Span   70100 – History of the Spanish Language

GC:     Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. del Valle, []

(cross-listed with LING 79600)

 

This course traces the external and internal history of Spanish (standard and non-standard dialects as well as contact varieties). The historical frame is wide, spanning from the spread of Latin in the Iberian Peninsula to present-day issues associated with the unity and prestige of Spanish throughout the world. One component of the course will outline the traditional description of the language's history as a linear evolution of forms (phonetic, morphological, syntactic) from Latin to Spanish. A second component will present sociolinguistic and cultural phenomena (bilingualism, diglossia, standardization, language death) relevant to the understanding of the emergence of Spanish as a "language" and of its spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas.

 

Span   71000 – Medieval Epic

GC:     Monday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Di Camillo, []

 

This course will deal the epic poetry of medieval Castile and will focus on those works that have been deemed representative of the genre: the Poema de mio Çid, the Poema de Fernán González as well as the Mocedades de Rodrigo and other fragments of supposedly epic cycles. Aiming at redefining both the genre and the canon, often associated with cantares de gestas and romances, we will begin by reexamining the various theories thus far advanced on medieval epic and then proceed to analyze classical epic material in the Libro de Alexandre and the absence of such material in the works under examination,. In this context, attention will be paid to the chroniclers of the later Middle Ages which are believed to have incorporated many of these epic fragments in their prose narrative. Special emphasis will be given to textual problems, to the transmission of the material text as well as to the organization of the literary text (language, use of rhetoric, techniques of artes poetriae, intended readers, reception etc.).

 

Text to be used in the course: Cantar de mio Çid.  Ed. Alberto Montaner, Barcelona: Crítica; Poema de Fernán González. Ed. Juan Victorio, Madrid: Cátedra; Libro de Alexandre. Ed. Jesús Cañas Murillo, Madrid: Cátedra.

 

Other epic fragments will be distributed in photocopies throughout the course.

 

Span   72300 – Don Quijote

GC:     Thursday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Lerner, []

 

Textual Problems, Critical Practices and the Modern Reception of the Cervantine Novel

 

This course will focus on the transmission of the text of Cervantes Don Quijote in the seventeenth century and in the twentieth century. The question of the relationship between the first and the second parts of the novel will be also examined, as well as the most important semantic and ideological aspects of the text. To study problems of annotation, several modern editions will be analyzed, among them, the best known ones of M. de Riquer, J.J. Allen, L. Murillo, J.B. Avalle-Arce, V. Gaos, F. Sevilla-A. Rey Hazas and Francisco Rico. Critical interpretations of the Quijote will be also considered so as to recast the history of its reception in the twentieth century.

 

Span   76200 – Spanish-American Colonial Literature - Chronicling the Encounter

GC:     Tuesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Chang-Rodríguez, []

 

Chronicling the Encounter

 

The course will study a diverse group of testimonies related to the early contact period and beyond.  Generally grouped under the label “crónicas de Indias,” they will include letters, histories, “relaciones” and chronicles produced  by authors of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity (Las Casas, Cortés, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Guaman Poma de Ayala, Catalina de Erauso). The works will be analyzed from various critical vantage points in order to understand their meaning in the shared culture and history of Europe and the Americas. The discussions will include: 1) how these texts became literature; 2) the polemics about the indigenous population; 3) the shifting positions of the writing subject; 4) the role of the eye-witness; 5) the indigenous perception of the encounter; 6) gender issues. Class discussions will be illustrated with images and communication facilitated through Blackboard. 

 

Span   77600 – Spanish-American Theatre - Latin American Theatre: History, Myth and Fiction

GC:     Wednesday, 6:30-8:30 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Glickman, []

 

Latin American Theatre: History, Myth and Fiction

 

This course will analyze Latin American plays in terms of their historical background, and observe how they deviate from documented records. The plays will be read in relation to their cultural context and in the ways they draw on popular myths  and elaborate them.  We shall observe how these works can reshape historical events and character for artistic purposes.

Bibiography: Authors studied:  Rodolfo Usigli, Vicente Leñero, Jorge Goldenberg, Isaac Chocrón, Sabina Berman, Nora Glickman, Manuel Puig, Ariel Dorfman, Griselda Gambaro.

Más allá del héroe. Antología crítica de teatro histórico latinoamericano. Medellín: Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 2008.

Antología crítica de teatro biográfico. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, 1997.

