Fall 2008 classes: Graduate Course Descriptions
Spanish 242: Introduction to Literary Theory (4 Units)
Prof. Dru Dougherty
The course is an introduction to 20th-century literary theory from structuralism to post-colonialism. Each week we will survey a major trend, using class time to clarify analytical concepts, discuss the propositions posed by the readings and explore their application to literary texts.
Requirements
Each student will hand in 6 of 11 weekly assignments (2-3 pages) and will lead one of the seminar discussions. At our first meeting I will distribute guidelines for the weekly assignments and for facilitating discussion. As a final project, each of you will give a 15-minute presentation on how you would organize a research paper on a subject of your choice, incorporating in the problematic one or more theories studied in the course.
Texts
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-7190-6268
Leitch, Cain, Finke, Johnson, McGowan, Williams. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York/London: Norton, 2001. ISBN: 0-393-97429-4
A Reader with additional texts will be on sale at Copy Central, Bancroft Ave.
Spanish 280.1:Vanguardia y cultura. La Argentina de los años 20. (4 units)
Prof. Francine Masiello
This course focuses on three writers–Arlt, Borges, and Girondo–, but it draws upon a wide range of artifacts–little reviews, newspapers, film and music, visual arts and architecture–that will allow us to reconstruct the culture of a decade. If, through the literary analysis of three writers, we come to terms with the poetic dimensions of the vanguardia, the ways in which cosmopolitanism comes into play with the local temporalities of popular or emerging mass culture, through our reading of little reviews and newspapers (Martín Fierro, Proa, Inicial, Síntesis, Claridad, Nosotros, Caras y caretas, El Hogar, Crítica among them), we will attempt to grapple with the larger flows of information that crossed through Buenos Aires, structuring the imagination and desires of an urban reading public. Reaching out from this base, pursuing the debates among intellectuals and tracking the cultural objects that they encountered along the way, we will try to grasp a version of 20s discourse from primary texts in circulation. This is a "hands on" research course in which we will learn to read the archives and, through them, to plot the spatial and temporal coordinates that mapped culture in the 1920s.
Required Books.
Arlt, Roberto. El juguete rabioso. Buenos Aires> Losada, 2005.
ISBN> 950-03-0605-0
Arlt, Roberto. Los siete locos. Buenos Aires> Losada,. 2005.
ISBN> 950-03-0620-4
Arlt, Roberto. Los lanzallamas. Buenos Aires> Losada, 2005
ISBN> 950-03-0616-6
Borges, Jorge Luis. Textos recobrados, 1919-1929. Edited by Sara Luisa del Carril. Barcelona: Emece, 2007. vol 1
ISBN> 978-950-04-2935-1
Borges, Jorge Luis. Obras completas, vol. 1. Buenos Aires> Emece, 2007.
ISBN> 978-950-04-2873-6
Girondo, Oliverio. Obras completas. Buenos Aries, Losada.
ISBN>950-03-5698-8
Spanish 280.2: : Literatura y música del Caribe hispano (4 units)
Prof. Julio Ramos
Este curso explorará la relación entre la música y la literatura moderna en el Caribe hispano. Recorreremos inicialmente los itinerarios de una metáfora clave en los discursos culturales caribeños: el ritmo como articulación y cruce de temporalidades multiples (Palés Matos, Guillén, del Cabral). Las pistas sincopadas del ritmo en los discursos identitarios modernos (Carpentier, W. C. Williams, Benítez Rojo, Quintero Rivera, Quintero Herencia, Otero y otros) nos permitirán revisar una serie de textos literarios y antropológicos ya clásicos que ubican el concepto del contrapunto en el corazón mismo de sus entramados figurativos y teóricos (Ortiz, Carpentier, Lezama Lima). Los contrapuntos (barrocos y vanguardistas) nos llevarán luego a considerar diversas prácticas y conceptualizaciones de la fusión musical en la obra de varios compositores y músicos contemporáneos, particularmente Chucho Valdés, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Palmieri y Francisco Aguabella cuyas fusiones inscriben los mapas nuevos de un cosmopolitismo alternativo y divergente que nos invita a considerar las discusiones sobre la “criollización” en otras lenguas y sonoridades caribeñas (Brathwaite, Glissant, Condé). Tales discusiones acaso faciliten nuestro acercamiento final a Pedro Valdez y el regatón (La Sista) al hip hop (Los Orishas, Alamar Express, T. Calderón) y a la invención de la timba (Los Van Van, NG, Charanga Habanera).
