depicted by literary authors, artists, and scientists. What writers and artists have in common is that the apparent realism of their descriptions cannot entirely conceal the very spectacular performance of courtly ambition, the play of appearances and fabricated identities that shapes the classical world. We will examine how the reality presented in texts and images is as much a product of a cultivated fiction as the unearthing of facts. Texts to include fairy tales by d'Aulnoy and Perrault; Corneille, MEDEE and L'ILLUSION COMIQUE; Molière, LE MALADE IMAGINAIRE; Racine, BRITANNICUS; Lafayette, LA PRINCESSE DE CLEVES; entries in Furetière's DICTIONNAIRE UNIVERSEL, and the autobiographical testimony of scientists like Descartes who write to defend their discoveries and inventions. Images to include portraits, as well as almanacs (calendars decorated with commemorative images), and maps.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5080 Administrative Internship for Ph.D. Students

Students in the Ph.D. program in French, nominated by faculty, may work in a rotating internship in academic administration. The internship will comprise three consecutive assisgnments over two semesters, with each assignment lasting three months: one in Romance Languages and two in different branches of the university's administration. This internship will carry three graded credits, which may not substitute for any seminar, but will count toward the total required for the degree. This program will be open only to students nominated by faculty, as consistent with departmental and student needs. Students will gather a portfolio of work produced in this time, as well as an administrative resume, in order to receive academic credit at the end of the last assignment. Alternatively, they will write a paper on some topic related to the assignment completed within our department. The internships will not be paid, and students will ordinarily work approximately ten hours per week in their assignments. Faculty approval required.; consult the DGS.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5110 Intensive Writing in French: Timely Topics

Grad Level Ident for L34 411

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS, WI EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5131 Advanced French and Translation

This course fosters an in-depth knowledge of the French language and accuracy in its use. It employs a comparative approach (linguistic and cultural) initiating students into the art of translation  from English to French and from French to English and sensitizing them to the problem of cultural transfer. Students will acquire practical training, cultivating skills advantageous in the workplace by drawing on  a wide variety of documents to develop translation strategies. Genres include fiction, autobiography, journalism, advertising, and correspondence spanning different eras, regions, and registers.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, LS, WI EN: H

FRENCH 5180 Dissertation

This course is for students working on dissertations. 

Credit 12 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

FRENCH 5220 Topics II

Focusing on topics of cultural and social importance, this course offer students the opportunity to learn about defining moments in the French tradition. The specific topic of the course will vary from semester to semester, and may include works from different disciplines, such as art, film, gender studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, politics, science. Prereq: Fr 307D.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

FRENCH 5270 Literature of the 17th Century I

UNDERGRADUATES ONLY REGISTER FOR THIS SECTION Prereq: Fr 325, 326, Thinking-It-Through, or In-Depth or one of these courses and the equivalent WU transfer literature course from Toulouse or Paris. One-hour preceptorial required for undergraduates.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: HUM BU: HUM

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5310 Problems in 16th-Century Literature

An advanced survey of poetic movements of the sixteenth century with special emphasis on representations of the erotic and the ailing body and the literary traditions associated with them, notably Petrarchism and the late sixteenth-century devotional tradition. Various poetic forms will be examined: RONDEAUX, CHANSONS, sonnets, elegies, etc. Readings will include works by Marot, Sceve, Labe, Ronsard, Coignard, Sponde and Chassignet.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5320 Literature of the 18th Century II

Prereq: Fr 325, 326, Thinking-It-Through, or In-Depth.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5443 Contemporary Francophone Literature: Disordering Race and Gender in the Caribbean

A general survey of Francophone literature. This seminar examines representative texts of Quebec, Acadia, Africa, and West Indies. Authors to include Antonine Maillet, Louis Hémon, Michel Tremblay, Gérard Leblanc, Anne Hébert, Maryse Condé, along with the influential poets of négritude, Senghor and Césaire. This course counts towrds the seminar requirment for the major. Prereq: Thinking-It-Through or In-Depth.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: HUM BU: HUM

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5447 The Medieval Literary Arts: Reconstructing Notre Dame

How do medieval French writers understand the structures and functions of the human body? What kinds of bodies are considered disabled? Are womanhood, childhood, and old age construed as disabilities? in this course we will read texts of varied genre--farces, saints' lives, fabliaux, poems, romances, journals and chronicles--as we consider how, if at all, disability exists as a social or literary construct in the Middle Ages. Texts include Philippe de Beaumanoir's MANEKINE, Courtebarbe's TROIS AVEUGLES DE COMPIÈGNE, Guillaume de Machaut's VOIR DIT, and the farce LE GARÇON ET L'AVEUGLE; excerpts from Jean de Meun's ROMAN DE LA ROSE, from the OVIDE MORALISÉ and from Christine de Pizan's MUTACION DE FORTUNE; and poems by Rutebeuf, Deschamps, and Molinet, as well as critical and theoretical texts from the emerging discipline of disability studies. Texts will be available in modern French; no prior study of Old French language is necessary. This course counts towards the seminar requirment for the major. Prereq: Fr 325 or Fr 326 or one of these courses and the equivalent WU transfer literature course from Toulouse or Paris. One-hour preceptorial for undergraduates.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5459 Writing North Africa: Francophone Literature of the Maghreb

With statues of colonizers coming down around the world, France reckons with its colonial legacy in North Africa. Ever since their conquest of Algiers in 1830, the French have been fascinated by writing from across the Mediterranean. Beginning with nineteenth-century French travel narratives about Algeria, the colonial era defined ideas of the exotic. As Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia gained independence from France in the mid-twentieth century, North African authors often wrote their own literature in the language of their former colonizer. These authors and their contemporary descendants continue to create and challenge the ideas of postcolonial francophone literature today. The main seminar sessions are taught in English, with additional required weekly undergraduate discussions (section A) in French. Prerequisites: for undergraduates, French 325 or 326, Thinking-It-Through, or In-Depth; for graduates not in French, reading knowledge of the language.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5468 Topics in French Literature

How do medieval and Renaissance writers understand the structures and functions of the human body? What kinds of bodies are considered disabled? Are womanhood, childhood, and old age construed as disabilities? In this course we will read texts of varied genre--farces, saints' lives, short comic tales, poems, romances, journals, essays, and chronicles--as we consider how, if at all, disability exists as a social or literary construct in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We will also read critical and theoretical texts from the discipline of disability studies, interrogating the applicability of this largely modern-focused approach to premodern societies. Course taught in French. Texts will be available in modern French; no prior study of the Middle Ages or of Old French language is necessary. Prerequisites: French 325, 326, Thinking-It-Through, or In-Depth. This course counts towards the French for Medical Professionals track. One-hour preceptorial required for undergraduates.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5501 Topics in French Culture: Zombies, Vampires, and Spirits in the Francophone Caribbean

Before horror movies, television series, and graphic novels, zombies were part of a tradition of Caribbean folklore. The figure of the zombie finds its roots in colonial Haiti where enslaved Africans found meaning in a mythical figure who no longer possessed its own body but belonged to others, instead. Spirits, magic, and sorcery are also indelible parts of the same folk traditions to which the zombie belongs in Guadeloupe, Haiti, and Martinique. This course will expose students to the cultural histories of zombies, vampires, spirits and spiritual practice in the French Caribbean through film, literature, and contemporary Caribbean art. We will pay particular attention to how these figures and histories work to undo and question legacies of colonialism, racial capitalism, sexism, homophobia, and everyday political violence. This course satisfies the In-Depth requirement. Prereq: In-Perspective.

Credit 3 units. BU: IS

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5510 Problems in 18th-Century Literature

This course will trace the development of the novel through the eighteenth century, focusing on narrative techniques of the Enlightenment. Among our concerns will be the question of "realism" as we examine the memoire, epistolary and dialogic forms. We will also explore the novel as cultural artifact, philosophical treatise and utopian critique. Critical essays will accompany our readings of authors such as Prévost, Marivaux, Rousseau, Diderot, Charrière, and Sade.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5610 Topics in French Literature and History:

How genre affects both the production of a given literary text and its perception by the reader. Representative texts from different centuries and movements. Prereq: Fr 325C and 326C (or, for students who have completed the Paris Business Program, completion of either course). One-hour preceptorial for undergraduates only.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5703 In-Depth: Paris, Capitol of Modernity: A Digital Nineteenth Century

This course will be an in-depth study of Paris as the capitol of modernity: a digital nineteenth century. 

