Spring 2010

Fall 2009

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NEW COURSES FOR FALL 2009!

Spanish 114S.01  Inventing the Mexican Revolution: From the Novel to the Museum

Laura Cobian

TTH 11:40-12:55  Friedl 216

“Inventing the Mexican Revolution” examines the literary, artistic and historical representations of the revolution (1910-20) in relation to the rise of modern cultural nationalism. The course investigates how the post-revolutionary state (1920-35) reinvents the story of the Mexican Revolution illuminating how memory, art, politics and national identity are shaped by its mythification. The course develops theoretical and historical perspectives to help understand why and how the revolution was mechanically represented, from foundational novels to the present day Mexican National Museum of Archeology. 

The course approaches these issues in the context of the post-revolutionary period, using literary texts alongside readings concerning muralism, photography, archaeology and museology from 1915 to the present. These works will highlight how national culture is narrated and collected with careful attention to the role museums play in developing discourses on national identity. Special consideration will be spent analyzing the discursive intersections between the novel’s literary language and the fluidity of the museum’s non-written expression. The course will additionally introduce methods for approaching the museum, as institution and text, as a primary source in research. 

Spanish 142S.01  Teatro Latinamericano: Laboratorio de Utopias

Professor Leslie Damasceno

MW 2:50-4:05 Perkins 2-070

“Inventing the Mexican Revolution” examines the literary, artistic and historical representations of the revolution (1910-20) in relation to the rise of modern cultural nationalism. The course investigates how the post-revolutionary state (1920-35) reinvents the story of the Mexican Revolution illuminating how memory, art, politics and national identity are shaped by its mythification. The course develops theoretical and historical perspectives to help understand why and how the revolution was mechanically represented, from foundational novels to the present day Mexican National Museum of Archeology. 

The course approaches these issues in the context of the post-revolutionary period, using literary texts alongside readings concerning muralism, photography, archaeology and museology from 1915 to the present. These works will highlight how national culture is narrated and collected with careful attention to the role museums play in developing discourses on national identity. Special consideration will be spent analyzing the discursive intersections between the novel’s literary language and the fluidity of the museum’s non-written expression. The course will additionally introduce methods for approaching the museum, as institution and text, as a primary source in research. 

Spanish 142S.04  Spain and Islam: Five Centuries of National Polemics (15th to 21st Centuries)

Visiting Professor Emilie Picherot

MTWTH:  10:05-11:20  Languages 305

Spain is still famous as the land of the "three cultures," and the massive presence of vestiges of Islamic civilization in its monuments and culture still distinguishes it from other countries. Indeed, Islam left deep roots in Spain after eight centuries of presence in the peninsula. But since 1492 (the end of the Muslim kingdom of Granada) and especially since 1609 (the expulsion of the Muslims who had converted to Christianity, known as Moriscos), Spain constructed its identity against Islam, as a Catholic kingdom. What are the cultural bases of the national identity in Spain?

How, in the 21st century, while immigrants from Maghreb are entering Spain in great numbers, can we understand this strong link between the two banks of the Mediterranean? Examining different kind of texts (literary texts, extracts from Inquisicin trials, memories, articles and films), we will see how this deep and complex relationship develops from the 15th century to the twenty-first.

This course is an intensive 6 week course, commencing Aug 24 through Oct 2nd.  One Course Credit.

Spanish 152D Women Writers of the Renaissance: Spain and England

Professor Meg Greer and Maureen Quilligan

TTH 2:50-4:05  Perkins 2-060 and Soc Sci 124

Readings in the work of major women writers of the Spanish and English Renaissance:  Zayas, Wroth, Navarre and their literary contexts, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Sidney.  Course includes in-depth examination

of ideals and conflicts of English and Spanish culture, as well as consideration of the intersection in their writing between Christian (Protestant and Catholic) and Muslim civilizations.  Lecture in English and Discussions in Spanish and English.

Spanish 181S.03  The Hispanic Challenge and the Rise of 'Latinidad' in the U.S.

Professor Walter Mignolo

MW 1:15-2:30  Friedl 118

The election of Barack Obama as President of the US put upon us the responsibility to rethinking,

remapping and remaking what in 1995 US historian David Hollinger described as “The ethno-racial

pentagon.”  Certainly “reality” did not change in sixth months. What is changing are the terms of the conversation.  This seminar examines the conditions under which Hispanic/Latinos/as label came into being, the present configurations of “ethnic existence” and what are the possible futures for Latino/as communities in the US as well as of their impact in higher education?  But above all, it explores the risk and responsibilities that “all of us” have in building a future economically democratic society beyond discrimination and injustice.

