GRADUATE COURSES IN SPANISH

Spring 2009

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

Spanish 609
Language Teaching and Learning
Prof. McMahon
(See Roster for time)

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 648
Cervantes, Genre, and History
Prof. Fuchs
(See Roster for time)

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 687
The Spanish Connection
Prof. Fuchs
(See Roster for time)

This seminar will examine the place of Spain in early modern English culture. The premise is that to make sense of England's strategies of self-definition and self-representation in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth century we must, paradoxically, turn to Spain. For despite the differences created by the Reformation, English incursions in the New World, and the conflicts in Ireland and the Netherlands, England remained, both culturally and politically, in Spain's debt. In a period that begins with the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon, and that briefly rehearses the dynastic allegiance at mid-century, when Mary Tudor marries Philip II (and, again, as farce, with the attempted "Spanish marriage" of Charles I), the two nations remained closely linked by literary and imperial preoccupations and by England's insistent imitation of Spain's primacy. Topics will include the role of Spain as imperial and cultural model, the production and dissemination of the Black Legend, and the creation of an English literary canon from Spanish materials. The goal will be to move beyond the Armada moment, with its emphasis on conflict, to the multiple and productive connections that characterize the period, particularly in terms of English literary nationalism. Readings will range from pamphlets and travel narratives to translations of Spanish originals to Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

Spanish 690
Literature and Art in the Age of Globalization
Prof. Laddaga
(See Roster for time)

Which conceptual and methological resources do we need to describe the main transformations in the arts in the last three decades (in an age of globalization)? The course will attempt to provide some possible answers to this question through the consideration of a series of artistic tendencies of these years: the expansion of a writing of the self; the interest in forms of collaborative production; the exploration of new technologies. We will analyze books by, among others, César Aira, Nicola Barker, and Emmanuel Carrere, films by Lars von Trier, Gus van Sant, and Lucrecia Martel, and artworks by Gabriel Orozco, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Pierre Huyghe.

Spanish 697
Critical Race Studies and the Iberian Atlantic
Prof. Hill
(See Roster for time)

This course is an introduction to critical race studies in which we will apply critical theory on race to a transatlantic corpus of Spanish-language texts that range from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and from poetry to drama, sermon, and essay. Authors of primary texts include Bartolomé de las Casas, José de Acosta, Garcilaso el Inca, Francisco Dávila, Benito Feijoo, José Gumilla, Luis Peguero, and Manuel Ascensio Segura. Requirements: a review (1000 words) of a book on colonial literature published in the last three years; a 15-minute in-class discussion starter (response to assigned theoretical piece or primary text); mid-semester précis of research project with annotated bibliography; research project final paper (25 pp.). Discussions in English.