 

Span   80000 – Seminar: Studies in Spanish Linguistics – Language and Intercultural Communication

GC:     Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Callahan, []

(cross-listed with LING 79500)

 

Language and Intercultural Communication

 

This seminar will focus on the role of language and linguistic behavior in intercultural communication. Using politeness theories as a point of departure, we will examine seminal work in the discipline, case studies of pragmatic variation between various languages, between Spanish and other languages, and across varieties of the same language, as well as issues involving the teaching and learning of intercultural pragmatics. Classes will be conducted in Spanish. Individual class participation and presentations may be in Spanish or English. Written work will be accepted in Spanish, English, Portuguese, or French.

 

Span   82200 – Seminar: Spanish Literature of the Baroque – The Power of the Classics in the Poetry of L. de Góngora

           and F. de Quevedo

GC:     Thursday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Schwartz, []

 

The Power of the Classics in the Poetry of L. de Góngora    and F. de Quevedo

 

The purpose of this seminar will be to “re-historicize” the work of these two masters of the Baroque, so as to get acquainted with forms of production of poetical texts. At the same time, attention will be given to their aesthetics, the “rhetoric of wit”, later explained and codified by B. Gracián in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio. In order to understand their conception of the creative process, a map will be drawn of Greek and Roman authors, whose works were published in new editions in their original languages, and in translations into Spanish, between the end of the fifteenth- and the beginning of the seventeenth-centuries. At the same time, a basic review of the anthologies and manuals used as textbooks in school and university will allow students to perceive innovation in the context of what  had become common knowledge. From this perspective some important works by Góngora will be studied among his sonnets, canciones, romances  and his Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, and Quevedo’s poetic innovations, in particular the neo-classical forms that he adapted into Spanish, the Anacreontic ode, the Greek epigram, the Pindaric ode, Roman elegy and Roman satire. Concepts of criticism such as imitation and specific aspects of Baroque  poetics will be also examined. Modern editions of Góngora’s work will include Dámaso Alonso’s edition of Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, Biruté Ciplijauskaite’s edition of his sonnets in Clásicos Castalia, and José María Micó of his Canciones; for Quevedo’s poetry, see J.M. Blecua’s edition of Poesía original, and  Schwartz’s and Arellano’s ,Un Heráclito cristiano, Canta sola a Lisi y otros poemas Barcelona: Crítica, 1998.  A more complete bibliography of editions and critical studies will be distributed in class.

 

 

Span   87000 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish Literature - Exilios (Sem II)

GC:     Day: TBA, Time: TBA, 2 credits, Prof. Bou, []

(Llull Chair) (mini-course, 20 hours)

 

Exilios (Sem II)

 

In this course we will explore the different notions of exile (inner exile, war, political persecution, etc.) and its representation in literature as experienced while traveling, living in foreign countries, and concentration camps. Readings will include memoirs, film, novels and poems by among others Josep Carner, Agustí Bartra, Max Aub, Juan Goytisolo, J. Amat Piniella, Jaime Camino, Carles Riba.

 

Span   87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature

Historias dos veces contadas: reescritura de la conquista en la nueva novela histórica latinoamericana

GC:     Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Perkowska, []

 

Twice-Told Stories: Rewriting of the Conquest in Latin American New Historical Novel

 

The second part of the 20^th Century witnessed the emergence and flourishing of a new form of historical fiction, dubbed by the critics "new historical novel". Many Spanish American novelists revisit existing accounts of historical events in order to imagine alternative ways and perspectives for emplotment of the past, questioning thus the hegemony of official texts and their versions of history. The authors of new historical novels create a space for reflection and criticism, inviting their readers to participate in the production and reproduction of knowledge of the past. This challenge to the dominant versions of history is paired with innovative narrative techniques and assimilation of discursive proposals launched by so called "new history," which aim at a critical rewriting of narrative strategies of the traditional historical discourse.

The Conquest of America is one of the periods most frequently revisited by Spanish American novelists, who look to reinterpret it from different and/or multiple perspectives and to inscribe its forgotten or silenced participants into the reader's historical consciousness. This course examines representative novels by Alejo Carpentier, Abel Posse, Napoleón Baccino de León, Tatiana Lobo, Rosario Aguilar, and Carmen Boullosa.

Texts: Alejo Carpentier, El arpa y la sombra (1979, Cuba); Abel Posse, El largo atardecer del caminante (1992, Argentina); Napoleón Baccino Ponce de León, Maluco, la novela de los descubridores (1990, Uruguay) Tatiana Lobo, Asalto al paraíso (1992, Costa Rica); Rosario Aguilar, La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies (1992, Nicaragua); Carmen Boullosa, Duerme (1994, México).

