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 630-301
Remediating Iberia: Medieval Texts and Modern (Audio)Visual Culture
Prof. Solomon
This seminar pairs a reading of medieval Iberian literary works with the remediated counterparts in twentieth century. Remediation, as defined for this seminar, is the process in which a work of literature is “performed” or recreated in a way that remedies or resolves a perceived lack or deficiency by means of an alternative or more robust medium. Most often what is remedied with remediation is a felt need for greater authenticity and a more powerful sense of immediacy. In the 20th century, with the rise of moving photographic images and recordable sound, the history of remediation turned decidedly toward transforming verbal works into (audio)visual artifacts. Thus, while surveying two pillars of medieval Castilian Literature the Libro de buen amor, and Celestina, we examine how these same works emerge in musical recordings, cinematic adaptations, and graphic interpretations during the 20th century. These include, for example, Picasso’s scandalous etchings that appeared in a French translation of Rojas’ Celestina or Miguel Sabido’s sado-masochistic cinematic retelling of Calisto’s relation with Melibea in the same work; Elijah Kane’s ludic and saucy historiated initials adorning his English translation of the Libro de buen amor and two cinematic versions of the Libro that appeared during the Spanish transition to democracy.
The goal of this seminar is threefold. First, I hope to provide an introduction and overview of several of the most celebrated works of medieval Spanish literature; second, together we will develop a theory of remediation that will help us not only understand modern versions of medieval works but also the ongoing production of literary artifacts during the medieval period; and finally, we will attempt to adumbrate the political, social and cultural implications of remediating medieval texts for modern readers and spectators.
Click here for Syllabus (forthcoming)
Span 686-301
Cultures of Anyone: Deomcratizations in a Spain in Crisis
Prof. Moreno Caballud
The authority of the ‘experts’ is based on a long, complex tradition in every society that tends to establish a group of people ‘in the know,’ and another group ‘in the dark.’ However, the economic disaster in Spain (2008-2015) has generated such a huge drop in the credibility of political institutions that it has begun to affect this hierarchical cultural system, thus compromising the very authority of those ‘in the know.’ This has driven many people ‘in the dark’ to trust in their own abilities to collaboratively construct the knowledge they need in any given situation, and effective answers to the problems that confront them. New ‘cultures of anyone’ have arisen mostly around grassroots social movements and in collaborative spaces fostered by digital technology, but they are spreading to many other social milieus, including those traditionally reserved for “high culture” and institutional power.
This seminar seeks to explore the plural consequences of the crisis of the expert paradigm and the emergence of ‘cultures of anyone’ departing from the case of present day Spain, and addressing global subjects such as the relation between neoliberalism and cultural authority, the roles of artists and intellectuals in this crisis of paradigm, and the creation of collaborative non-hierarchical forms of self-representation and sense-making among different communities.
Span 690-301
Minor Literature in 19th-Century Latin America
Prof. Escalante
In this course we will analyze short literary genres that aim to represent fragments of 19th-century daily everyday life in contrast with more canonical and encompassing forms like the novel. These genres include costumbrismo articles, fantastic tales, political discourses, tradiciones, among others. We are going to discuss the aesthetic and ideological implications of this rejection of totality of these literary genres and their contribution or deviancy to the nation building project. We will read works by Pardo y Aliaga, Palma, Mansilla, Holmberg, Gorriti, Heredia, Montalvo, Roa Barcena along with literary theory authors like Dennis Mellier, Jacques Rancière, Carlo Ginzburg, Jacques Derrida.
Span 694-301
Contemporary Latin American Cinema
Prof. de la Campa
This course will examine some of the best-known Latin American films in light of various strands of influential theoretical models pertaining to the area, such as film of liberation, imperfect cinema, third world film, new colonial discourse and national cultural identity critiques. In particular, we will explore whether the waning of revolutionary and other utopian discourses has given way to themes and techniques that feature migratory displacement, new gender formation and neoliberal ambivalence in Latin American cinema. The goal is not only to observe how these topics shift the focus from national histories or ideological common places but also to study how these films engage new video cultures and market pressures in their pursuit of audiences. Film theory and criticism will therefore accompany the discussion of screened movies. The list of films will include No, City of God, Silent Night, Love is a Bitch, Memories of Underdevelopment, I The Worst of All, El Topo, Pixote, Entranced Earth, The Young and the Damned, El Mariachi, among others.
The class will be mainly taught in Spanish but the films will be subtitled in English and students who wish to do so may write their papers and make their presentations in English. A minimum of two 15-page papers and a class presentation will be required.