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 650-301
Word, Image, Spectacle: Early Modern Theatricality
Prof. Velázquez
Philosophers, painters, and poets have long examined the interactions of verbal and visual modes of expression that give concrete form to thought and to abstractions such as beauty or virtue. This course adds a third element to that inquiry by including spectacle (the visual and material aspects of a performance) in order to explore forms of theatricality in early modern Spain. The goal of the course is thus double. First, it will provide an introduction to the variety of theatrical forms of the period (the entremés, pre-Lopean plays, comedia nueva, autos sacramentales etc.) and to some of the central debates about the definition and function of theater. Second, we will put into dialogue the writings of early modern preceptists and polemicists weighing in on matters poetic, pictorial and theatrical with present-day criticism and theoretical works that consider the nature of theatricality in its relationship to modernity, medium, and ideology. Readings will include works by Sánchez Badajoz, Lope de Rueda, Cervantes, Pérez Montalbán, Calderón de la Barca, López Pinciano, selections from Cotarelo y Mori’s Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la licitud del teatro, Samuel Weber, Walter Benjamin, William Egginton, Norman Bryson, Bruce Burningham, Louis Marin, and others.
Span 684-301
Spanish Realism
Prof. López
First, we will study the ideological novel that is written in Spain following the failure of the liberal revolution (Pepita Jiménez, El escándalo, Gloria, Doña Perfecta). Second, we will cover the main titles in Spanish Naturalism as well as the reaction against this school (La Regenta, Fortunata y Jacinta, Los Pazos de Ulloa, La Madre Naturaleza). Finally, we will conclude with works that present modern styles in the understanding of man and society (Miau, Peñas arriba). One or two oral presentations, a paper (written in various stages through the semester), and class participation will decide final grade.
Span 690-301
Latin America and Theories of New Literary Formation
Prof. de la Campa
This course will take up various strands of new Latin American literary formation, the theoretical arguments being made around them and a sampling of the writers that compose them (short fiction will be favored whenever possible). It will first review debates that framed the Latin American literary canon through Modernism and the Boom, then move toward various instances of the “new” in the 90s such as “McOndo” and the “Crack Generation,” as well as more the more recent constellation of influential writers such Roberto Bolaño, César Aira and Mario Bellatin.
With that backdrop we will explore other manifestations of new writing across the wider plane of Latin America. One possible strand will be the work of Carlos Franz, Alonso Cueto, Leopoldo Brizuela. Another will be the literature surounding the narco genre composed by writers such as Evelio Rosero, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Sergio Alvarez, Yuri Herrera and Martín Solares. Other possibilities will be the work of Eduardo Lalo, Ena Lucía Portela and other Caribbean writers.
In each case, we will be testing the following set of theoretical premises as potential characteristics of this new literary formation: A) Autobiographical imbrication as disruption of the real. B) Distinctions between political state theory and national inscriptions. C) Distrust of “the local” as locus for resistance or refuge. D) New gender configurations as site of contestation for the links between affect, habitus and the notion of general intellect.
Span 697-301
Contrapuntos Caribeños: Literaure, Música, y Teoría
Prof. Ramos
Este seminario ofrecerá una introducción al pensamiento sobre (o desde) la música en la literatura y la teoría cultural caribeñas.
Al menos desde la década del 1920 (y los movimientos de vanguardia) el recurso musical ha jugado un papel decisivo en las contiendas epistemológicas y estéticas de los discursos caribeñistas. En el seminario nos preguntaremos sobre los modelos de interpretación cultural que se desprenden de la referencia a la música en estos discursos culturales que con frecuencia han postulado la elaboración sonora como una forma superior de integración simbólica y política. ¿Cómo se autoriza este reclamo? ¿Cómo se manifiesta el límite musical de los textos literarios? ¿Qué relación guarda la inscripción de esos límites con la compleja historia colonial de la región? ¿Qué políticas o genealogías alternativas del saber desencadena la pregunta sobre la música y la sonoridad en los estudios literarios y culturales caribeños o caribeñistas?
Partiremos de la obra de Fernando Ortiz, cuyo trabajo clásico sobre la transculturación, el Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y del azúcar (1940), arranca con una metáfora musical (de historia barroca y a la vez popular). El contrapunto intenta dar cuenta de los desencuentros y desfases temporales de la modernidad caribeña. No habrá que estar siempre de acuerdo con las conclusiones de Ortiz para apreciar en su obra el relieve que cobra la aproximación al lugar del cuerpo y de la percepción misma en su peculiar genealogía de la modernidad. Esto explica en parte la amplitud y la intensidad de sus investigaciones sobre la sonoridad particuarmente de las músicas afrodescendientes como fuentes o repertorios de saberes alternativos. La lectura inicial de Ortiz y de Alejo Carpentier (La música en Cuba) nos encaminará luego a considerar las transformaciones del tema musical en discusiones más recientes sobre la cultura contemporánea que reubican la relación entre literatura y música en el marco de las transformaciones de la industria y del capital cultural, discusiones que llevan a repensar críticamente los límites (y limitaciones) del pensamiento sobre la transculturación en las sociedades contemporáneas.