 

Span   87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature – Identity and Nation in Contemporary Cuban

        and Puerto Rican Literature

GC:     Wednesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Martinez, []

 

Identity and Nation in Contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican Literature

 

This course will examine significant contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican fiction. Special attention will be given to racial and gender identities as well as the creation of a Caribbean imaginary. Among the writers to be studied are Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Rosario Ferré, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Reinaldo Arenas, and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá. In addition, readings on literary theory will be also required.

 

Span   87100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature

GC:     Monday, 4/19 – Friday, 4/23, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 1 credit, Prof. Elvira Arnoux (Univ. of Buenos Aires)

(Argentine Culture Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

 

 

Span   87200 – Seminar: Special Topics in Hispanic Literature – Intellectuals, Nationalism and Philology: 1868-1914

GC:     Monday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 4 credits, Prof. Alonso, []

 

Getting rid of God and Philology:

 Intellectuals, Historians and Philologists in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Culture and Thought

 

Nietzsche’s provocative assertion that “We are not getting rid of God because we still believe in Grammar”, has finally come to pass, as both God and Philology have already been replaced by a new set of Gods and their respective beliefs. The cycle that began with the promise that Philology, in the words of Ernst Renan, (1848) would awake “ the spirit of modernity” and shield our intellectual practices from arbitrariness  and barbarism  has ended, one hundred and fifty years later, with the widespread conviction that philologists’ methods are at best old fashioned and at worst obsolete, while the knowledge they seek is by definition conservative and alien to today’s political and cultural concerns.  What contemporary critics seem to ignore is that philology, from its very inception, was just the opposite: a way of knowing that introduced a rationalist approach on tradition, and therefore on those classical texts in which men of letters could recognize the traces of their own identity.

Designed from a comparative and theoretical perspective, this course will reexamine how literary knowledge was constituted in nineteenth-century Spain, questioning the representations that nationalist intellectuals, from Menéndez Pelayo to José Ortega y Gasset, had established. Bringing into our analysis the debates over contemporary conceptual and intellectual history, (from Foucault to Bourdieu), we will study the task of nineteenth-century men of letters, the foundation of their literary field, as well as the polemics and controversies of a long awaited Spanish Liberalism: a moment when Linguistics, Philology, Literary History and nationalism became entangled. We will also focus on the constitution of an autonomous cultural space, the canonization of the classical Parnassus, from Epics to Cervantes and Calderón, the invention of the concept of Hispano-American Literature, the rising of regional literatures, the relationship with Portugal and the paradoxes of Iberismo.

Another aim of the course is to introduce a reflexive attitude towards both scientific and spontaneous practices of the men of letters with whom we will be dealing and to seek those reasons that contributed to the current marginalization of traditional literary knowledge.

 

Span   87500 – Seminar: Studies in Galician Literature – Towards a Social History of Galician

GC:     Monday, 3/22 – Friday, 3/26, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 1 credit, Prof. Henrique Monteagudo, []

(Galician Chair) (mini-course, 10 hours)

 

Portuguese

 

Port    73600 – Contemporary Trends in Brazilian Literature

GC:     Tuesday, 4:15-6:15 p.m., 3 credits, Prof. Santos, []

 

COSMOPOLITAN DISCOURSE IN BRAZILIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

 

The course examines Brazilian Literature contextualized in the Latin American Culture. The comparative approach will allow the students to be able to experience similarities and differences between the literary cosmopolitan discourse practiced by Brazilian authors (in original and /or in Spanish or English translations) and Spanish Americans. The theoretical frame will be recent scholarship about cosmopolitanism, especially the literary, political and philosophical readings of the classical concept, such as Santiago’s, Mignolo’s and Derrida’s. Chronologically, the course will be developed through the great cosmopolitan moments of Latin American literature: Conquest (Vespucci), Baroque (Vieira and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz), Fin de Siècle (Nabuco and Sarmiento), Modernism (Graca Aranha and Haroldo de Campos compared with and Roberto Arlt and Octavio Paz) and Postmodernism (Hatoum, and Carvalho compared with Fughet, and Bolaño). To be taught in Spanish.

 

Port    88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Portuguese Literature I

Port    88100 – Seminar: Special Topics in Portuguese Literature I

GC:     Monday, 4/26 – Friday, 4/30, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Rm. TBA, 1 credit, Prof. Hélio Alves (Univ. de Évora), []

(Camoes Chair) (mini-course)