Spring 2016 PhD Course Offerings PORT-GA 1104.001 – Portuguese for Spanish Speakers Day/Time – Wednesday 6-8pm Instructor - Carlos Veloso PORT-GA 1104 is an accelerated course for advanced Spanish speakers with a good command of Spanish grammar. It covers the fundamentals of the Portuguese language with a focus on Brazil. In this course, Spanish sentence patterns and vocabulary will be utilized as a basis for the study of similarities and differences between the two languages. Comparisons among sound systems (Spanish/English/Portuguese) will familiarize students with standard Portuguese pronunciation. Written responses to short readings (crônicas, poetry, essays and articles) or visuals will help to review and expand grammar points and to practice transferring common features of Spanish into Portuguese syntax. Brief presentations on topics related to the arts and society will promote essential speaking skills. By the end of the semester students will be prepared to read complex materials and will have acquired basic proficiency in speaking, writing and understanding standard Portuguese. This is a zero credit course. A limited number of spots are available for students from other departments/programs. These spots will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. Interested students should contact Edgardo Núñez at [email protected] for permission to enroll.

PORT-GA 2967.001 – Clarice Lispector Day/Time – Tuesday 4-6pm Instructor - Marta Peixoto A recent biography claims that Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) is one of the most popular but least understood of Latin American writers (Benjamin Moser, Why this World). This course, monographic but not insular, aims to further the understanding of her writing and to examine the Brazilian and international reception that brought about her prominence. We will read representative selections of her novels, short stories, newspaper chronicles, and criticism about her work, considering the literary and cultural frameworks that shape them. The rise of Lispector's international reputation coincided with feminist interest in female literary production and with an intense debate about the possibility and nature of a feminine textual difference. We will discuss the feminist reception of her writing, including the critical / theoretical writings of Hélène Cixous, crucial in establishing Lispector's renown, and recent theories of intimacy and affect that particularly resonate with her texts. We will read excerpts from a first Englishlanguage biography that studies her life and work from the perspective of the Jewish diaspora.

We will also consider the multiple ways in which writers and readers are encoded and addressed in her texts and reflect, more broadly, on the process of canon formation, as we examine this writer's entry into the short list of Brazilian writers widely known outside Brazil. Depending on student interest, this course may be conducted in either Portuguese or English. Papers may be written Portuguese, English or Spanish. All of Lispector's texts are also available in English, Spanish and French. We will read the following texts by Lispector: Perto do coração selvagem, 1944. Laços de família, 1960. A legião estrangeira, 1964 (selections). A paixão segundo G. H., 1964. Água viva, 1973. A via crucis do corpo, 1974. Visão do esplendor, 1975. A hora da estrela, 1977, A Bela e a Fera, 1979 (selections). A descoberta do mundo, 1984 (selections).

SPAN-GA 2965.001 –

Gender Issues in Modern Spanish Writing and Film (1850s to the Present)

Day/Time – Thursday 4-6pm Instructor – Jo Labanyi This course will take students through a selection of Spanish fictional, autobiographical, essayistic, dramatic, and cinematic texts from the mid 19th century to the early 21st century. These will be put in conversation with a range of writings in feminist and queer theory, in the hope of stimulating readings of the literary and cinematic texts as theoretical interventions in their own right. The aim is to develop proficiency in gender analysis as a form of cultural as well as textual criticism. We will trace the historical development of attitudes to gender in modern Spain, considering how cultural representations can go against the dominant discourses of the historical period, as well as reflecting them. The texts also illustrate the ways in which prescribed

gender roles can constrict or can be used strategically. A number of texts show how the gender divisions that have been a hallmark of western modernity are subverted by gender fluidity and/or a notion of gender as performance; other texts propose a model of sexual difference whereby women free themselves from male violence. A number of the texts explore alternatives to compulsory heterosexuality. Both masculinity and femininity will be interrogated. The class will be taught in Spanish. Prescribed texts Rosalía de Castro, La hija del mar (novel, 1859) Leopoldo Alas, La Regenta (novel, 1884-5) María Martínez Sierra, feminist essays 1915-1932 collected in: Alda Blanco, A las mujeres. Ensayos feministas de María Martínez Sierra (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2003) Federico García Lorca, El público (drama, written 1930, published posthumously) Carlos Arévalo, Harka (film, 1941) Rosa Chacel, Memorias de Leticia Valle (novel, 1946, written in exile) Ventura Pons, Ocaña: retrato intermitente (documentary, 1978) Juan Goytisolo, Coto vedado (1985) and En los reinos de taifa (1986) (autobiography) Carmen Martín Gaite, Usos amorosos de la postguerra española and Desde la ventana (essays, both 1987) Maria-Mercè Marçal, Antología (poems translated from the Catalan, 1973-1998) Pedro Almodóvar, Todo sobre mi madre (film, 1999) Pilar Monsell, África 815 (documentary, 2014)

