Spanish and PortugueseSpan 609-401
Language Teaching/Learning
Prof. McMahon
This course is required of all Teaching Assistants in French, Italian, and Spanish in the second semester of their first year of teaching. It is designed to provide instructors with the necessary practical support to carry out their teaching responsibilities effectively, and builds on the practicum meetings held during the first semester. The course will also introduce students to various approaches to foreign language teaching as well as to current issues in second language acquisition. Students who have already had a similar course at another institution may be exempted upon consultation with the instructor.
Span 682-401
Literary Theory
Prof. de la Campa
This course will cover the field of contemporary theory through its most productive paradigms of the past few decades. These will include the following: a) various models of deconstructive work, b) new approaches to literary communities and comparative literature, c) debates around coloniality and subalternity, d) transatlantic mappings. The special focus will be on how these paradigms apply and at times define Latin American and Hispanic literary and cultural areas. In that pursuit, we will look at three modes of instantiation: theoretical sources as such, specific works of criticism, samples of literary and cultural production.
Span 684-301
La Novela Realista
Prof. Lopez
This course is dedicated to the non-classical novel of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This class of novel begins to appear when Realism/Naturalism (which had informed what Lukács called the «classical novel») showed signs of exhaustion. We begin with the forms of the novel that react to Naturalism when authors searched for alternative forms of narrative. We will then follow a historical sequence until we reach the forms of the novel of the twentieth century. We will study different tendencies including “espiritualismo”, fin de siècle, decadentism, what Ortega y Gasset called perspectivism, futurismo (los –ismos), and avant-garde. Readings will include Galdós (Miau), Trigo (Jarrapellejos), Unamuno (Niebla), Azorín (Doña Inés), Valle-Inclán (Sonata de otoño), Baroja (íEl mundo es ansí) ), Pérez de Ayala (Belarmino y Apolonio), Gabriel Miró (El obispo leproso), Carmen de Burgos (Puñal de claveles), Cansinos Assens (El movimiento v.p.), Rosa Chacel (Estación de ida y vuelta), Francisco Ayala (Cazador en el alba).
Span 690-301
Studies in Spanish American Literature
Prof. Ramos
"Los avatares de la no-ficción: crónicas literarias, documentales, ensayos fílmicos"
Este seminario explorará una serie de debates actuales en torno del concepto de la no-ficción en la literatura y el cine. Partiremos de la lectura de algunas crónicas ejemplares de José Martí, Carlos Monsiváis, María Moreno et al. para ubicar históricamente la discusión. Luego nos concentrarnos en los documentales de Nicolás Guillén Landrián y algunos ejemplos actuales de las cambiantes formas del ensayo fílmico, su relación con el "cine de poesía", el trabajo de archivo filmico, etc. Trabajaremos con un foco latinoamericano, pero tomaremos en cuenta algunos ejemplos de cine europeo o norteamericano (Pedro Costa, Chris Marker, et al).
Span 692-301
The Politics of Writing the New World: Colonial Latin American Literature
Prof. Téllez
In this graduate seminar we will reflect on writing as a social practice during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, a period during which both written production and reception were strictly guided by the State. We will study different kinds of texts–from Conquistador chronicles, poetry, letters, to literary criticism–and analyze their role on the political and aesthetic debates about the New World, as well as the cultural markets in which the were composed and circulated. Each week we will read and discuss texts from the colonial period along with contemporary literary criticism and/or critical theory.