Global Arc

An introduction to the study and practice of translation, this course provides students with an awareness of the complex tasks involved in translating written materials from one cultural context to another. The cultural encounter between the Hispanic and the Anglo-Saxon will be explored through the translation of increasingly difficult texts--newspaper articles, interviews, economic reports, and scientific articles. Through the examination of the students' own translations, the course will study the process of cultural exchange between Spanish and English. Prerequisite: 307. One three-hour seminar.

A four-week intensive summer language course taught in Toledo, Spain. This course examines in detail the work of six masters of Spanish painting (El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Picasso, Dalí y Miró) in the social, historical and artistic context in which they worked. The course has two integrated components. The first focuses on discussions of the paintings themselves; the second offers complementary information about social and cultural issues, while also providing support and feedback for the writing assignments of the first component. Visits to artistic sites in Toledo and the El Prado museum will be an important part of the course.

A survey of the major forms of Spanish drama of the Golden Age, including plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón. Emphasis on the development of the theater in relation to the rise of the absolutist state, the Counter-Reformation, and the impact of the Inquisition on Spanish society. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course. Two 90-minute classes.

Bodies of evidence, bodies of knowledge, the body politic, bodies-inviolate to mutilated, saintly to criminal-are figured in Medieval and Early Modern literature and objects in ways that reveal not only cultural paradigms, myths, and obsessions, but also some widely divergent realities. Notions of the body and its cultural inscription involve the history of marginal social groups, the history of the senses, of sexuality and gender. The relations between bodily and cognitive systems will form the basis for our analyses and discussions of such texts and authors.

The course will explore the relationship between literature and politics since the 19th century, starting from the processes of independence led by intellectuals who based their ideas on the French illustration to the U.S. Constitution of 1776. Those ideas defined the new Latin American nations. However, dictatorships dominated above the laws. This contradiction gives oppression and misery a decisive weight in literary creation and the figure of the dictator emerges as the dominant character in the 20th century novels. The seminar will be taught by internationally acclaimed writer Sergio Ramírez, former vice president of Nicaragua.

The Caribbean has been at the center of modernity and globalization since the 15th century, when European, African, and Asian migrants joined indigenous inhabitants in a violent crucible that produced new cultures, landscapes, rhythms, and political imaginations. This course begins with classic reflections on the Caribbean before centering on recent literature and art from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Recent works address issues such as debt, migration, climate change, gender, music, and the afterlives of slavery in the region.

Topics may include the literature of non-Castilian cultures in the Peninsula; the nonconformist drama of Galdós, Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, and García Lorca; the artist against the state (poets, essayists, and novelists under the Franco regime); the commitments of the avant-garde. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or instructor's permission.

Major cinematic movements in Latin America and/or Spain: their influence and their relationship to literary and cultural issues. Possible topics include: the art of adaptation of narrative to film or Spanish surrealism. Two 90-minute seminars. Prerequisite: 207 or instructor's permission.

The development of the novel and short story, as art forms, from 19th-century realism to the avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s. An analysis of literary problems and their historical background, drawing on the works of Galdós, Clarín, Unamuno, Baroja, Valle-Inclán, Miró, and others. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or equivalent.

Special attention to its European context. Course may focus on a few important essayists (such as Ortega, Unamuno, d'Ors, and Zambrano) or may trace the development of an influential idea (such as the function of art, the individual and the masses) or map the characteristics of a certain period. One three-hour seminar. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or equivalent.