Global Arc

The junior seminar discusses major challenges to the study of culture, literature and society in Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries. Focusing on text and audiovisual materials, students will acquire methodological tools to develop their own independent research projects. Topics may include: identity, memory, democracy, visual arts, health, race, gender, migration, global cities, sustainability, climate change, citizenship, and digital humanities. It is co-taught in English, with sources in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Students are welcome to use any of the three languages in their written work.

Major themes, forms, and techniques in Latin American novels and short stories. Close analysis of texts by Borges, Rulfo, García Márquez, Bolaño, Vallejo, and others. Consideration will be given to historical contexts and contemporary ideological currents. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or instructor's permission.

An introduction to the major poets and poetic trends in modern Latin America and the Caribbean, with emphasis on Martí, Darío, Huidobro, Vallejo, Mistral, Neruda, Palés Matos, Borges, and Saer. Special attention also to the rich oral traditions represented by popular genres such as boleros, tango, nueva canción and rock, and particularly the work of Silvio Rodríguez, Violeta Parra, Rubén Blades, Tite Curet Alonso, and Charly García available in audio recordings or videos. Two 90-minute seminars. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or equivalent.

Early Modern Spain exhibits a variety of fascinating obsessions and addictions resulting from extreme and rapid political, social, and economic changes. Addiction to sex crimes, to transgendering and tobacco offer some of the most spectacular accounts of the period. The advent of mass culture produced by print technology, tabloid journalism, and public theaters leads to the rise of the "vulgo" which the elite seek to control and condemn. The obsessive focus on money (both for "pícaros" and "indianos") as well as attempts at social engineering by the would-be problem-solving "arbitristas" and inquisitors all make for compelling reading.

Studies a variety of texts (poetry, comedia, mystery play, letters) written by the most celebrated female Hispanic writer of the seventeenth century, widely considered to be the first feminist of the American hemisphere. Discussions include: rhetoric and feminism; Sor Juana's literary forbearers; freedom and repression in the convent; correspondence with other writers in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru; performances of gender and sexuality in colonial Mexico. Sessions to view and analyze first editions of Sor Juana's works of the Legaspi collection will be held at the Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone.

This course focuses on the Prado Museum in Madrid as a central institution to understand Spanish art and culture. Using different sources (paintings, literature, documentary films, audiovisual resources, essays), this class will offer a virtual tour to one of the most important art institutions worldwide. The course will consider topics such as gender, nation-building, the popular, nature, historical memory and democracy, in relation to art and exhibitions. It offers a general overview of Spanish history since 1819 to present day.

In 2012, the Reina Sofia Museum presented the exhibition "Losing the Human Form," featured works from the 1980s in Latin America that focused on the violence against bodies, and the radical responses of artists who based their work on liberty and transformation. This seminar takes the problems posited by the show as a point of departure for thinking about unmaking the body as a central function of modern and contemporary visual culture. Cognizant of the violence of 20th century Latin America, it places emphasis on the dictatorships of the Southern Cone, Colombia, Mexico, and cases in Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.

An overview of Latin American literary masterpieces in the twentieth century. We will focus on the period of the Latin American boom in the 1960s, and discuss how novelists responded to political events in the region that include: the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, the Central American wars, the military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, etc. Authors studied will include: Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriela Mistral, Juan Rulfo, Pablo Neruda, Reinaldo Arenas, Julio Cortázar.

Why has DQ been construed in such disparate ways as: a book about good and bad reading, a funny book that mocks the medieval world view, a book about the impact of the printing press, a satire of the New World conquistadors, a study of deviant social behavior, the nature of madness, or a meditation on human sexuality and aging? In answering these questions we will consider the cultural models Cervantes rethinks: from chivalric adventure to the criminality of the picaresque, the humanist dialogue, the politics of empire, and the Inquisition. DQ offers an anatomy of such cultural icons as well as a programmatic interrogation of their effects.

Why write or read novels in the age of hyper-information and immediacy? What can the novel tell us about the present and its conflicts? In this course, we will reflect on different forms of present-day violence through the quiet and careful reading of 5 novels by young Spanish writers. The course will facilitate interaction and collaboration with students at Northwestern University, and during April students from both universities will participate in a virtual encounter with some of the authors, as well as in an online workshop.