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5704 In-Depth: France and the Muslim World

France today has more Muslim citizens than any other country in Europe, and this fact puts the country's relationship with Muslims, both within and beyond itsborders, constantly in the news. Starting with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, we will examine the wide involvement of France in the affairs of Muslim countries: its presence in Egypt and Lebanon, and most notably its colonization of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, which had an irreversible effect on French culture today. We will also consider the anthropology and cultural productions (literature, film, and art) of French people of Muslim origin. Given the influence of francophone Muslim religious scholars, we can not only speak of France and the Muslim world, but investigate France in the Muslim world. What futures become imaginable, when we see Muslims as an integral part of French culture, and France as part of the global Muslim community? Assignments will include writing for non-academic audiences, and the creation of a StoryMap presentation in ArcGIS. Prereq: In-Perspective or Fr 308.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5710 Problems in the 20th-Century Novel

This course will cover problems in 20th-century literature. 

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

FRENCH 5711 Mourning in Haitian Culture

Grad level ident fo L34 4711

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5720 Seminar in 20th-Century Literature

This course will be a seminar in 20th-century literature. 

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5810 Problems in Medieval Literature

This course will cover problems in medieval literature. 

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 5999 Independent Study

Prereq: senior or graduate standing, and permission of the Chair of the Department.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

FRENCH 6000 Masters Continuing Student Status

This course is for masters continuing students.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 6010 Masters Nonresident

This course is for nonresident masters students.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 6020 Masters Resident

This course is for resident masters students.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 8000 Doctoral Continuing Student Status

This course is for doctoral continuing students.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring, Summer

FRENCH 8010 Doctoral Nonresident

This course is for nonresident doctoral students.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

FRENCH 8020 Doctoral Resident

This course is for resident doctoral students.

Credit 0 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

ITAL 5000 Independent Study

Special studies chosen and arranged with the instructor.

Credit 6 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 5000 Intensive Translation for Graduate Students I

Designed to help graduate students in the humanities, social and natural sciences fulfill their Ph.D. language requirement, this is an intensive three weeks first part of a two-semester course sequence in reading and translating Spanish. No Spanish background required. Must be followed by Spanish 5001.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

SPAN 5001 Intensive Translation for Graduate Students II

Designed to help graduate students in the humanities, social and natural sciences fulfill their Ph.D. language requirement, this is the second part of a two-semester course sequence in reading and translating Spanish. No Spanish background required. Credit for Span 5000 is contingent on completion of Span 5001.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Summer

SPAN 5010 Seminar in Teaching of Romance Languages

A practical and theoretical introduction to teaching second languages. The theoretical component incorporates historical and contemporary theories of language pedagogy. The practical component focuses on developing a teaching persona, a relationship with students, and classroom organization and presentation skills. It offers approaches to communicative language teaching and to teaching culture and literature. It suggests varied instructional materials and use of multimedia. Students have an opportunity to teach with supervision, observation, and follow-up conferences. Open to teaching assistants in the Romance Languages, for whom this is a required course; open to other teaching assistants by permission of instructor.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5011 Cultural Theory

The course focuses on the main topics, authors, works and debates that constitute the corpus of cultural theory in the Hispanic world, particularly in Latin America. After a brief introduction to the connections between Latin American cultural criticism and European critical theory, class discussions will concentrate on the most important interdisciplinary problems and categories that have organized the field since the second half of the XXth-century. The purpose of the course is, then, twofold: first, it attempts to familiarize students with the main critical and theoretical debates in the study of symbolic production. Secondly, it offers a critical approach to the contributions of the main intellectuals and academics working on the analysis of cultural topics. Some of the authors to be analyzed are, among others, Antonio Cornejo Polar, Angel Rama, Silviano Santiago, Roberto Schwarz, Martín Oppenheim, Beatriz Sarlo, Nelly Richard, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Néstor García Canclini, Renato Ortiz, George Yúdice, Hugo Achugar, BolIvar Echeverria, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos Monsiváis.The interdisciplinary nature of this course will incorporate perspectives from history, communications, literary studies, social sciences, and philosophy. Graduate Standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5012 Advanced Pedagogy Seminar: Integrating Technology Into Language Instruction

Seminar offers professional development in language pedagogy with a focus on enhancing the teaching of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and culture through technology. Participants will develop critical skills for assessing, creating, and integrating multimedia courseware into the language classroom. Course formats include readings, discussion, demonstrations, and hands-on sessions with multimedia technologies (e.g., software, WWW, CD-ROM, video). Open to ADVANCED GRADUATE STUDENTS IN ALL LANGUAGE DEPARTMENTS WHO HAVE COMPLETED THEIR REQUIRED CLASSES. Students with questions regarding eligibility should consult with the instructors. Grading: Credit/No Credit.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5013 Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy: Integrating Technology Into Language Instruction

This seminar will transform knowledge about second language acquisition and pedagogy into practice while focusing on technology. The course fosters professional development as participants formulate critical skills for assessing, creating and integrating technology into the classroom. Course formats include readings, discussion, demonstrations and hands-on sessions with technologies. Students accepted into the certificate program in Advanced Language Instruction can enroll whenever it suits their course planning, but non-certificate students need to take it after completing all Ph.D. courses. Students with questions regarding eligibility should consult with the professor.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5021 Contemporary Spanish Language Teaching

This course is a practical and theoretical introduction to teaching Spanish as a second language. The theoretical component of the course incorporates historical and contemporary theories of second language acquisition (SLA) and instruction, including major contemporary notions about SLA, communicative language teaching, and individual difference in language learning. The practical component of the course focuses on professional development as an instructor, roles of instructor and student, teaching Spanish as a heritage language, and day-to-day classroom activities with emphasis on communicative and task-based instruction. Students create a variety of teaching activities, teach with supervision and observation, and take part in follow-up conferences. The course also involves preparing written lesson plans, audiotaping, and self-evaluation. Each student in the course prepares a teaching portfolio, which includes a teaching philosophy statement, different types of classroom activities, and an exam section on grammar.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5030 Introduction to Graduate Study in Spanish

An introduction to the skills required for advanced study in Spanish literature. Major concentration is on critical methods, approaches, and schools, with an important secondary emphasis on bibliography and research methods. Required of all M.A. and Ph.D. candidates entering the program. Prereq. Graduate standing.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5031 Global Hispanic Studies

This graduate seminar provides a critical overview of the field of Global Hispanic Studies as an essential area of research that explores cultural and literary production throughout the Hispanic world across traditional historical periods, and border-bound geopolitical and geographical areas. The course thus explores the various ways in which the field of Global Hispanic Studies today connects with closely related areas of scholarly inquiry, such as Transatlantic Studies, Transpacific Studies, Hemispheric Studies, Mediterranean Studies, Third World/ Global South Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Migration Studies (including Exile), and World Literature. The seminar is structured into a series of different sub-sections that aims as a whole to frame the field of Global Hispanic Studies as an interdisciplinary and transnational area of scholarship and research. This format combines the analysis of important critical and theoretical readings (by authors such as Adam Lifshey for Transpacific Studies, Boaventura de Sousa Santos for the Global South, or Pascale Casanova for World Literature), with the close reading of a series of primary texts central to the overall field of Global Hispanic Studies across different historical periods. Examples of these central works include literature of the Sephardic diaspora or written in Ladino, Transatlantic avant-garde poetics and networks (César Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, Silvina Ocampo); Hemispheric Literature during the modernist period (José Martí, Gabriela Mistral), and the Cold War (Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal, Elena Garro); contemporary literature produced by various exiled, and immigrant or first-generation writers (Max Aub, Najat El Hachmi); cultural production related to the African Diaspora across time (cultural forms by Afro-descendant communities across Latin America, the poetry of Nicolás Guillén, and Raquel Ilonbé); or the work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, or Roberto Bolaño as World Literature. Graduate students only. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 5040 Intensive Guided Reading

Selected literary readings to be established individually. Course normally taken in the third semester of the M.A. program. Prerequisite, for students in the M.A. program.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5041 Media, Material, and Popular Cultures

This seminar introduces students to key conversations in the fields of media, material, and popular culture across the Hispanic World. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to explore how media shape culture and alter the material dimensions of cultural production, dissemination, and consumption, paying special attention to the historical formations of popular culture in rural and urban settings. We will study various print, aural and visual mediascapes and analyze the roles mediation (culture circuits), objects (books, speeches, sound or visual recordings), and practices (production and consumption) play in the formation of identity, community, and everyday experiences of nation, globalization, race, gender, and ethnicity. We will address key concepts, research questions, theories, and methodologies in the fields of media and cultural studies, critical theory, material culture, and popular culture, both in the Hispanic World and globally. This course aims to collectively think about new ways of defining objects of study, connecting media and popular culture, and linking interdisciplinary methodologies to broader research questions across the humanities.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5050 Research Writing and Methodology Practicum