In 2005 noted Harvard political scientist, Sammuel Huntington, published an influential article, "The Hispanic Challenge" that then became part of his book, Who Are We?  What constitute the Hispanic Challenges? Why the challenge for Huntington was Hispanic and not Latin(o/a). What is the challenge: former attorney General Alberto González; migrant workers; the uprising of April and May of 2006? And for whom the challenge is a challenge? The transformation of knowledge and understanding of ourselves and the society we are living in, that Hispanics, Afro-Caribbean, Native Americans, Women of Color, Asian-Americans, Muslim communities and intellectuals, etc., are introducing?

The seminar you are engaging in is an attempt to introduce you to understanding of the historical foundation of racism (and its relationship with knowledge, politics, economy and ethics) through the emergence of Hispanics and Latinas in the US in the 1970's. Who is Latino/a or what is Latinidad; that is the question. Indeed, where are Hispanics or Latinas coming from? And what is the meaning of Latinidad say, next to Anglicidad or Africanidad?  How do they fit into the ethno-racial pentagon (White, Native Americans, Afro-Americans and Asian Americans?). And what are the connections between the ethno-racial pentagon in the US and globalization? Where, indeed, is Latinidad coming from since Latinos/as are not a “race”? Is Latinidad understood and defined in contradistinction with Anglicidad? And what about religion--are Latinas Catholic and Anglo Protestant? Why we do not have programs of Anglo-Studies as we have programs of Latino/as, Afro-American, Native Americans, Muslim, etc., studies? Who is “studying” whom and what and what for? The seminar explores, also, the interconnections between identity, knowledge and politics, distinguishing identity politics from identity IN politics.

Spanish 200S.01  Miguel de Cervantes and Maria de Zayas: Tale-Telloers of Love, Madness and Death.

Professor Meg Greer

Wed 4:25-6:55  Perkins2-060

What makes a (love) story "exemplary"?   Passionate romance?  Model courtship? A cautionary tale?  Stylistic craft?  Cervantes entitled his collection of novellas Novelas ejemplares and said he would cut off the hand with which he wrote them if anyone found a bad example in them.  Not all his critics agreed that stories including rape, thievery, madness, witchcraft and talking dogs, along with love, were exemplary.  Yet his novellas were as path-breaking in their way as Don Quixote, and as popular and influential.

María de Zayas y Sotomayor, following soon after Cervantes, wrote two volumes of equally page-turning stories from an early modern woman's perspective.  She too called her stories "exemplary" - Novelas ejemplares y amorosas in the first volume, and had male and female narrators take turns telling love stories from their gendered perspective.  But she called the second set Desengaños amorosos and filled that volume with hair-raising images of cruelty to--and sometimes by--women.

We will read Cervantes' and Zayas's stories (about 2 novellas a week for undergraduates, more for graduate students) and compare them with selected examples from influential Italian and French tale-tellers Boccaccio, Bandello and Marguerite de Navarre (these last in English translation).  We will all consider their relationship to the historical context, as Spain moved from ruling the first global empire to painful awareness of its decline.  Graduate students will take the lead in bringing a variety of critical theories (eg., cultural materialism, narratology, feminism, psychoanalytic theory) and  to our discussions. 

Spanish 200S.02  Narrative and Identity in Contemporary Hispanic Caribbean

Professor Richard Rosa

TH: 4:25-6:55  Languages 305

During the last two decades several important events have influenced the discursive and cultural constructs that were current in the Hispanic Caribbean. These events and the narratives woven around them have: put in question traditional notions of race, gender, and sexuality in the region; redrawn the imaginary boundaries of the nations and their linguistic media; and challenged the relationship between them and the U. S. government amid the collapse of communism in Cuba, the collapse of colonial capitalism in Puerto Rico, and the dubious outcome of the neoliberal experiment in the Dominican Republic. Taking as our point of departure the media tic articulation of these events (for example, the case of Elián González in Cuba, the struggle against the U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and the defeat of José F. Peña Gómez in the Dominican Republic) we will examine the incorporation of the region into the new economy during the 1990s and the emergence of a ‘culture of spectacle’ linked to global tourism; we will also explore how Caribbean intellectuals reconceptualize the relationship between event and identity during the 1990s and 2000s. Readings include Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Junot Díaz, Mayra Santos, Rita Indiana Hernández, among others.