SPAN-GA 2966.001 – The Marginal: Exploring Exclusion in Contemporary Spanish Culture (This course originates in Comparative Literature)

Day/Time – Tuesdays 12:30-3:15pm Instructor - Eduardo Matos-Martin According to Etienne Balibar, exclusion does not always describe a formal juridical status —an external condition— but it can also be internal, existing where there is not an explicit denial or limitation of civil rights and citizenship. Following this wide use of the term “exclusion” —as an open category that encompasses phenomena ranging from discrimination to elimination—, this course will examine cultural and literary representations of contemporary Spain’s excluded “others,” tracing them back to the Franco dictatorship. Our goal will be thus to sketch a mapping of “exclusion,” a counter-history of the excluded, in order to critically explore the contradictions and the dark side of the Spanish project of “modernity”. As such, we will analyze films and literary texts that address situations of oppression, marginality, precariousness, abandonment or poverty within the modern Spanish context—from the Spanish Civil War to the current moment of economic crisis. Exclusion, therefore, is not restricted to periods of hardship such as the late2000 financial crisis but, rather, inherent to an economic/political system. Theoretical readings will include, among others, Foucault, Agamben, Esposito, Mbembe, Wacquant, Bauman, Lazzarato, Berlant, Balibar, Butler, Negri and Rancière.

SPAN-GA 2967.001 - Sexualidades impropias. Disidencia sexual e imaginación democrática en América Latina Day/Time – Monday 2-4pm Instructor – Gabriel Giorgi Hacia la primera década del siglo XXI, muchas sociedades en América Latina asistieron a lo que se denominaron victorias históricas de las luchas glttbi: matrimonio igualitario, ley de identidad de género, políticas antidiscriminatorias. La sexualidad parece haberse instalado de modos definitivos como un horizonte desde el cual se piensan sentidos decisivos de eso que llamamos “democracia”,trazando el terreno de sus luchas: un horizonte de politización en invención y en disputa. El seminario quiere indagar una genealogía corta de ese horizonte, analizando los modos en que la sexualidad funcionó, desde los años 60, como un núcleo de anudamiento entre cultura y política. Se enfoca en tres ejes: itinerarios de lo queer/cuir; rearticulaciones de lo trans; disputas en torno a lo pornográfico. El primer eje hace base en el debate sobre temporalidades, que demarcó muchos de los recorridos críticos recientes y que ilumina otras secuencias históricas que no se dejan capturar en la narrativa lineal de la represiòn y la libertad, el closet y la visibilidad, lo pre-político y lo político: queer/cuir funciona allí como invención de formas de vida y de espacio-tiempo alternativos. El segundo eje hace foco en los modos en que debates recientes en torno a lo transgenérico/transexual no sólo tensan modelos críticos queer y feministas, sino que iluminan zonas de la cultura que habían quedado subsumidas bajo el debate en torno a las “homosexualidades.” Por último, el tercer eje quiere traer a discusión el debate más amplio en

torno a pornografía/”posporno”, y pensar las rearticulaciones históricas en torno a lo público que se conjugaron desde allí. Los materiales de discusión incluyen textos clásicos junto a producciones más recientes: textos de Manuel Puig, Ramos Otero, Sylvia Molloy, Severo Sarduy, Nestor Perlongher, Caio Fernando Abreu, Joao Gilberto Noll, Copi, Dalia Rosetti, junto a filmes de Hilton Lacerda (Tatuagem), Julia Solomonoff (Ultimo verano de la Boyita , Gustavo Vinagre (Nova Dubai), Rafael Alvarez y Tatiana Issa (Dzi Croquettes), entre otros.

