Global Arc

Poetry, prose, and drama of the Golden Age. Readings might include the works of authors such as Garcilaso, Saint Theresa, Saint John of the Cross, Góngora, Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and Calderón. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or instructor's permission.

Key literary works are analyzed in relation to main cultural, political, and social currents in Spain in the last three centuries. The course combines analysis of specific texts with a panoramic view of the complex articulation of cultural forces that have led to the present configuration of contemporary Spain. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: a 200-level Spanish course or instructor's permission.

This course is connected with the Latino Link volunteer program, which brings together Princeton University students and Latino/a youth attending public schools in the Princeton area. This course will enrich the volunteering students' experiences with readings, discussions, ethnographic projects, and visits from experts and members of the community, with the purpose of reflecting critically on Latino communities and Spanish language in the United States. The course will also provide intensive language practice inside and outside the classroom.

An advanced language course which develops and reinforces accuracy and fluency in both writing and speaking Spanish. Students will learn to identify linguistic features that characterize different genres, as well as social and cultural factors that aid in the interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of speech. The course also aims at providing the tools for discourse analysis, raising awareness of the social and ideological values that permeate discursive practices, and developing autonomy and proficiency as an advanced learner of Spanish language. Three classes. Prerequisite: One 200-level SPA course.

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.

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.

The ways in which individuals and societies define space and place is very revealing. The investigation of space and place-how cultures turn material, racial, and/or metaphysical settings into human landscapes defining home, neighborhood, and nation-is a deeply important optic that dramatizes social, racial, political, and religious factors. At the same time, it can be used to track the changes of these realities over time. Because of its unique mix of Jews, Christians, and Moors, medieval Iberia offers near laboratory conditions for the study of space and place in their racial, ethnic, literary, religious, and political identities.

This course focuses on one of the most renowned and influential Spanish poets of the 20th century--Federico García Lorca. We will examine Lorca's vast corpus of poems and plays to see how they combine experimental aesthetics and popular traditions. We will also study the readings and re-readings of "Lorca" as both an author and a mythical figure, standing for freedom, the defeated Spanish Republic, the historical avant-garde poetry, and gender politics.