Global Arc

This course studies the intersection between photography and other media in modern Latin American literature, art, and culture. It traces artistic and political uses of the photographic image as a narrative device, a document, a puzzling or deceiving representation of reality, and/or an aesthetic artifact. Among other materials, we will study and analyze art and documentary photography, fiction and non fiction texts, as well as photoessays. Readings and materials include works by Roberto Bolaño, J. L. Borges, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Graciela Iturbide, Ana Mendieta, Oscar Muñoz, Rosangela Renno, and others.

When the name Miguel de Cervantes is mentioned, readers tend to think of the character Don Quijote-his idealism or madness. But beyond that, the book stages daring critiques of ethnicity, race, religion, gender, class, and human nature. Such Cervantine works as the 'Persiles' and the 'Novelas ejemplares', as well as his theater offer equally challenging responses to the hegemonic structures of the Spanish empire. By means of these texts and their historical and philosophical contexts, this course will examine Cervantes' questioning of many of the contested social and political structures in place during the turbulent times in which he lived.

Transnational feminist approaches to globalization, race, sexuality, diaspora and nationalisms from Latinx, Black, and Asian American perspectives. Through different methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches to feminism, we will explore issues of women's and LGBTQIA rights, gender equality, globalization, capitalism, and contemporary debates around race and sexuality.

This course will explore 20th century Spanish history from the 1936 Civil War to the present, paying special attention to Francisco Franco's regime and the 1970's transition to democracy. We will discuss the social, political and cultural implications of memory and history. Dialectics between dictatorship and democracy will be at the center of the discussion. Public remembrance, memorials, social movements, gender, citizenship and neoliberal crisis are among the topics to be addressed, by means of scholarship, documentary films, fiction, art, exhibitions and literature.

This workshop-style course will focus on developing the student's skills in translating short texts from Spanish into English. Each week one or two students will present their translations from a selection of poems and short stories by writers like Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Julio Cortázar, and many others. Students will also read theoretical texts about translation. Several professional translators will visit the class during the semester and present examples from their own work to the class. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of Spanish. One three-hour seminar.

An overview of recent debates about the practice of translation with special emphasis on how these ideas have been applied in translations of literary works by poets, novelists, and thinkers like Octavio Paz, Alfonso Reyes, Jorge Luis Borges, José Lezama Lima, and José Ortega y Gasset. Readings include essays on translation by Walter Benjamin, Vladimir Nabokov, Georges Steiner, and Lawrence Venutti. Students will be asked to translate a literary text from Spanish to English. Prerequisite: 307. One three-hour seminar.

This course focuses on the Spanish museographies: royal collections of objects, books and art, democratic institutions and archives, popular experiences on displaying culture agencies, critic museography and new narratives in contemporary exhibitions. Using different sources (essays, literature, catalogues, artworks, photography, films, audiovisual resources) this class will consider the museum as a relevant cultural device that shapes the social imaginaries and perceptions, in relation with gender, nation-building, the popular, nature, historical memory and democracy.

Havana is famous for its thriving cultural scene. This course will offer an introduction to some of the most dynamic contemporary works in theater, film, dance, performance, visual arts, and literature. Students will attend performances and meet theater and film directors, artists and poets. Each student will conduct an independent research project working closely with one of these authors.

This course will offer a cultural history of how Havana evolved from a sleepy colonial city in 1900 to rising as one of the cultural and architectural capitals of Latin America and the world by the 1950s. We will study the urban development of the early 20th century, the adoption of modernism and International Style in architecture, and the tensions between private enterprise and public projects.

This seminar examines the ethical and historical dimensions of the 2019 Summer Puerto Rican Protests. Developing within an ongoing financial catastrophe and the trauma of Hurricane María, most issues raised today are deeply rooted in the history of U.S. imperial domination since 1898. The course aims to rethink questions of second-class citizenship, colonial capitalism, militarization, ecocide and massive migrations, as well as gender, sexual and racial inequalities. Special focus on how musical, artistic, religious, political, and literary traditions shape memory and resistance in Puerto Rico and in its vast diasporic communities.