GRADUATE COURSES IN SPANISH

SPRING 2006

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

Spanish 600
History of the Spanish Language
Prof. Esposito
M 2-5

This course will explore three main issues:
(1) The external history of the Spanish language: How do linguists read history? What cultural and historical events are important for the development of the Spanish language? As linguistic historians, we shall follow a canonical chronology that will examine pre-Roman influences, Iberian Latinities, the linguistic fragmentation of the Peninsula, medieval attempts at standardization, the rise of the Academy, and the linguistic revival of the Autonomías. As critical readers, we shall interpret these linguistic cultures in light of their foundational ideologies and how they contribute towards the creation of a national philological imaginary.
(2) The internal history of the Spanish language: How did Latin become Spanish? Can the purported cause of a sound change be innocent and free of ideological meaning? What features make Spanish unique in comparison to the other Iberian languages? To what end do we make such claims of uniqueness?
(3) Reading Old Spanish texts.

Spanish 650
Cervantes, Genre, and History
Prof. Fuchs
T 2-5

This course will introduce Cervantes' remarkably broad literary production across a variety of Renaissance genres, as well as some important predecessors, and examine the ideological valences of genre in the period. How does genre serve to interrogate both national and literary histories? How does Cervantes construct his own authority in relation to preexisting genres? Readings will include Heliodorus, Ariosto, and Tasso, as well as Cervantes' own  Galatea, Don Quijote, Novelas ejemplares, the Persiles, and the drama.

Spanish 689
The Spanish Labyrinth: Essayism and Nationhood, 1898-1980
Prof. Nadal Melsió
R 4-7

Taking our cue from Rubert de Ventós' El laberinto de la hispanidad, we will study the role essays have played in both articulating and dismantling the traumatized national identities of contemporary Spain. After a bout of melancholy and mourning, Montaigne had inaugurated the essay as a genre in an attempt to work through (painful) emotions with a dose of rational thought. The fairly abstract ways in which contemporary Spanish essayists have chosen to delve into a repressed national memory echoes the genre's beginnings. Like Montaigne's "I," the nation scrutinized in the essay soon proves to be chimerical, a changing and untraceable reality or a repressed monster, a short-lived opinion or a cruel and abstract law. In short: where the self was, there shall the nation be. Readings will include Eugeni d'Ors, Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Zambrano, Sánchez Ferlosio, de Ventós, García Calvo, and Azúa among others.

Spanish 697
Las artes en Latinoamérica en una época de globalización
Prof. Laddaga
W 2-5

The objective of this course is to provide an introduction to the problematics of artistic and literary production in Latin America in the last two decades. This period has been at the same time a period of social crisis and of continual cultural and artistic innovation. Many of the most characteristic productions of the period are transdisciplinary and some of the groups that produce them are transnational; analyzing them demands using conceptual and methodological frameworks different to the ones we are more familiar with. The seminar will introduce to these concepts and frameworks. Together with a bibliography on the characteristics of globalization processes and their impact in the region, we will analyze a wide selection of fictions, films, works of visual art, performances and pieces for digital media.