Global Arc

This course surveys the practice of beliefs in Spain, Latin America, and in Hispanic communities in the United States. It explores how "Catholic" folk piety was established and developed in Spain and what happened to it when it transferred to the New World. By surveying the diverse configurations of religious practices through written texts and visual media, it inquires how identity and social relationships define a person's relation to the divine. Emphasis will be given to the development of spoken and written proficiency in Spanish.

Love is the subject of the world's greatest stories. The passions aroused by Helen of Troy brought down a city and made Homer's masterpiece possible, while the foolishness of those in love inspired Shakespeare and Cervantes to create their most memorable characters. Many powerful Latin American and Spanish stories deal with the force and effects of love. In this course, we will study a group of films and literary fictions that focus on different kinds and forms of love. We will pay special attention to the forms of narrative love (quest, courting, adultery, heartbreaking), as well as the translation of love into language, body, and image.

From Artemidorus in antiquity to Freud in modern times, dreams and nightmares have been a perennial human concern. This course will explore political, philosophical, medical and psycho-sexual representations of dreams and nightmares by such authors as Cervantes, Zayas, Calderón, Cela, Martín Gaite, Muñoz Molina, Bolaño, Piglia and Vargas Llosa.

How do we represent meaning to ourselves and to others in contexts of difference? What social and historical conceptions of language are operational in our scriptural practices and cultures of scholarship? Because texts are embedded in, and shaped by, communities with shared histories and social practices, by experiencing different ways of reading and writing, we can explore not only new words, but new worlds. This course offers substantial practice to help students write creatively and credibly in Spanish, using the writing process recursively to present their ideas in an articulate, sophisticated manner.

This course surveys how notions of what is sacred and profane inform the cultures of Latin America, Spain, and Latino communities in the United States. It explores how "Catholic" folk piety was established and developed in Spain, what happened to it when it transferred to its colonies, and its iterations today in Latin America and in the United States. It analyzes discursive and pictorial constructions of holiness and sinfulness, the use of religious symbols for political purposes, performative aspects of religion, sociocentrism, the role of women, and the juncture between piety and violence.

An introduction to 20th century Spanish modern art, this course will study modern artistic languages such as literature, painting, sculpture, film, photography, theatre, music and dance in their historical contexts. It will examine relations between artistic styles and contemporary Iberian history. The course's main objective is to provide students with a set of strong aesthetic, analytical, and linguistic skills, which will provide a great asset in studying 300-level literature and culture courses.

Since 2018 the feminist movement has massively and transnationally re-emerged. Particularly in the Spanish-speaking world, the enormous momentum of its struggle has generated profound political, social, and cultural transformations. In this course we will study the so-called 4th Feminist Wave from a varied number of media (literature, film, social media, archives, etc.) created by artists, intellectuals, and activists from the Spanish-speaking world. The aim of the course is to promote a rigorous knowledge of the recent history of feminism in The Americas and Europe and to encourage reflection on the relevance of its claims and achievements

Anthropologist Sidney Mintz famously explored connections between sugar, capitalism, and modern global history. This course borrows his approach to explore the ways that sugar - with reference to other commodities such as coffee and petroleum - have shaped societies in the Caribbean and Latin America (and, less obviously, Europe, Africa, and Asia). Through short stories, poems, archival documents, essays, novels, films, and art about sugar and its worlds, students will study histories of enslavement and marronage, environmental history, Cold War tensions, modernization, and major literary, filmic and artistic movements.

This course is an introduction to crime fiction from early 20th-century "locked room" mysteries to 21st century narco-narratives. It examines short stories, novels, films and critical writings about detective and crime fiction in Latin America and Spain. Topics include the genre's links to high and low literature, to film and to historical contexts such as immigration, state crime, drug culture and globalization. Authors include Roberto Arlt, María Elvira Bermúdez, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Ricardo Piglia, Fernando Vallejo, and others.

Major developments in Spanish literature and civilization from the Muslim conquest to the 17th century. Beliefs and attitudes underlying the rise of the Spanish empire and the ways in which the interaction (convivencia) of Christians, Jews, and Muslims brought about the cultural differentiation of Spain within the European context. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: 207 or higher, or instructor's permission.