GRADUATE COURSES IN SPANISH

Fall 2008

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

Spanish 681
20 th Century Poetry
Prof. Lόpez
(See Timetables for time)

A study of the poetry in Spain during the twentieth century. We will start the course exploring the transformations ushered in by Juan Ramón Jiménez’s and the changes he introduces in the nineteenth-century canon. We will continue with a study of some of the main figures of the Generation of 27 (Guillén, Lorca, Aleixandre) as well as the reaction against the avantgarde announced in the years prior to the civil war (Hernández). We will conclude with a study of post-war poetry including a) social poetry, b) the "medio siglo", c) the "novísimos," and d) "poesía de la experiencia". Oral report(s), class discussions and a research paper will decide final grade.

Spanish 682
Literary Theory
Prof. De la Campa
(See Timetables for time)

Contemporary Issues in Critical Theory, Literary & Cultural Studies

This course will focus on leading critical issues pertaining to literary and cultural studies today. The initial emphasis will be on clarifying conceptual paradigms as much as possible, outlining their historical evolvement in the 20th Century first, then their spheres of dissemination and contradiction, and finally looking at the ways they can be deployed in analyzing literary and cultural texts (short stories, novels, poems, films, videos, music or other forms). The list of issues and questions will include the following:

Textual Revolution since Romanticism: How does the concept of modern literature unfold through the legacy of textual critiques that derive from Sausurean, formalist, Frankfurt School, reception theory, close reading, structuralist, semiotics, and post-structuralist modes of reading and understanding?

Postmodern, Postcolonial and Subaltern proposals of the past twenty years: Do they offer new points of departure for literary and cultural studies or just a graduate school version of multicultural pluralism? Are the profound differences between the British and Hispanic legacies of colonialism in the Americas highlighted or erased through these discourses? What are the claims of diasporic, post-nationalist and post-humanist forms of writing and reading? What role does feminism play in them?

Culture and New citizenry: Are contemporary subjects susceptible to a powerful aesthetic pull which post-humanistic theories fail to address? Is there such a thing as an aesthetic of globalization? Can it be studied critically? Does literature play a role in it? Do theorists such as Badiou, Agamben, Virno, Negri and Deleuze bring us past the linguistic turn and the various posts it has imbued?

Performativity: A look at various notions surrounding this general trope; specifically how it impacts modes of writing and reading, as well as the idea of creativity, autobiography and culture brokering prevalent in the pull towards techno-mediatic globalization and cultural studies. What is the work of literature in this sphere?

Mappings and Periodization: How do such notions as Black Atlantic, Cosmopolitanism, Coloniality, Transatlantic, New Republic of Letters, New Ethnic Constructions, Queer Theory, among others, address the current moment of disciplinary work?

The final list of writers, critics and theorists is still in progress. It will constitute a selection of creative writers and sell as theorists. Some likely entries are: Jorge Luis Borges, Damiela Eltit, Roberto Bolaño, Clarice Lispector, Severo Sarduy, J. Ranciere, Antonio Negri, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, Paul de Man, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, J. Derrida, R. Barthes, A. Badiou, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Nelly Richard, G. Deleuze, Clarice Lispector, Fredric Jameson, Richard Rodriguez.

This course will be taught in English.

Spanish 689
Cinema 68: Film, Crisis, and Transition in Spain and Mexico (1960-1985)
Prof. Solomon
(See Timetables for time)

The objective of this course is to examine the remarkable cinematic production in Spain and Mexico during the decade following the 1968 massacre at Tlectoloco in Mexico City and during the waning days and subsequent death of Francisco Franco in Spain.  We will compare these two national traditions against a broad overview of European and Latin American cinema during the 1960’s, including French Nouvelle Vague, British Free Cinema, and Brazilian Cinema Novo.   Given that a major concern of filmmakers during the 1960’s and 1970’s was the relation between film and indexical realism, we will discuss works by classical film theorists such as Kracauer, Bazin, Eisenstein, Epstein and Dulac as well as more recent works by Gunning, Doane, and Mulvey.  Required screenings include: from Spain, La caza (Carlos Saura 1966), Furtivos (Borau 1975), El espíritu de la colmena (Erice 1973), Diatrambo (Suarez 1968), Fata morgana (Aranda 1965), La campana del infierno (Guerín 1973); from Mexico, Canoa (Cazals 1976), El lugar sin límites (Ripstein 1978), La pasión según Berenice (Hermosillo 1976),and  Alucarda, hija de las tiniebas (López 1978).  Secondary required screenings include, Los olvidados (Buñuel 1950), Sang des bêtes (Franju 1949), À bout de souffle (Godard 1960), Battaglia di Algeri (Pontecorvo 1966), and  Tire die (Birri 1960).  

The syllabus and corresponding readings and screenings will be coordinated with lectures by visiting faculty member, Carlos Monsivais, and with related events at the International House such as a Glauber Rocha retrospective and screenings of Death of a Cyclist (Antonio Bardem 1955) and La hora de los hornos (Getina y Solanas 1968).

Spanish 690
Modernismo y Fin de siglio
Prof. Salessi
(See Timetables for time)

By looking at the prose and poetry of Julián del Casal, José A. Silva, Rubén Darío and Enrique Rodó, but also taking into account the works of minor figures that greatly contributed to the popularization of the movement, the course proposes to study the so called “Modernismo Latinoamericano” not so much as a literary practice but more as an instrument of continental definition in a tense and problematic relationship with contemporary European writing. We will explore the system of manipulation and cultural appropriation practiced in Latin America at the same time of its incorporation to the global interconnectedness of the liberal economy. We will pay especial attention to the Hispanoamerican enunciation of turn-of-the-century themes such as literature and cosmopolitanism, museums, interiors, sexuality, gender and women in the job market or as object d’art, the writer as collector and arbiter elegantiarum, degeneration, decadence and regeneration, politics and dandysm.