Fall 2006

GRADUATE COURSES IN HISPANIC STUDIES

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

Spanish 630
The Literature of Love in the Age of Pestilence: 1300-1550
Prof. Solomon
M 2:00-5:00

This seminar explores the hygienic, pathological, and epidemiological underpinnings of late medieval and early modern works on love written shortly before the advent of the plague to the outbreak of the syphilis epidemic in the early sixteenth century. We will read literary works such as El libro de buen amor, El Arcipreste de Talavera, Celestina, and La lozana andaluza while investigating medical treatises on love and human sexuality, including the anonymous Speculum al foderi, Arnau de Villanova’s De amore heroico, Nuñez de Coria’s Tratado del uso de la mujer, and Ruy Diáz de Ysla’s Tractado sobre el mal serpentino.

For more information, follow this link to the course website:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/romance/spanish/solomon/film/Media%20Medieval/LoveHome.htm

Spanish 684
Nation, Class, and Self in the Spanish Novel of the Nineteenth Century
Prof. Lopez
W 4:00-6:00

The nineteenth-century novel develops in Spain several decades after it appears in other European countries such as France, Russia, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. Contrary to what happens in these cases, the Spanish novel of this period is not linked to the appearance of a new social reality (e.g., the emergence of the bourgeoisie as a dominant class) nor to the birth of a nationalistic discourse. Historically, it is linked to the 1868 revolutionary process, but most of the major titles appear after 1875--that is, once the revolution had been defeated. In this context the novel unfolds as a critical discourse that seeks to maintain alive the revolutionary ideology once the revolution has failed in its struggle to question power in a national landscape resigned to a slow-paced industrial modernization and characterized by social and ideological conservatism. The purpose of this course is to study the development of the novel as a critical discourse in this context. Concentrating on works by the major authors (including Galdós, Clarín, Alarcón, Pereda, Pardo Bazán), we will study the novel as an alternative and even subversive discourse in the context of the Spanish Restoration.

Spanish 690
The Long 20th-Century in Latin American Literature
Prof. de la Campa
R 3:00-6:00

Latin American literature has arguably played a key role in our understanding of world literature and theoretical frameworks since the beginning of the 20th- Century. This has come from its own historical and critical traditions, which include various strands of modernism, avant-garde, fantastic, Neo-Baroque, transculturation, hybridity and feminist literatures, not to speak of the Latin American inscriptions in better known and much debated concepts such as magic-realism, postmodern and even postcolonial approaches to literary studies. The question now is whether and how these critical notions continue to aide contemporary readers of Latin American literature, or whether they get in the way, thereby also leaving behind the work of many important, if not great artists.  This course will test this question through the work of key literary figures such as Octavio Paz, Clarice Lispector, Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Angel Asturias, Rosario Castellanos and José María Arguedas, among others.  The list aims to establish a comparative framework of cultural traditions and writerly dispositions, in short, to remap a significant register of Latin America’s rich archive of literary discourses.

Spanish 698
Workshop on Scholarly Writing
Prof. Martinez-San Miguel
T 11:30-1:30

In this graduate workshop students will work in developing effective scholarly writing in Hispanic studies. Students will learn how to distinguish between a 25-page term paper, a 10-page conference presentation, a publishable article in a professional journal, a book review, an article for a newspaper, and a dissertation and/or book chapter. The class will address issues such as how to: (1) develop a clear thesis and guide the reader through the internal structure of a paper; (2) conduct a responsible review of existing critical bibliography; (3) balance literary analysis and the use of theory; (4) decide what should be included in the texts and the footnotes of an article or chapter; (5) organize arguments and use appropriate rhetorical strategies. Students will also learn to study the available publishing venues in order to select an appropriate journal or press to submit their work. Course requirements include: readings on editing, writing and publishing, extensive writing exercises followed by intense and multiple redactions of the work originally produced, individual and collaborative editing exercises, and working on a class paper written previously, with a view to learning the process of transforming a term paper or a dissertation chapter into a publishable article. Special attention will be given to scholarly writing in Spanish.