We all know that writing is a fundamental part of a professional academic career, but what exactly is research writing? How and where do you start? How do you do research? Where do you do research? How do you write up your research for different audiences? This course is designed to help you answer these questions and others related to the craft and practice of research writing from topic pitch to final draft. At the beginning of the semester you will define a research project which you will develop in different stages each week through various modes of scholarly writing (examples include book reviews, conference panel proposals, grant proposals, a final polished piece of scholarship). Sessions will function as writing workshops where you will engage component parts of your project. By the end of the course you will have a solid research writing portfolio and know better how to present it to different audiences.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 5051 Gender and Sexuality

This course will provide the conceptual and analytical frame for critically examining literary and cultural production in the Hispanic world from the perspective of gender and intersections with race, ethnicity, class, religion, nationality, and (dis)ability. The course will engage readings in theory, criticism, and historiography crucial to the scholarly investigation of gender and sexuality in the field of Hispanic studies. We will address how the consideration of gender has transformed literary and cultural analysis; in particular, the ways in which scholars of feminist and gender studies have challenged traditional assumptions about how knowledge and subjectivities are produced. The students will come out of the course having acquired: 1) a knowledge of fundamental concepts in feminist and gender studies; 2) an understanding of how feminist/gender studies scholars identify and frame research questions; 3) an introduction to the critical debates related to gender and sexuality; 4) a knowledge of feminist cultural history; 5) the ability to apply relevant concepts in feminist and gender studies to your own research in a historically-grounded fashion.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5060 Street Cultures of the Americas

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

SPAN 5061 Race and Ethnicity: Race, Labor and Affect in Latinx Culture

Race, Labor, and Affect in Latinx Culture: In this seminar, we will familiarize ourselves with the trajectories, conceptualizations and challenges to Latinidades in the United States by considering the relationship between race, labor, and affect. We will explore the theoretical and political uses-and limits-of the category of Latinidad by considering aesthetic and affective expressions of Latinx lived experiences, focusing on the roles of labor in Latinx communities-migrant labor, domestic and care labor, etc. We will focus on how labor shapes the affective contours of Latinx experience in relation to race, gender, and sexualities and pay attention to affective articulations that transcend labor and derive from forms of racial joy and pleasure that resist labor as an imperative.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 5070 Body, Gender, and Power in Colonial Latin America

This class will study representations of the body in Colonial Latin American texts through the lens of sex and gender and the discourses of power that are scripted upon it. Throughout the semester we will look at how gender is a primary field within which our power is articulated, studying the complexity of gendered cultural, literary, social, and religious constructions. We will study institutional ideologies and rules (both religious and secular) in their relation to constructions of the body, examining the impact of the discourses of Conquest, Counter-Reformation teachings, confessional practice, medical discourse, Inquisition processes, as well as religious genre conventions. We will read the works of more canonical authors (Colón, Pané, Cabeza de Vaca, Las Casas, Rodríguez Freyle, Catalina de Erauso, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sigüenza y Góngora, Juan Valle Caviedes) as well as writers of religious, didactic and legal texts of the period (e.g. Madre María de San José, Antonio Núñez de Miranda). We will also read critical and theoretical works that take up the concerns of the construction of sexual and gendered identities in society including Butler, Foucault, de Certeau, Jonathan Sawday, Margo Glantz and others. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5080 A Planetary Avant-Garde: Experimental Literature Networks and the Legacies of Iberian Colonialism

This Hispanic Studies graduate seminar focuses on the literary and artistic period known as the historical avant-garde (1909-1930) with a global, planetary perspective in relation to the legacies of Iberian colonialism across the world. As a historical event closely intertwined with the global expansion of Western colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization during the early twentieth century, the historical avant-garde constitutes a rich period during which various transnational connections are articulated, experienced, and imagined across the world beyond a merely European or Anglo-American framework as it relates to the impact of Iberian colonialism in different regions of the globe. While providing a theoretical introduction to avant-garde and global modernist studies, with archive of primary sources related to the field of Hispanic Studies, as well as Lusophone Studies, our course will study instances of experimental literature networks emerging during the historical avant-garde across Western Europe, East Asia, West Africa, and the Americas.The course format thus aims to combine the analysis of important critical and theoretical readings across these sub-fields, with the close reading of a series of primary readings central to global avant-garde. Through the examination of the work of authors like Almada Negreiros and Fernando Pessoa (Portugal), Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade (Brazil), Vicente Huidobro (Chile), Jose García Villa and Angela Manalang Gloria (Philippines)-as well as theoretical readings by Laura Doyle, Gayatri Spivak, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Bürger, Dipesh Chakravarty, Bruno Latour, Caroline Levine, Benedict Anderson, and Tamar Herzog among others-this course will explore the interrelated aesthetic, linguistic, sociohistorical, and geopolitical dimensions of the emergence of a planetary avant-garde during the first three decades of the 20th century, as well as its various rearticulations in the 1960s and the contemporary period. Taught in English; Spanish reading proficiency required; for Graduate students only.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

SPAN 5100 18th Century Spanish Literature in the European Context: The Invention of Modernity

The eighteenth century radically changed Spain as it did the whole of Europe. The founding of academies, the proliferation of newspapers, advances in the sciences and technology, the emergence of a new social class, the seduction of new ideas about society, morality, and gender, are only a few of the strands that make this time and literature notable. We will study Spanish writers such as Feijoo, Isla, Torres Villarroel, Moratin, Iriarte, Melendez Valdes, Cadalso, and Jovellanos, within the framework of the European Enlightenment.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5110 Two Spanish Masterpieces

An in-depth reading including a careful study of their particular formation viewed as an example of the so-called medieval textuality which, according to the most recent theories, needs to be put into question and reformulated (Stock, Zumthor, Dagenais). This close reading will be complemented with a presentation of the criticism that surrounds both works and with a comparative discussion on related texts such as sources and continuations.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 5120 Studies in Literature of 16th and 17th Centuries

The class will address the ways in which religion, empire and cultural contact converged to create new masculine identities in colonial Hispanic America. We will examine how European models of masculinity were shaped through contact with a religious and cultural "other" to produce a series of new colonial masculinities. We will read theoretical and critical works which will provide us with the tools to analyze masculinity not as a fixed and consistent concept, but rather as an evolving and contested idea which challenged Western notions of idealized manhood and revealed the anxiety behind society´s need to maintain this same ideal. We will examine a series of texts authored by men and occasionally women whose work allows us to interrogate the construction of series of key masculine figures including the conquistador, the missionary, the "savage" and the martyr. Primary readings will include authors such as Ignatius of Loyola, Bartolomé de las Casas, Hernán Cortés, Guaman Poma, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Valle y Caviedes. Secondary critical readings will feature, among others, selections from Connell, Wiegman, Laqueur and Breitenberg

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5140 20th-Century Spanish Literature

We will study selected works by Valle-Inclán, Azorín, Baroja, Benavente, Machado and Unamuno. We will examine the concept of  "generation",  cover all genres, and place them in their historic and aesthetic contexts. Requirements: one book report and a closely monitored research paper which ought to move through various drafts before completion.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5150 Feminist Literary and Cultural Theory

This course provides a historical overview of feminist literary and cultural theories since the 1960s and 70s, acquainting students with a diversity of voices within contemporary feminism and gender studies. Readings will include works of French feminism, Foucault's History of Sexuality, feminist responses to Foucault, queer (LGBTQ+) theory, postcolonial and decolonial feminism, feminist disability theory, and writings by US feminists of color (African-American, Asian-American, Latina, Native-American). The reading list will be updated each year to reflect new developments in the discipline. We will approach these readings from an intersectional and interdisciplinary perspective, considering their dialogue with broader sociopolitical, cultural, and philosophical currents. By the end of the course, students are expected to have gained a basic knowledge of the major debates in feminist literary and cultural studies in the last 50 years, as well as the ability to draw on the repertoire of readings to identify and frame research questions in their areas of specialization. The class will be largely interactive, requiring active participation and collaborative effort on the part of the students. Students will be encouraged to make relevant connections between the class readings, everyday social and political issues, and their own research interests. NOTE: This course is in the core curriculum for the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies graduate certificate. Prerequisite: advanced course work in WGSS or in literary theory (300 level and above) or permission of the instructor.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

SPAN 5151 Studies in the Literature of Latin America

The field of modern Iberian studies has finally taken the imperial turn-defined by Antoinette Burton as the accelerated attention to the impact of histories of imperialism on metropolitan societies-forcing a reckoning with the legacies of Spain's colonial past and its continued impact on the present. The long nineteenth century was a critical moment in the history of colonialism in the Iberian world: in the face of colonial loss in the Americas, the problem of slavery (and the slave trade) became a major subject of debate among not only politicians and social reformers, but also literary writers of the period. We will examine the nature of this debate through the study of diverse forms of Iberian cultural production, including abolitionist literature (narrative, theater, and poetry), the political essay, and periodical publications, as well as analyzing the controversies surrounding monuments to slave traders and colonizers, constructed in the nineteenth century. Authors to be considered include the theologian José Blanco White, playwright María Rosa Gálvez, poet Carolina Coronado, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, popular novelist Ayguals de Izco (also the translator of Uncle Tom's Cabin into Spanish), the social reformer Concepción Arenal, women's magazine editor Faustina Sáez de Melgar, and the realist novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, among others. The analysis of primary sources will be supplemented by historical, critical, and theoretical readings in gender, postcolonial and critical race studies. Students will be expected to maintain a weekly log of their reflections on the readings and to engage actively in class discussions. A final paper and a mock conference talk will also be required.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 5160 19th-Century Spanish Literature

