Fall 2004

GRADUATE COURSES IN HISPANIC STUDIES
FALL 2004

(Course information subject to change)
(Cross-reference with Department Roster)

Spanish 630
Media Medieval: Information and Technology in the Iberian Middle Ages
Prof. Solomon
T 2:00-5:00

Drawing on recent media theory, this seminar will identify and explore medieval systems of information that emerged from the Iberian Peninsula. Using as our point of departure Alfonso X's massive codicological enterprise, we will examine phenomena such as medieval cartography, Galenic hygiene, the digital writing of the cuaderna via, and the idea that writing in its material and semiotic forms function as an extension of the human body. Primary works include Alfonso X (Estoria de España, Cantigas de Santa María, Las siete partidas), El libro de Alexandre, Ramón Llull (Llibre de les maravillas, Blanquerna, Ars Brevis), and Juan Ruiz's enigmatic Libro de buen amor.

For more information, click on the following link: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/romance/spanish/solomon/fable/MediaMedieval/MMmain.htm

Spanish 682
The Uses of Perplexity: An Introduction to Literary Theory
Prof. Nadal
W 2:00-5:00

The seminar will address the major questions and crises that have punctuated the emergence of theory as a mode of humanistic inquiry through a close reading of texts that will range from Sophocles to Schlegel, from Kierkergaard to Baidou. We will study these theoretical interventions as reactions to the perplexity caused by mind-boggling intellectual encounters—with the realization of hermeneutics, subjectivity, temporality, belief, ideology, materiality, and so on—that challenged received ideas and knowledges. Together with providing a familiarity with the history of theory as an academic discipline of endless proliferation, this course will strive to retain some of the affect of theory as unlearning.

Spanish 690
Literature and the Visual Arts in Latin American Modernity
Prof. Laddaga
R 1:30-4:30

The course consists of a comparative study of some of the most celebrated bodies of works in the Latin American visual and verbal arts from the second half of the Twentieth century. We will examine parallelisms between the developments in each, paying particular attention to the way the visual is inscribed in literary texts, and writing visualized in images. We will analyze texts by authors such as José Lezama Lima, Julio Cortázar, Clarice Lispector, Severo Sarduy and César Aira, and artworks by Lucio Fontana, Jorge de la Vega, Ana Mendieta and Félix González Torres.

Spanish 692
Escrituras Indianas: Construcción del Indígena en el Discurso Colonial
Prof. Martínez San Miguel
M 2:00-5:00

This course explores oral, visual and written representations about and by indigenous subjects in the New World. The course will begin with a redefinition of what is currently understood as a "textual representation," to include oral and visual accounts along with the textual narratives of the conquest and colonization of the Américas. The concept of "indianidad" is also questioned, as a misnomer that contributed to the invention of an Euro-centric definition of the native populations in the New World. The selection of texts studied includes pre-Hispanic narratives, Spanish chronicles, "relaciones," natural histories and epic poems, as well as post-conquest compilations of indigenous oral narratives in alphabetic and visual forms. Native, imperial and colonial representations are studied to trace the discursive construction of the Spanish American indigenous populations throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Orality, visibility and writing are analyzed as technologies of representations that collide and are synchretized as a result of the colonization process. The unequal processes of occidentalization and colonization of the native imaginaries is analyzed in the context of contemporary debates in Transatlantic and Early Modern studies, as well as Colonial and Postcolonial theory. Primary texts: Popol Vuh; Chilam Balam de Chumayel; Diario de viaje (Colón); Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios (Pané); Naufragios (Cabeza de Vaca); Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Las Casas); La Araucana (Ercilla); Elegía VI de los Varones Ilustres de Indias (Castellanos); Instrucción (Titu Cussi); Comentarios reales (Inca Garcilaso); Huarochirí Manuscript; "Alboroto y motín de los indios de México" (Sigüenza y Góngora); among others.

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