Spring 2008

GRADUATE COURSES IN HISPANIC STUDIES

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

Spanish 590-401
Queer Caribbean
Prof. Mart í nez-San Miguel
W 3:30-6:30

This course will analyze the ways in which Caribbean sexualities get expressed outside or beyond the script of the “coming out” narrative. The uncomfortable location of the Caribbeanvis-à-vis Latin American political, national and cultural paradigms will be discussed using sexuality as a critical intervention. Topics of discussion include the following: “Homosocialidades caribeñas,” “Nacionalismos y sexualidades,” “Against the Closet,” “Más allá de la homonormatividad,” “Diasporas Queer,” “Hom(e)ophobias,” and “Sexualidades no corpóreas o Fenomenologías Queer.” Throughout the course, students will read critical and historical texts on the configuration of queer, sexuality and gender studies in Europe, the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. We will study works by Luisa Capetillo, José Martí, Piri Thomas, Reinaldo Arenas, Achy Obejas, Junot Díaz, Elías Miguel Muñoz, Manuel Ramos Otero, Sonia Rivera Valdés, Rey Emanuel Andújar, Rita Indiana Hernández, Javier Bosco, Antonia Pantoja, Luisita López, and Abilio Estévez. We will also read critical interventions by José Quiroga, Emilio Bejel, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Lázaro Lima, Juana María Rodríguez, Licia Fiol Matta, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Lawrence LaFountain Stokes, Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, and Jossianna Arroyo, among others. The course includes some film clips from Brincando el charco and Before Night Falls, and some blogs on Caribbean sexualities.

Spanish 609-401
Applied Linguistics
Prof. McMahon
W 1-3

Spanish 609 is a course required of all Teaching Assistants in French, Italian, and Spanish in the second semester of their first year of teaching.   It is designed to provide  instructors with the necessary practical support to carry out their teaching responsibilities effectively,  and builds on the practicum meetings held during the first semester.  The course will also introduce students to various approaches to foreign language teaching as well as to current issues in second language acquisition.   Students who have already had a similar course at another institution may be exempted upon consultation with the instructor.

Spanish 640-401
Maurophilia and the Early Modern Construction of Spain
Prof. Fuchs
R 1:30-4:30

This course examines the place of Moorishness in Spain over the long sixteenth-century, from the alleged maurophilia of Enrique IV to the “historiador arábigo” of the Quijote. In order to historicize our reading of literary maurophilia, we will trace the negotiation of Spain’s Andalusi heritage in its material culture—architecture, fashion, chivalric games, and so forth. We will also examine how Spain’s Moorishness is exoticized in its European reception. Readings will include El Abencerraje, the romancero morisco, Las Guerras Civiles de Granada, “Ozmín y Daraja,” Don Quijote.

Spanish 689-401
Essayism and the Question of Everyday Life
Prof. Nadal-Melsió
M 4-7

In this seminar, we will trace the emergence of everyday life as critique. Such a critique operates from the phenomenological, from the quotidian as experiential, that which is in a constant estate of becoming, into the epistemological, that which, if politically charged, can trigger an ontological change—an event, if you will. As we will see, the receptivity of the essay as form is uniquely suited to the task, as it foregrounds a heightened attention to the material (a recognition) that counteracts the alienating potential of philosophical abstraction. Readings will include: Zambrano, Heller, Ors, Lukács, Lefebvre, Heidegger, Unamuno, Badiou.

Spanish 697-401
Narrative and Theory
Prof. Laddaga
T 1:30-4:30

One of the beliefs on which the modern tradition is founded is that intensity should prevail over form. Writer after writer of the period maintains that a truly great text is one that transmits a presence or a force that exceeds the arrangements of language. This general theme has, naturally, been articulated in many different ways. We will explore the way the valorization of intensity (and the chain of figures associated to it) is manifest in modern Latin American narrative, focusing in the work of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Clarice Lispector and Severo Sarduy.

Spanish 698-301
Proseminar Hispanic Studies
Prof. Mart í nez-San Miguel
M 12-2