Lecturas (muy tentativa: la lista final se distribuirá el primer día de clase)
Alejo Carpentier, El reino de este mundo
La música en Cuba (selección)
selección de cuentos
Luis Palés Matos, Tuntun de pasa y grifería
Nicolás Guillén, selección de poesía
Manuel del Cabral, selección de poesía
Relatos de Ana Lydia Vega y Carmen Lugo Filippi
Relatos de Rita Indiana Hernández y Aurora Arias
Fernando Ortiz, selección de ensayos (del Contrapunteo, sobre Wilfredo Lam y de La transculturación blanca de los tambores negros)
Pedro Valdez, Bachata de un ángel caído
Antonio Benítez Rojo, La isla que se repite (segunda edición española)
Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, El entierro de Cortijo
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Delito por bailar el chachachá
Luis Rafael Sánchez, La guaracha del Macho Camacho
Otras lecturas (ensayos sobre música y cultura)
S. W. Mintz, T.W. Adorno, Quintero Herencia, J.M. Wisnik, L. Acosta, Ph. Lacoue-Labarthe, Aurea M. Sotomayor, Adriana Orejuela, J.L. Nancy, Quintero Rivera, Raúl Fernández, Deleuze/Guattari, Juan Flores, D. Pacini Hernández, Juan Otero Garabis
Spanish 280.3: Ficción y Transición en América Latina (4 units)
Prof. Laura Garcia-Moreno
Este seminario se enfocará en literatura y cultura latinoamericana que marca y se desarrolla en momentos de transición social, económica y/o política a partir de la mitad del siglo veinte. Además de textos literarios como El llano en llamas (Rulfo), El obsceno pájaro de la noche (Donoso), Lumpérica (Eltit), La nueva novela (Martínez), El dock, (Sánchez), El entenado (Saer), En estado de memoria (Mercado), así como obras de Puig y Taibó, entre otras, exploraremos formas culturales no literarias como fotografía, instalación y espacios públicos. Temas importantes del curso son la producción de literatura y cultura en contextos de crisis, formas de insubordinación estética y la relación entre memoria y narración.
Spanish 285.1: Garcilaso de la Vega and Fernando de Herrera (4 units)
Prof. Ignacio Navarrete
This will be a research seminar into the major issues and resources for the study of Garcilaso de la Vega in particular and of Golden Age and Colonial poetry in general. Possible avenues of investigation include: Garcilaso's combination of classical, Italian, and medieval Castilian sources; the nature of poetic imitation; the influence of courtly aesthetics; the political and social context and content of Garcilaso's poetry; contemporary reception of Garcilaso's poetry leading up to his canonization as an original, and the ideology of the Golden Age commentaries. We will also read the commentaries for the information they provide about Renaissance Spanish poetic theory, and examine how Herrera himself appropriates Garcilaso in his own poetry.
Requirements: a short critical paper, a long research paper, constructive critique of another student's paper, and class presentations.
Books on order:
Garcilaso de la Vega, Obra poética y textos en prosa (Crítica, 84-8432-882-1)
Pierre Alzieu (ed), Poesía erótica del siglo de oro (Crítica, 84-8432-083-9)
Fernando de Herrera, Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso (Cátedra, 84-376-1923-1)
—–. Poesía castellana original completa (Cátedra, 84-376-0509-8)
Spanish 285.3 Valle-Inclán: War, the Grotesque and Tragedy. (4 units)
Professor Dru Dougherty
The seminar will study the relationships between war and Valle-Inclán’s experiments with traditional and modern tragedy. Spain’s Carlist civil wars, the writer’s visit to the French front during World War I and his familiarity with Goya’s Desastres de la Guerra demonstrate his preoccupation with the emblematic experience of tragic suffering in an age when the viability of tragedy as a genre was being questioned. Readings include Romance de lobos. Comedia bárbara; Gerifaltes de antaño. La guerra carlista; selections from La lámpara maravillosa; Voces de gesta (tragedia pastoral); El embrujado (tragedia de las tierras de Salnés); La medianoche. Visión estelar de un momento de guerra; Divinas palabras (tragicomedia de aldea); Luces de bohemia. Esperpento; Las galas del difunto. Esperpento; Tirano Banderas. Novela de Tierra Caliente. The novels we’ll read, along with La medianoche, will give us an opportunity to discuss how war and tragedy spurred Valle to theorize and develop a novela de masas.
Portuguese 275: Brazilian Poetry: Art and Social Transformation (4 units)
Prof. Candace Slater
The seminar is designed both to introduce graduate students to Brazilian poetry and to permit those already familiar with its basic contours to deepen their understanding of particular aspects of it over time. We will look at the evolution from Romanticism into the present in terms of poets’ ideas about art in relationship to variously-defined social transformations. Examples will include the work of major writers such as Manuel Bandeira, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Haroldo de Campos, and João Cabral de Melo Neto, as well as popular poets including Patativa and a series of cordel writers from the past and present. The unifying thread will be shifting ideas of what poetry is, and of the poet’s relationship to sometimes multiple publics with different capacities and demands.
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