This course will examine women's writings, from the late nineteenth century to the present, in the context of the rise of the feminist movement in Spain. Both fictional and non-fictional narratives will be considered. Authors to be studied include nineteenth-century proto-feminists such as Emilia Pardo Bazßn and Concepci=n Arenal, Margarita Nelken and other female activists of the Republican period, and, finally, feminist writers of the post-Franco era, such as Lidia Falc=n and Montserrat Roig. Special focus will be given to issues of agency and rhetorical positioning in these women's discourses as they relate to the concrete political context in which they are writing.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5161 Poetics & Politics of Rep. in 19th-Century Spanish Realism

This course will examine the ways in which reality is constructed in the Spanish realist narrative, drawing both on 19th-century novelists' own conceptualizations of realism and on modern theoretical approaches to this problem. We will explore the evolving notions of realism in the 19th century in view of the esthetic and ideological projects of individual authors, focusing in particular on the ways in which issues of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and national identity find articulation in realist discourse. Literary readings will include narrative fiction by such canonical figures as Galdós, Clarín, Pardo Bazán, and Valera, as well as a representative sampling of works by lesser-known women and by popular novelists of the period. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5170 Spanish Phonetics, Phonology, and Dialectology

This course, conducted in Spanish, explores the linguistic varieties of the 21 Spanish-speaking countries from both a historical and a synchronic perspective. The course begins with a traditional look at Spanish phonetics and phonology, with all students memorizing and utilizing the International Phonetic Alphabet. Course readings and discussions extend beyond the descriptive and include a search for the sources of language variation within the Spanish speaking world. Particular attention is devoted to language contact and bilingualism. Students will read in areas such as history, sociolinguistics, dialectology, and sociology, as well as traditional linguistic studies, in designing their projects concerning phonetics, phonology and dialect diversification.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD BU: IS EN: H

SPAN 5171 Poetics and Politics of Representation in 19th-Century Spanish Realism

This course will examine the ways in which reality is constructed in the Spanish realist narrative, drawing both on nineteenth-century novelists' own conceptualizations of realism and on modern theoretical approaches to this problem. We will explore the evolving notions of realism in the nineteenth-century in view of the esthetic and ideological projects of individual authors, focusing in particular on the ways in which issues of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and national identity find articulation in realist discourse. Literary readings will include narrative fiction by such canonical figures as Galdós, Clarín, Pardo Bazán, and Valera, as well as a representative sampling of works by lesser-known women and popular novelists of the period.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5180 Special Topics in Peninsular Hispanic Literature

Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote is a complex experiment in the narration of "history" that has influenced literary and other forms of cultural production in and beyond the geographical zone of the former Spanish empire during more than four centuries. In addition to establishing a prototype for the modern novel, this narrative fiction, written and published ten years apart as two books, dialogues in the story of its errant protagonist with the dominant and emergent discourses of its time, modeling the potential of the cultural artifact to speak to history for its public. Primary focus will be given to the ways that Don Quijote deploys and questions the use in early modernity of the mediums of cultural production (various types of writing, orality, visual representation) to shape knowledge and collective memory; its representation of imperialism and colonialism; and its creation of linguistic and ideological pluralism, reflecting the realities of its world. The seminar's readings will include critical and theoretical works relevant to these areas of focus. Prereq: Graduate Standing. In Spanish. 3units.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5190 Urban Myths: Latin American Cities in Literature

Latin American cities have historically played a crucial role in the construction of culture. In this course, we will explore how the idea of the City is imagined within different cultural contexts. Such an exploration will involve careful attention to, among other concerns, how the City has been mapped with regard to boundaries of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. We will study important critical and literary works by Vargas Llosa, Onetti, Puig, Fernando Vallejo and Bryce Echenique. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5191 Urban Spaces, Gendered Places: Women, City & Modernity in Late 19th- & Turn-Of-The-Century Spain

This course will examine the representations of the city in the literature of late nineteenth- and turn-of-the-century Spain, focusing on the ways in which the cultural history of the city is linked to the production of gendered spaces in moment of uneven and uneasy transition to modernity. Through a close analysis of texts by authors from Galdós and Pardo Bazán, to Baroja and Carmen de Burgos, we will explore women's shifting and unstable place in the emergent consumer society of urban Spain, and their impact on the construction of a modern urban identity and national consciousness. The significance of these gendered spaces will be considered from the viewpoints of diverse groups of women who inhabited the city: the bourgeois angel of the house, working-class women, prostitutes, the bohemian flaneuse, among others. From these viewpoints, we will attempt to construct a feminist counter-discourse that vies to undermine the dominant tropes of a masculinized urban modernity.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5200 Special Topics in Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature

CULTURAL HETEROGENEITY? TRANSCULTURATION? HYBRIDISM? WHAT IS ALL THAT ANYWAY. In this course we will examine and question theoretical paradigms such as "mestizaje," transculturation, cultural heterogeneity, colonial discourse, and hybridism for the study of primary texts written by Indians, Mestizos, Creoles, Spanish and Chicanos in colonial and post-colonial Latin American Literature.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5210 Losers, Divas and Dolls in Latin American Literature

Among the issues to be explored through readings, film and music are gendered representation of the body and the city, the family as a disciplinary instance and the reactions against it in urban fictions. Readings include works by Silvina Ocampo, Elena Garro, Clarice Lispector, Felisberto Hernández, Fernando Vallejo, Roberto Arlt and others.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5220 Protest and Pleasure: The Politics of Latin American Cinema

Latin American Cinema has been an important vehicle for the discussion and fostering of social change in this continent. Revisiting the main creative currents and theoretical formulations about the social role of cinema will help us understand the ways in which the cinematic image can address the revollution, confront authoritarianism and criticize neoliberal democracies. This graduate seminar emphasizes the acquisition of the concepts and tools for cinematographic analysis as well as the reflection on the historical evolution, production, distribution, and consumption of cinema during key periods in Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5221 Globalism and Technology in Recent Latin American Narrative

As Latin American countries have dealt with the impact of the neoliberal regimes of the 1990s, we have seen a marked increase in novels that explore the implications of global business, culture, and technology in Latin America. In this course we will examine a series of novels by authors like Ricardo Piglia, Rafael Courtoisie, Alberto Fuguet, Carmen Boullosa, Eugenia Prado, Alicia Borinsky, and Edmundo Paz-Soldán among others as we analyze the representation of technology, global media, neoliberalism, and the arrival of a Latin American posthuman body in contemporary narrative. We will include a variety of theoretical approaches in our examination, including works by García Canclini, Haraway, Hayles, Hopenhayn, Richards, and Deleuze and Guattari.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5230 All About Spanish Cinema

This course surveys major themes in recent Peninsular Cinema. While the main focus will be on films from the past decade, we will spend a few weeks studying the most important trends since the Spanish Civil War. Throughout the course, such issues as representation of the war, resistance to Francoism, nationalism, globalization, immigration, and youth culture will be addressed; the construction of memory and the representations of violence will be underlying themes. In addition to situating the films in a historical, cultural, and political context, we will study different theoretical approaches to film and visual culture stemming from psychoanalysis, feminism, and postcolonial studies, as the course also aims to provide students with the necessary tools to analyze and write about film. We will view works by Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Montxo Armendáriz, Iciar Bollaín, Victor Erice, Fernando León de Aranoa, Alex de la Iglesia, Julio Medem, Basilio Martín Patiño, and Carlos Saura, among others. The course will be divided into 10 different sections. These sections delineate a progression of literary, historical and theoretical issues that will allow us to develop critical positions in relation to films discussed in class as well to cultural developments in twentieth-century Spain. Requirements include active seminar participation, a presentation, and a final paper.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5240 Cuban Literature: Within, Against and Beyond the Revolution

