Fall 2001

In this seminar we will explore the relationship between the body and the prosthetics of information that emerged in the later Middle Ages.  We will examine the medieval codex as a complex machine whose technology was designed to extend the physical body and to compensate for the limits of human mobility, memory, and well being.  Primary readings include:  Augustine, The Confessions; Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon; Alfonso X, Cantigas, Estoria de Espanna; Jacme II, Libre del feyts; Libro de Alexandre; Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor; Jacme Roig's Spill and an abundant selection of maps, miniatures, paintings, and woodcuts.  Secondary readings include selections from Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text; Paul Zumthor, La medida del mundo; Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity:  The Co-evolution of Humans and Machines; Lynn White, Medieval Religion and Technology; John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture; Jean Baudrillard, Le Système des objects; Mary Curuthers, The Book of Memory; Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life; Marina Brownlee, The Status of the Reading Subject in the Libro de buen amor; and Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings.

Spanish 540
The Label Wars: "Golden Age" or "Early Modern" Spain?
Prof. Brownlee
T 2-4

Analogous to the debate over the period terms "Modern" and "Postmodern," Hispanists working in the 16th and 17th centuries are currently debating the validity of "Golden Age" and/or "Early Modern." What cultural mentality does each of these labels suggest? Are they more problematizing than problem-solving? Does "Golden Age" imply the study of texts from a perspective that celebrates empire? Does "Early Modern" represent more truthfully the new focus on subjectivity and related issues? Or is "Early Modern" a distorting term that anachronistically projects the cultural production of earlier centuries as an imperfect version of "the Modern"? Is this framework perhaps as distorting and colonizing as some claim "Golden Age" is? These issues will form the basis for our consideration of such texts as the sonnet in Garcilaso and Góngora, selections from Quevedo's satirical prose and Cervantes's Persiles y Sigismunda.

Spanish 600
History of the Spanish Language
Prof. Espósito
R 2-4

This course will explore three main issues: (1) the external history of the Spanish language: How do linguists read Spanish and Latin American history? What cultural and historical events are important for the evolution of the Spanish language? (2) the internal evolution of Spanish: How did Latin become Spanish? How is Spanish different from the other Iberian languages? (3) the reading of Old Spanish texts. Student evaluation will be based on: (1) participation and performance in class; (2) a mid-term examination; (3) a brief (7 pp.) report on a research tool for Hispanic philology (dialect atlases, dictionaries, etc.); (4) a final examination.

Spanish 697
Text, Image, and Context in Latin American Literature
Prof. Laddaga
M 2-4

The course will be an investigation of the most influential styles of conceptualizing the relationship between artistic or literary productions and political practices in Latin America between the 1950s and the present. We will pay special attention to the genesis and structure of the notion of "liberation," and to its subsequent crisis. We will also try to determine the predicament of political art and literature in times of globalization. We will read texts by, among others, Pablo Neruda, Julio Cortázar, Glauber Rocha, Reinaldo Arenas, Osvaldo Lamborghini, and Diamela Eltit, and analyze images of several artists, from Antonio Berni and Hélio Oiticica, to Doris Salcedo and Cildo Meireles.