Results for ILAC

Short stories, poetry, and theater. What analytical tools do the "grammars" of different genres call for? What contact zones exist between these genres? How have ideologies, the power of patronage, and shifting poetics shaped their production over time? Authors may include Arrabal, Borges, Cortázar, Cernuda,García Márquez, Lorca, Neruda, Rivas. Taught in Spanish.

Part of the Gateways to the World program, this is an introductory course for all things Latin American: culture, history, literature, and current events. By combining lecture and seminar formats, the class prepares you for all subsequent research on, and learning about, the region. Comparative discussion of independence movements in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, the Andean Region, Brazil, and the Southern Cone. Other topics vary yearly, including: representations of ethnicity and class, the Cold War, popular culture, as well as major thinkers and writers. Open to all. Recommended for students who want to study abroad in Santiago, Chile. Required for majors in Spanish or Iberian and Latin American Cultures (ILAC). In Spanish.

How does the criterion for the division between the human and the animal take part on contemporary Latin American narrative? To what extent is this divide challenged or contested? The course combines a discussion of the literary works of authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Horacio Quiroga, Julio Cortázar, Mario Bellatin, Clarice Lispector, and José María Arguedas with a reflection on the animal and animality in the writings of Bataille, Derrida and Deleuze. Taught in English.

This course examines different expressions of self-portrayal in Latin America from 1920s to the present. The course explores different models of self-shaping and forms of expression that draw contourns on self and identity in Latin America. After a brief consideration of the Inca Garcilaso, Sor Juana, J.F. Sarmiento, we examine the works of José Vasconcelos, Norah Lange, Victoria Ocampo, Frida Kahlo, José María Arguedas, Rosario Castellanos, Mario Bellatin, Tununa Mercado, Marcela Trujillo, Fernando Vallejo, among others. Taught in Spanish; Spanish proficiency required.

Survey on modern Iberian literatures (Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician and Portuguese) through major canonical authors. Community building, tolerance, the ethics of memory, the value of human purpose as a tool for survival are some of the issues explores in key works by Eca de Queiros, Miguel de Unamuno, García Lorca, Fernando Pessoa, Antonio Machado, Mercé Rodoreda, Maria Angels Anglada, Ramón Sainzarbitoria and Manuel Rivas. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisites: SPANLANG 13 or equivalent, SPANLANG 102 Recommended.

Survey of literature in Spanish from the early modern period. Course will draw on transatlantic literature. Taught in Spanish; prerequisite: SPANLANG 13 or equivalent.

The manners in which a country is perceived and defines itself is a result of many complex forces, and involves the reproduction of social relations and complex social constructions both on the part of those who live there and those who see it from a distance. The perceptions of what Brazil is and what defines the country has changed throughout times, but has conserved some clear pervasive defining traits. This course is an introduction to the history, culture, politics and artistic production of Brazil as seen through feature films, documentaries and some complementary readings. Movies include, among others, Banana is my Business, Black Orpheus, Olga, They Don't Use Black-Tie, City of God, Central Station, Gaijin, and Four Days in September-among others. In English.

Open only to students in the department, or by consent of instructor.

Analysis of the Argentine author's literary renditions of philosophical ideas. Topics may include: time, free will, infinitude, authorship and self, nominalism vs. realism, empiricism vs. idealism, skepticism, peripheral modernities, postmodernism, and Eastern thought. Close reading of short stories, poems, and essays from Labyrinths paired with selections by authors such as Augustine, Berkeley, James, and Lao Tzu. The course will be conducted in English; Spanish originals will be available. Satisfies the capstone seminar requirement for the major in Philosophy and Literature.

Who is a terrorist and who is a revolutionary? With surge of Anarchism in the XXth Century, the "culture of fear" has been one of the axes of political activism. This course will explore the difference between the desire to correct injustice in society (Revolution) and the desire to destroy society (Terrorism) using literary texts and films. Readings will include novels and testimonies of the protagonists in various social struggles, as well as journalistic and academic papers about these social movements.

Examines a diverse set of narratives by U.S. Latin@s of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Dominican heritage through the lens of latinidad. All share the historical experience of Spanish colonization and U.S. imperialism, yet their im/migration patterns differ, affecting social, cultural, and political trajectories in the US and relationships to "home" and "homeland," nation, diaspora, history, and memory. Explores how racialization informs genders as well as sexualities. Emphasis on textual analysis. Taught in English.

Examination of cultural representations by U.S. Latin@s that explore the following questions: How is the mutual constitution of race/sex/class/gender theorized and represented? How is desire racialized? How is racial difference produced through sex acts and what is the function of sex in racial (self)formation? How to reconcile pleasure and desire with histories of imperialism and (neo)colonialism and other structures of power? How do these texts reinforce or contest stereotypes and the "ideal" bodies of national identity? How do these texts produce queerness as a web of social relations?

Open to department advanced undergraduates or graduate students by consent of professor. May be repeated for credit.

This course enables students to develop the writing skills necessary in their academic careers. Course topics include writing in the discipline, critiques, and literature reviews.May be repeat for credit.

Who is a terrorist and who is a revolutionary? With surge of Anarchism in the XXth Century, the "culture of fear" has been one of the axes of political activism. This course will explore the difference between the desire to correct injustice in society (Revolution) and the desire to destroy society (Terrorism) using literary texts and films. Readings will include novels and testimonies of the protagonists in various social struggles, as well as journalistic and academic papers about these social movements.

Examines a diverse set of narratives by U.S. Latin@s of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Dominican heritage through the lens of latinidad. All share the historical experience of Spanish colonization and U.S. imperialism, yet their im/migration patterns differ, affecting social, cultural, and political trajectories in the US and relationships to "home" and "homeland," nation, diaspora, history, and memory. Explores how racialization informs genders as well as sexualities. Emphasis on textual analysis. Taught in English.

For Spanish and Portuguese department graduate students only. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Barcelona is a well known literary topic, but Catalan literature has also documented other areas of its geography, like the Pyrenees, the Ebro valley, the Balearic Islands ... It is interesting to note that two of the most notable international successes in recent years, Maria Barbal and Jaume Cabré, write specifically about rural areas. The course aims to trace the construction of literary cartography of Catalonia in the postwar literature. At the same time, however, we will try to understand why some authors have abandoned urban areas to establish their stories in marginal places, indefinite and forgotten. This tendency is not characteristic only for the Catalan literature, but it is also visible in the contemporary literature in general. Taught in Spanish; most readings available in English.

Franz Kafka's concept of "small literature" is still very useful to understand literary productivity in conflict areas in Europe. Catalonia is always seen as a country that has yet to find its place in Spain. Its uniqueness, however, when compared with other "peripheral" areas, especially with the cultures of Central Europe, is not an exception, but part of a general pattern. In literary terms, the margins of Europe are not invisible: from this perspective it is possible to understand the rich literary heritage of this continent. The course aims to compare the Catalan with other European peripheries through paired readings of Catalan and various European texts from different linguistic traditions, such as the German, the Italian, the Greek, the Czech and the Swedish (Bernhard, Lampedusa, Cavafy, Kundera, Enquist). Taught in Spanish; most readings available in English.