In this seminar we will focus on contemporary Cuba within the broader cultural and historical context of the Caribbean. Drawing upon a variety of theories (postcolonial, cultural studies, discourse analysis), we will emphasize textual interpretations of discourses in several different genres (poetry, theatre, narrative, testimony, political discourse, essay) by a variety of authors: from the revolutionary canon (Guillén, Carpentier, Morejón, Barnet), through the diaspora (Pérez Firmat, Behar, Benítez Rojo) to the youngest generation of the so-called POST-NOVISIMOS. Themes under discussion include, but are not limited to: syncretism, transculturation, CUBANIDAD, intellectual freedom and censorship, TESTIMONIO, bridges to/from Cuba, cultural memory, arts of resistance. Students may be required to view selected films outside of class. REQUIREMENTS: shorter written assignments (article summaries; book responses) and research leading to a major paper, in class discussion.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5241 Myth, Memory, and Space in Cuban Literature

This course explores the multilayered Cuban identities - both on the island and in the diaspora - within the spatial context of the Caribbean and in connection with the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, plantationi economy, African-based spirituality, and colonial/postcolonial domination. The central themes of memory, forgetting and spaces of resistance are studied through the works of Morejón, Guillén, Loynar, Carpentier, Ponte, and Triana, among others. Offered in Spanish, for graduate students only. REQUIREMENTS: In-class participation, mid-term exam, final research paper, brief responsive papers. 3 units.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5250 The Ethics of the Exeumplum

This course will be devoted to the reading and discussion of the most important collections of medieval Spanish exempla, such as the Sendebar, the book of Calila et Dimna, the Barlaam et Josafat, the Conde Lucanor, the Libro de los Gatos, and the Libro de los Exemplos por A.B.C. We will study various theoretical issues that can contribute to the understanding and aesthetic appreciation of these texts, such as their narrative structures, the cultural and ethical issues that led to their creation, and the ways in which these issues were treated by different authors and translators. We will also try to understand how these written texts existed in a society that was predominantly oral and how this same orality contributed to their shaping, transmission, and preservation.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5261 Crime and Criminals in 19th-Century Spanish America

The definition of deviant conduct was a mainstay of the discourse of nation building in Latin America. The idea of progress was never conceived without first taking for granted a specific idea of order that referred not only to the public space but also to the newly independent citizens' private lives. In this course, we will study -- through the readings of legal, medical, and literary texts of the time -- how criminal conduct was represented in literature and newspapers. We will focus on the impact the definition of the criminal subject had on the social, political, economic, and cultural arenas. In particular, we will concentrate on the roles of lawbreakers and their actions in 19th-century novels. Some of the authors studied will be Juan Montalvo, Eduardo Blanco, Manuel Payno, José Martí, and Federico Gamboa.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5270 Whose Latin America(nism)?

The course will focus on the evolution of the Latin American field, from area studies to cultural studies, with special attention to some of the debates that have run across the field in the last two decades: baroque/neobaroque, modernity/postmodernity, colonialism/post-colonialism, national/post national. Theoretical and textual analysis will also give basis for an introductory reflection on the role of gender and ethnicity in the construction of collective subjectivities from colonial times to the present.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5290 Baroque/Neobaroque/Ultrabaroque

The course will explore, from a trans-historical, trans-disciplinary perspective, the continuity of Baroque aesthetics throughout Latin America's cultural history from colonial times to the present. The course will be divided in 3 parts: 1) the analysis of Baroque writing, public art and performances of the XVIIth century (Sor Juana, Sigüenza y Góngora, Espinosa Medrano, villancicos, arcos triunfales, etc.), 2) the study of literary texts and manifestos of the neobarroco and neobarroco in the XXth century (Sarduy, Perlonguer, Lamborguini) and other examples more marginal but still associated with contemporary Latin American Baroque (Marossa di Giorgio, Pedro Lemebel et al.), 3) new reappearances of the Baroque in the visual arts both in Latin America and in Latino art. The course will analyze the connections between Baroque and Modernity, with particular emphasis on ideological issues, representation of gender/genre, and identity politics.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5300 The Inventions of America: Latinoamericanismo in the Xxth Century

This course surveys what Santiago Castro Gómez has termed The birth of Latin America as a philosophical problem, in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, and the different incarnations of this philosophical and cultrual problem in the writings of Latin American essayists throughout the XXth Century. The course will be divided in three sections. First, we will closely read foundational figures of the first decades of the XXth Century--like Alfonso Reyes, José Vasconcelos, José Carlos Mariátegui, Gilberto Freyre and Pedro Henríquez Ureña--in order to discuss different cultural ideologies, such as MESTIZAJE, cosmopolitanism and idigenism, as well as their literary and intellectual genealogies. Through these readings, students will analyze the re-formulation of the notion of Latin America in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Then we will move to mid-century intellectuals--Leopoldo Zea, Edmundo O'Gorman, Roberto Fernández Retamar--to discuss the continuities and ruptures of those ideas before and after the Cuban Revolution. The second part will focus on the philosophical question of America as a historical being, as well as the consequences of this idea in intellectual projects of cultural emancipation. Finally, we will turn to authors from the last quarter of the century--Enrique Dussel, Angel Rama, Antonio Cornejo Polar, Román de la Campa--in order to assess the reinvention of LATINOAMERICANISMO and its founding principles in the contexts of postcoloniality and cultural studies. The aim of this course is not only to familiarize students with the backbone of Latin Americanist thinking, but also to engage in an advanced-level critical and theoretical reading of these foundational figures in terms of their literary and philosophical genealogies--thinkers such as Hegel, Spinoza, Heidegger and Foucault, among others--and the consequences of their thinking in contemporary Latin American literary and cultural studies.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5310 Thousand and One Travelers' Tales: Exile, Immigration and Memory in Contemporary Spanish Culture

In light of recent migratory flows to Spain, such issues as multiculturalism, racial and ethnic conflict, and religious and linguistic diversity have received renewed attention within the Social Sciences, and have also been the subject of recent films and selected literary text. However, these issues have not been sufficiently discussed in relevance to the debates on the constructions of cultural memory (particularly in regards to the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath), which in many ways have dominated the field of Spanish Cultural Studies. In this course, we will attempt to bridge this gap, while simultaneously studying the main historical developments from the Second Republic in 1932 to the present. We will examine, among other issues, the meanings of the Medieval convivencia of Arabs, Christians and Jews in contemporary Spain, the relationship between the end of this period and the forging of an Imperial culture, which was nostalgically invoked during the Francoist era, the myth that Francisco Franco saved Spanish Jews from a certain death in the Holocaust, the meanings attached to a Mediterranean culture, contemporary tours of Jewish and Arab Spain, and the representation of immigration in contemporary narrative and film. Readings include works by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Ammiel Alcalay, Cathy Caruth, Américo Castro, Jacques Derrida, Federico García Lorca, Paul Gilroy, Juan Goytisolo, Ranjana Khanna, Julia Kristeva, María Rosa Menocal, Angelina Muñiz-Huberman, Antonio Muñoz Molina, David Nirenberg, Juana Salabert, and Edward Said. We will also watch films by Carlos Saura, Iciar Bollaín and Fernando León de Aranoa.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5320 Poetics and Politics in Democratic Spain

This course examines the various political implications of some of the most influential poetic movements during the last 40 years taking place in Spain. The course combines close readings of the work of key poets of the period, with the critical analysis of their respective poetics in relation to the politics of the Transition period, and the ensuing democratic period after Franco's totalitarian regime. Throughout the course, we will examine various historical, political, and social events determining the poetic and cultural production of the period such as the politics of memory, gender inequality, exile, and migration. We will also focus on the tensions between various Iberian national identities, the impact of key Latin American poets in exile during the 1970s, as well as the more recent 15-M movement and the economic crisis in the early 21st century. Some of the poets that we will study (originating from various regions of Spain, Latin America and Equatorial Guinea) include Jaime Gil de Biedma, Gloria Fuertes (1960s); Jose Ángel Valente Leopoldo María Panero, Juan Gelman, Mario Benedetti, Raquel Ilombe, Cristina Peri Rossi (in the 1970s); Ana Rossetti, Luis García Montero, Joaquin Sabina (1980 and 90s); Kirmen Uribe, Agustín Fernández Mallo, Chantal Maillard, Ana Merino, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, and Carla Badillo Coronado (2000s). We will also read critical essays by Hannah Arendt, María Zambrano, Cristina Moreiras, Jo Labanyi, Antonio Méndez Rubio, Guillem Martínez, Germán Labrador Méndez, José Ignacio Padilla, and Belén Gopegui, among other writers, and scholars in the field. Offered in Spanish, for graduate students only. Requirements: In-class participation, individual presentations, weekly online responses, and final research paper.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5340 Early Modern Spectacular Culture

This seminar studies a range of early modern visual and theatrical representations from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in order to understand the major role that public spectacle played in Hispanic cultures shaped by popular literacies. We will examine the deployment of spectacle for the purpose of cultural formation, in royal pageantry and elite portraiture that sought to shape historical memory, and in the rich staging of Jesuit school plays that aimed to inform beliefs and recruit (male) public interest in reading, writing, and social advancement. At the same time, we will explore works of the comedia that drew crowds from all walks of life, as Lope de Vega's ARTE DE NUEVO DE HACER COMEDIAS spurred a boom in plays that abandoned classical formal models instead to mirror life for an avid public of mixed literacies. Shaped by popular tastes, this new form of entertainment represented social relations between elites and common subjects, as well as between genders, as complex and contested dynamics of power, negotiated by performances of identity that could invite public laughter, scorn, or censure. These works incorporated a wide range of questioning voices into the spectacular formation of early modern Hispanic culture. Our focuses will include visual and textual sources of elite spectacles, a Jesuit school play, Lope's dramatic treatise, and a range of comedias that deploy visual and linguistic spectacle as a means of cultural performance, including most works on the doctoral reading list for this period. Critical and theoretical selections as well as visual materials will inform our analyses. Prereq. Graduate standing.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5350 Sociology of Latin American Literature

This class is an introduction to the field of sociology of literature as relevant to Latin America. This field is focused on the study of literature as a material and institutional practice and of the concrete structures of production, circulation and reception of literary works. The class will focus on the study of issues such as: the construction of an autonomous literary field within the field of cultural production; the sociology of literary form; and the relationship between literature and the economic market, via institutions such as magazines, publishers and agents. These questions will be explored through both theoretical discussions and case studies, mostly focused in Mexico. The course will focus readings from major theories of literary sociology (including Georg Lukàcs, Franco Moretti, Pierre Bourdieu and others), major interventions on the subject by Latin American critics (Pedro Ángel Palou, Ericka Beckman, Jean Franco and others) and some canonical authors which will be used to exemplify the theories (José Asunción Silva, Jorge Cuesta, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Juan Rulfo and others). Readings in English and Spanish, course taught in Spanish. Prereq. Graduate standing.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5360 Colonial Memories, Postcolonial Crossings, and Spanish Cultural Studies

In this course we will examine different approaches to postcolonial studies (Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ella Shohat, Walter Mignolo) in relation to texts focusing specifically on Spain's cultural and religious pluralism (Américo Castro, Daniela Flesler, Susan Martin-Márquez, Eduardo Subirats, Alfredo Campoy-Cubillo). We will also discuss the theoretical foundations of such concepts as Convivencia, Orientalism, Transatlantic Studies, and Mediterranean Studies. We will begin the semester by discussing the end of Spanish empire in the nineteenth century and then move across the violent twentieth century and into the twenty-first century in order to assess the ways in which colonial, postcolonial, and neo-colonial discourses shape contemporary culture in Spain and the nation's former colonies. Primary texts may include novels (Ana María Matute's PRIMERA MEMORIA, Juan Goytisolo's DON JULIAN), films (Chus Gutiérrez's films PONIENTE [2001] and RETORNO A HANSALA [2008], Iciar Bollaín's films FLORES DE OTRO MUNDO [1999] and TAMBIÉN LA LLUVIA [2012]), and more recent depictions of and approaches to migration, multiculturalism, and memory in Spain in times of crises. All texts are available in translation.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5370 The Production of Culture: Jose Maria Arguedas and the Migrating Andes

Taking the oeuvre of writer, folklorist, and anthropologist José María Arguedas as a case study, this graduate seminar will examine the way 20th-century intellectuals dealt with material transformations in the production and circulation of cultures in the Andean region. Through the analysis of literary texts, ethnographies, journalism, practices of cultural promotion and recordings, we will explore the role of orality, writing and other, more recent technologies (such as the voice recorder, the radio, and music records), as well as that of capitalist markets and cultural commodification, in the configuration of public spheres in the Andes. Similarly, we will analyze the impact of the emergence of said public spheres on the imaginaries and materialities of nation, ethnicity, and the political dimension of culture. Conceptualizing immigration and urbanization as the key historical processes for our case study, the seminar will offer a historical and theoretical framework for understanding the transformations. rural and urban cultures in the Andean region region underwent during the past century, paying close attention to the classical debates these transformation generated in the field of Andean studies. This seminar will have a strong interdisciplinary appproach, combining topics such as cultural production, intellectual and cultural history, media studies, culture history, and public sphere. Readings in English and Spanish; course taught in Spanish. Prereq: Graduate standing.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5380 Literature and Modernity in 20th-Century Mexico

This class will develop a critical reading of the literary history of Mexico from the late Porfiriato to the year 2000. The course will focus on the way in which different genres (novel, short story, essay, chronicle, poetry) engage with four different moments of capitalist modernization in Mexico: The Porfirian reforms, the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican Miracle of the 1950s and 1960s and Neoliberalism. Each session will engage in the comparative study of representative texts of two and three authors, with key works of theory and criticism, in order to understand phenomena such as cultural mediation, ideology, urbanization, technology, national identity, cosmopolitanism and the construction of literary institutions. Authors and movements include late MODERNISMO, the stridentist movement, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, José Revueltas, the CASA DE LAGO movement, LA ONDA and the CRACK group. Prereq: Graduate Standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5390 Crisis and Modernity in the Spanish Fin De Siecle

This course will focus on the literature and culture of the Spanish fin de siècle, a moment of social, political, and cultural crisis marked by both domestic instability and imperial loss abroad, even as the nation was making its uncertain and uneven entry into modernity. We will explore the impact that this crisis had on literary and cultural representations at the turn of the century, as well the cultural debates that it generated on the problem of Spanish national identity. Taking as a point of departure a statement made in a novel by the nineteenth-century realist Benito Pérez Galdós, that the late nineteenth century was a moment that saw the disappearance of classes, groups and categories, we will examine how the general crisis of category in the fin-de-siècle transformed perceptions of identity--such as class, gender, sexuality, race, and nationality--and gave rise to new aesthetic forms and preoccupations that heralded a modern(ist) sensibility. Materials to be examined will include works by both canonical writers and artists, as well as popular cultural representations, on both sides of the century line.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5400 Baroque Intellectuals: Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz and Siguenza Y Gongora

The multifaceted intellectual and literary production of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora dominates the cultural landscape of seventeenth -century colonial Mexico. In this class we will examine representative works from both of these authors, addressing a wide variety of genres - history, theology, poetry, theater, scientific writing, autobiography and biography - to plot the contours of elite baroque culture. In bringing these two authors together in one class we will be able to examine in detail the preoccupations of these baroque intellectuals - their inferior status as criollos (Mexicans of pure Spanish descent), the challenges involved in disseminating their works, as well as the difficulties imposed by an absolutist state and orthodox religious power structure. We will also focus on the differences in their works and lives that sprang from their respective genders, taking a close look at the production of femininity and masculinity in colonial Mexico. This class will also strive to create a detailed socio-cultural and historical context in which to place the works of these two figures. Primary texts will include Paraíso occidental, Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, Autodefensa espiritual, Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez, Teatro de virtudes políticas, Neptuno alegórico, Libra astronómica, Carta Atenagórica, as well as a selection of Sor Juana's poetry and villancicos. Secondary sources will include works by Foucault, Paz, Moraña, Merrim, More, Glantz and Ross. Graduate standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5410 Major Seminar

An undergraduate seminar. Topics vary. Prereq: Span 307D and Span 308E and at least two 300-level literature/culture surveys taught in Spanish.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

SPAN 5411 Memory, Mobility, and Space in Contemporary Spain

From the mythical medieval convivencia to the nineteenth-century notion that Africa begins at the Pyrenees, from the two Spains, to Spain is Different, from the Pacto del Olvido to the recuperation of historical memory, from Una, Grande, y Libre to Catalonia is not Spain, from en España se vive bien to the predicaments of the Generación Noqueada, discourses over identity and belonging in contemporary Spain have been fraught with conflicts and contradictions. Recent theoretical approaches to memory, mobility, and space provide productive perspectives that make it possible to examine these conflicts and contradictions. Thus, in addition to examining the key debates within Spanish Cultural Studies from the 1990s to the present, the course provides students with theoretical and methodological tools, stemming from such fields as Memory Studies, Migration Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Spatial Humanities, and Transatlantic Studies. Readings include works by Aleida Assmann, Max Aub, Américo Castro, Javier Cercas, Tim Creswell, Helen Graham, David Harvey, Anne Knowles, Federico García Lorca, Paul Gilroy, Juan Goytisolo, Susan Martin Márquez, María Rosa Menocal, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Michael Rothberg, and Edward Said. We will also watch films by Iciar Bollaín and Fernando León de Aranoa, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, and Julio Medem. Prereq: Graduate Standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5420 Latin American Mediascapes: From Mass Culture to Indigenous Media and Global Consumption

The increasing commodification and technological mediation of culture over the past century has transformed the constitution of identities and communities, as well as the very form of the popular and the political. How have these transformations modified our understanding of national, regional, and local cultures in Latin America? How do the ways in which indigenous and urban populations experience identity and community differ? What comes after the dissolution of categories such as lo alto, lo popular y lo indígena? Concentrating on Latin American cultures from the twentieth century to the present, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to answer these questions, and explores them through three aspects of mediation: commodification, technology and consumption. These aspects are studied within four different debates: (1) Literary responses to mass culture: tensions between lettered practices and mass media, the value of democratization, and the politics of mass-oriented culture and literature are analyzed. Authors discussed may include: Mario Vargas Llosa, Ricardo Piglia, and Luis Rafael Sánchez; (2) Communication and nation: the role of technological orality (and its clash with print culture) in the configuration of national and campesino cultures in the Andes is explored; (3) The emergence of Indigenous media: an analysis of the reformulation of the politics of representation and the agency of indigenous and subaltern subjects in the countryside and the city in the midst of the boom of this kind of media throughout Latin America, particularly in the Amazon; (4) Consumer cultures: early twentieth-century consumption of popular print culture (sensationalist press) is compared to current discussions of consumption in contemporary urban Latin America in order to discuss democratization, citizenship, and global identities. Readings include works by Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Arjun Appadurai, Friedrich Kittler, Jean Franco, George Yúdice, and Beatriz Sarlo. Students are encouraged to propose and discuss additional examples of national cases or authors. Prereq: Graduate Standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5430 Gender, Race, and Colonialism At the End of Empire in 19th-Century Spain

This course will examine the ways in which gender, race, and colonialism informed discourses on nation and empire in the long 19th century in Spain. Drawing on recent developments in gender, postcolonial, and critical race theories, we will analyze literary and other forms of cultural representation that engaged with major social and political debates of the century around issues such as slavery, gender equality, prostitution and sex-trafficking, transoceanic migration, racial degeneration, improvement (eugenics), and mestizaje. Materials to be examined include plays of the early century, such as María Rosa Gálvez's Zinda and Duque de Rivas's Don Álvaro; the poetry and anti-slavery writings of Romanic authors Carolina Coronado and Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda; the narrative fiction of canonical realists such as Galdós, Clarín, and Pardo Bazán; and the works of popular novelists of the fin-de-siglo, such as López Bago, Eugenio Flores, and Felipe Trigo.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5440 Humanism, Magic, Love, and Rhetoric in Spanish Literature of the 15th Century

This is a course devoted to three related subjects that were central to the life and work of the Spanish intellectual elite during most of the 15th Century: the power of words, the nature of love, and an idea of magic that permeates the world, not only as a force to be reckoned with, but also as a means to better one's own position in society, both in the private and also in the public sphere. We will study a selection of texts produced in courtly and university circles, especially at the court of Isabel de Castile and at the University of Salamanca. Given the dynamic cultural exchange that was taking place at that time between the Iberian and the Italian peninsulas, special attention will be given to the arrival and development of humanism in Spain. We will study a selection of sentimental fiction, treatises of love, magic, and rhetoric, and conclude the course reading and analyzing the TRAGICOMEDIA DE CALISTO Y MELIBEA also known as CELESTINA, which is considered, to this date, the second most famous work of Spanish literature, just after DON QUIJOTE. The analysis of these texts will be simultaneous to an ongoing reflection about the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition and its effects on those who, still after having converted, were threatened and affected by its existence. We will also read a selection of theoretical and critical texts that will help us deepen our understanding of the primary readings. Prereq: Graduate Standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

SPAN 5450 Warriors and Pilgrims, Sinners and Saints: Foundational Texts of Medieval Castile

We will read and discuss in this seminar a selected corpus of medieval Castilian foundational texts such as: the POEMA DE MIO CID, the PRIMERA CRÓNICA GENERAL, the Romancero poetry related to the Cid, the POEMA DE FERNÁN GONZÁLEZ, the VIDA DE SAN MILLÁN DE LA COGOLLA, selections of: the MILAGROS DE NUESTRA SEÑORA, the CODEX CALIXTINUS, the CANTIGAS DE SANTA MARIA, and the LIBRO DE BUEN AMOR. The reading of this corpus will be enriched by a selection of theoretical and critical studies that will foster a better understanding of the role these texts played at different stages in the formation of Castilian identity. Some of the issues discussed will be: the politics and poetic forms involved, at different times, in the retelling of historical facts and legends, the relations between oral and written traditions, manuscripts and clerical culture, and the changing perceptions of Christians, Moors and Jews.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5460 Theory Into Practice: (Re)reading Span Amer Contemp Narratives Through the Lens of Recent Theories

Guided and inspired by the premise of the inherent synergy between theory and analytical practice, this seminar will provide graduate students with hands-on opportunities to (re)read major 20th and 21st century Spanish American narratives-both fictional and non-fictional-through the applied lens of select methodological approaches, most of them cross-disciplinary, such as social discourse (Angenot, Ducrot), various perspectives on ecocriticism, decoloniality (Mignolo), memory and trauma studies (Jelin and others), semiotics of spaces (Lotman, Lefebvre, Foucault) as well performance and visual studies. Throughout this course we will strive to achieve critically productive uses of theory while attempting to avoid mechanical applications and abuses. Works under analysis will include, among others: selected short stories by Juan Rulfo and Amparo Dávila (México), Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo and Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina), Ana Lydia Vega Serova, Aida Bahr and Marilyn Bobes (Cuba), along with selections from canonical testimonies (Barnet/Montejo, Cuba; Burgos/Menchú, Guatemala), essays (La fiesta vigilada by Ponte, Cuba), and novels and/or novellas by Carpentier, Fuentes, and García Márquez.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5480 The Art of Telling, Writing and Representing History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

This course will be devoted to analyze a selection of texts produced in the Iberian Peninsula during the middle ages and the early modern period, whose principal subjects are the History and legends of the region that became, eventually, the kindom of Castile. This will be our point of departure to better understand the uses of the past, as it becomes part of a text, and goes through the unavoidable process of fictionalization. We will study, for example, the ever problematic relations between the nobility and the monarchy and the uses of History as a source of exemplary matter, as inspiration to help create and reinforce social identity, and as a way to overcome censorship. With the objective of acquiring a better understanding of the uses of the past as a strategy to comment, explain and try to modify the present moment, and given the popularity that the historical novel has acquired in Spain in recent years, especially after the transition to democracy, our reading list will also include a few examples of these types of texts. For their final projects, the students will be asked to work in a synchronic and comparative way, with various representations of a legend, a character, or a historical event of their choice. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5491 Women Writers of Spain From the Enlightenment to the Contemporary Period

This course will examine various genres of writing by Spanish women--including narrative fiction, poetry, and the essay--from the eighteenth century to the contemporary period, paying attention to their role in engendering social and cultural transformations for women. We will approach their work, considering not only the challenges faced by women who took up the pen in different historical periods, but also the strategies they used to negotiate their participation in the public sphere as writers, intellectuals, social reformers and feminists. Authors to be studied include Enlightenment figures such as Josefa Amar y Borbón and María Rosa Gálvez; Romantic writers (Coronado, Gómez de Avellaneda), who, under the impact of liberalism, were key to shaping new models of subjectivity for women; nineteenth-century feminists and social reformers of the late nineteenth-century (Arenal, Pardo Bazán, Gimeno de Flaquer); early twentieth-century suffragists and freethinkers (Carmen de Burgos, Rosario de Acuña); and women writing during and in the aftermath of Franco's dictatorship (Rodoreda, Martín Gaite, Riera). We will explore the unique perspectives that these women bring to their writing as they address pressing social, political, and cultural issues-including universal suffrage, citizenship, slavery, nationalism, and women's (and human) rights.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5500 Special Topics in Spanish Literature and Culture

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Spring

SPAN 5510 Reading the Right to Have Rights: Borders, Mobilities, and Memories

Taking Hannah Arendt's notion of the right to have rights as a starting point, this course centers on the connections between the Humanities and Human Rights. We will discuss a variety of literary texts in relation to theoretical works from such fields as Border Studies, Critical Refugee Studies, Mobility Studies, and Memory Studies. This will allow us to examine different histories of displacement, spanning from the early twentieth century to the present. In addition to contextualizing the historical and legal significance of such terms as refugee, asylum, sanctuary, non-refoulement, or forced displacement, our discussions will also allow us to engage with the broader meanings of concepts that include hospitality, identity, belonging, and citizenship. A majority of the literary texts on the syllabus stem from the Hispanophone world; all are available in translation. Students will have the opportunity to add material to the syllabus and may base their final projects on their main areas of study, providing they are relevant to the theme and materials of the course.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 552 Methods of Literary Study: The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation II

Ident for L16 552

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5600 Torture, Inquisition, and Literature

The course will focus on the theory and practice of torture in the Hispanic world and other countries where the Inquisition flourished: France, Mexico, Peru. Torture manuals will be adduced as well as archival materials. Inquisition trials from Spain and its dependencies will be studied; also historical texts by defenders and opponents of the Inquisition; among them, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Julio Caro Baroja, Haim Beinert, Henry Kamen, Miguel Blazquez Díaz and others. Literary texts by Marcos Aguinis, Carlos Fuentes. Homero Aridjis, Miguel Delibes, Carme Riera, Arturo Pérez Reverte, and others. Students will consult with the instructor to write a research paper. In addition, a short book report is required and will be the basis of an oral presentation.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5610 Beyond Survival: Black Agency in Colonial Latin America

Through the analysis of primary sources, where available, this seminar will examine the varied ways through which men and women of African descent garnered and exerted agency in colonial Latin America. Topics to be discussed include: archival politics, race, slavery, resistance, legal consciousness, family, clothing, corporate organization, military service, and festive and ritual practices. The seminar focuses on a lesser-studied aspect of the colonial experience and is intended to engage graduate students with a growing area of study in the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies. Prereq: Graduate Standing.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5670 Grammar and Vocabulary Acquisition

This course examines theoretical and instructional implications of research on grammar and vocabulary acquisition. Topics include making form-meaning connections during language learning; developmental stages; the role of input and input processing; explicit and implicit methods of grammar instruction; pertinent factors in vocabulary acquisition, such a learning context and processing resource allocation; and comparisons of incidental and direct vocabulary instruction techniques. Major theories of language acquisition (e.g., nativism, emergentism) are critically examined in light of the research presented, and research findings are applied to instructional practices.

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD BU: BA EN: H

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5700 Nueva Narrativa Weird

With novels that include everything from talking refrigerators to ghostly twins, alternate histories to extraterrestrials, Latin American narrative of the last two decades from Mexico to Argentina has seen the rise of a nueva narrativa weird. We will explore the various theorizations of the weird, from Lovecraft, Freud, Borges and Cortázar to more recent conceptualizations and use them to evaluate novels by Rodrigo Fresán, Guadalupe Nettel, Jorge Baradit, Mike Wilson, Daniela Tarazona, Edmundo Paz Soldán and Álvaro Bisama. We will examine themes that run from cyborg theory to underground culture and a developing narrative aesthetic of intertextuality based on mashups and sampling.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5720 (Re)imagining the Greater Caribbean Through the Lens of Gender and Ethnicity

Conceived as a multicultural space, The Caribbean immediately calls to mind many complex images: the slave trade and plantation economy; the diaspora and Pan-Africanism; magical realism and the dark (post)colonial side of modernity. As Caribbeanists, we will look comparatively at the commonalities and the differences among the literary and cultural productions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Columbia and Haiti, along with their respective diasporas. Exploring the notions of gender and ethnicity will enable us to further focus on such overarching themes as creolization and national building (belonging, inclusion, marginalization), gendered and racial politics of the diaspora, the performance of gender, sexual politics of tourism, the configuration of Afro-Latinidad, and the hybrid aesthetics emerging from the spiritual practices of African-derived (syncretic) religions. A combination of canonical and newest works will be presented in a variety of genres (testimonio, short stories, poetry, novels, theatre, film, essays, visual culture). In addition, we will tackle the complex methodological issues involved in cross-cultural and cross-racial research, including the works of Trouillot, Glissant, Césaire, Fanon, Mintz, La Fountain Stokes, Araújo, Benítez Rojo, Fernández Retamar, Torres Saillant, Paravisini-Gebert, among others. This seminar is also designed to guide you through the intense process of researching, drafting and writing a seminar paper of publishable quality.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall

SPAN 5740 Seminar On the Complete Works of Leonardo Padura

The highly acclaimed and award-winning Cuban author Padura is known for his seven detective novels and many journalistic articles that deal with social and political issues in Cuba. We will read his works Fiebre de caballo, Pasado perfecto, Vientos de cuaresma, Máscaras, Paisaje de otoño, La novela de mi vida, Adios Hemingway, La cola de la serpiente, La niebla del ayer, El hombre que amaba los perros, and Herejes. These works will be studied using scholarship on Padura as well as sources used by Padura in his writing; special attention will be paid to his style, structure and inter-textual preferences in examining Cuba's social and historical conditions as he raises questions about values and character creation in ways reminiscent of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Galdos and Dickens. Students will present a report on one of the novels, and produce a research paper of 20-25 pages on a topic chosen in consultation with the professor. Prereq: Graduate Standing. In Spanish.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5750 Myths Icons, & Fallen Idols: (Re)scripting the Haitian, Mexican, & Cuban Revolutions in Literature

In this seminar we will study the watershed moments in Caribbean and Latin America history, such as the Haitian, Mexican, Cuban, and Nicaraguan revolutions, through the lens of aesthetically and ideologically complex re-scriptings of these events in works of literature, film, visual arts, and testimonial accounts. We will explore possible correlations between aesthetic revolutions and political upheavals as well as the violent mechanisms behind the (re)fashioning of historical figures into myths, icons, and fallen idols. Furthermore, reflecting on issues of class, ethnicity, gender and national/regional identities will allow us to gain a more nuanced and deeply contextualized understanding of divergent voices emerging from spaces as diverse as Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The primary corpus will consist of the writings by Mariano Azuela, Nellie Campobello, Elena Poniatowska, Sabina Berman, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Edwards, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Wendy Guerra, Nancy Morejón, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Heberto Padilla, Julio Cortázar, and Gioconda Belli, among others. The critical, theoretical, and documentary bibliography will include, but will not be limited to, excerpts from writings by Olympe du Gouges, C.L.R. James, Lizbeth Paravisini Gebert, Michel Rolph Trouillot, Hannah Arendt, Michael Taussig, James C. Scott, Enrique Krauze, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Roberto Zurbano, Rigoberta Menchú, Margaret Randall, and Zygmunt Bauman.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5900 Dissertation

Original investigation research experience designed by student to prepare for completing proposed research, public defense, and publication of dissertation as based on student's substantive areas of interest and program of research.

Credit 12 units.

SPAN 5910 Studies in Spanish-American Literature

This course plays with literary explorations of the philosophy of  
the subject, concentrating on close readings of the art and artifice  
"the fiction" of selves. We will juxtapose 20th and 21st century   
literary texts, canonical and "contracanonical," in order to  
destabilize assumptions about a unified development of such fictive  
selves. At the same time, we will read relevant theoretical material  
which will both question and be questioned by the processes of  
subjectification and the elision of subjectification in the  
literature.
This "fugue," then, understood as both composition and flight,  
anticipates the notion that literary selves are made through a sort  
of counterpoint, which will serve us as an organizing metaphor for  
the critical task: we will approach an understanding of the  
compositional, constructed nature of subjectivity through the  
examination of how literature's polyphony is usually read to create  
the illusion of unison --and yet how in reading multiplicity, as in  
listening to a piece of music or viewing a diagram, we can also  
recognize our own participation in seeing, hearing or being told  
that which "is represented." We will also dwell for a while in the  
thematic relationship of literature-music explored in various texts,  
in which moments such counterpoint is made explicit. Readings may  
include works by Clarice Lispector, Felisberto Hernández, Horacio  
Quiroga, Julio Cortázar, Subcomandante Marcos, Roberto Bolaño,  
Gabriela Massuh, Roberto Arlt, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Diamela  
Eltit, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Mario Bellatín and others.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5990 Latin American Narrative in the 21st Century

This course explores new directions in Latin American narrative, examining novels published in the last 5 years by both established and new writers. The course will focus on science, technology and the literary expression of a posthuman Latin American identity. Other themes will include: Neoliberalism, Latin American literature and/in the global market, and Latin America and Empire. Theoretical readings include Hayles, Negri & Hardt, and Masiello. Novels by Piglia, Giardinelli, Prado Bassi, Volpi, Paz-Soldán, and Rojas among others.

Credit 3 units.

SPAN 5999 Independent Study

Prerequisites: Senior or graduate standing and permission of the chair of the department.

Credit 3 units.

Typical periods offered: Fall, Spring

SPAN 6996 Hispanic Languages & Literatures Elective (GRAD)

Credit 0 units. EN: H

SPAN 8800 Doctoral Resident

Dissertation research.

Credit 0 units.

SPAN 8830 Master's Continuing Student Status

Dissertation research.

Credit 0 units.

SPAN 8840 Doctoral Continuing Student Status

Dissertation research.

Credit 0 units.

SPAN 8850 Masters Nonresident

Dissertation research.

Credit 0 units.

SPAN 8860 Doctoral Nonresident

Dissertation research.

Credit 0 units.

SPAN 8870 Masters Resident

Dissertation research.

Credit 0 units.