SPAN-GA 2968.001 - Perspectivas transpacíficas en los estudios latinoamericanos Day/Time – Wednesday 2:30 - 4:30pm Instructor – Laura Torres-Rodríguez La perspectiva transpacífica ha sido fundamental para la crítica del capitalismo neoextractivo actual en América Latina. De la misma forma, la producción literaria contemporánea en el continente ha privilegiado a Asia como un referente obligado para representar procesos de globalización tanto formales como informales. Este seminario ofrece una visión transhistórica a los discursos de globalización transpacífica recientes (ej. TTP). Por lo que intenta revisar críticamente el impacto que la formación de circuitos y redes de intercambio globalizadas con Asia – con materias primas como la plata, el opio, el guano, el petróleo– ha tenido en la producción cultural y estética latinoamericana desde el siglo XIX. Con esto, se pretende interrogar el modelo transatlántico de investigación que ha dominado los debates académicos del campo de los estudios latinoamericanos. Aunque privilegiaremos el caso mexicano y el periodo contemporáneo, la clase girará alrededor de una serie de textos literarios clásicos del orientalismo latinoamericano enmarcados en distintas series discursivas: liberalismo/neoliberalismo, populismo/desarrollismo/nacionalismo, agrarismo/indigenismo, socialismo/internacionalismo, etc. Los módulos de lectura no son absolutos y pretenden ser activamente problematizados, por lo que se establecerá relaciones de afinidad, complicidad, y antagonismo entre los temarios. La clase también investigará distintos teorías de análisis para el estudio de las representaciones inter-coloniales en América Latina. Uno de los ejes de trabajo girará en torno al concepto de orientalismo y su impacto en los recorridos críticos del “latinoamericanismo”. El libro de Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), ha transformado los estudios literarios al replantear la relación entre los dispositivos disciplinarios, el archivo como campo de la producción cultural y la distribución de una consciencia geopolítica específica. A través de un diálogo con la reelaboraciones críticas de Said, revisaremos los debates en torno a la inserción de América Latina al campo de los estudios poscoloniales, tradicionalmente enfocados en la experiencia colonial de Asia y África. En el contexto actual donde las regiones de Asia, América Latina y África siguen configurándose como zonas sacrificadas por la violencia, resulta fundamental el fortalecimiento de reflexiones comparadas entre ambas regiones que reordenen las distribuciones de cuerpos, disuelvan la lógica binaria Oriente/Occidente, exploren nuevos modos de

contigüidad y re-imaginen otras comunidades políticas más allá de las nuevas narrativas del capitalismo globalizado. Otros temas a discutirse serán: la relación entre las representaciones de Asia y la formación de ideologías continentales latinoamericanas, tales como el americanismo, el arielismo, el cosmopolitismo, el internacionalismo, etc. Algunos temas específicos a tratarse serán: estéticas maoístas en América Latina, izquierdas comparadas, narco literatura, el orientalismo y la literatura policial, estéticas liberales/neoliberales, orientalismo queer, entre otros.

SPAN-GA 2975.001 - Translating the Middle Ages Day/Time – Monday 5-7pm Instructor – SJ Pearce Toward the end of his life, the Cordoba-born philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote a letter to the man who had begun to translate his theological summa, the Guide of the Perplexed. In the letter, he himself defined the technical terms in his original that did not have good counterparts in the target language; offered, with some reservations, to meet with his translator to discuss the text; and, finally, proposed an overarching theory of translation by which he wished to see his magnum opus adapted: “Whoever wishes to translate, and proposes to render each word literally, and at the same time to adhere slavishly to the order of the words and sentences in the original, will meet with much difficulty; his rendering will be faulty and untrustworthy. This is not the right method. The translator should first try to grasp the sense of the subject thoroughly, and state the theme with perfect clearness in the other language. This, however, cannot be done without changing the order of the words, putting many words for one word, or vice versa, and adding or taking away words, so that the subject may be perfectly intelligible in the language in to which he translates. This method was followed by Hunayn ibn Ishaq, with the works of Galen, and his son Ishaq with the works of Aristotle. It is for this reason that all their versions are so particularly lucid, and therefore we ought to study them to the exclusion of all others. Your distinguished college ought to adopt this rule in all the translations undertaken.” This letter encapsulates many of the debates and issues that were current and contested in medieval translation circles and workshops: Maimonides distinguishes between two medieval modes of translation, one of which privileges the word as and prime unit of meaning, and the other, which privileges the sense of the text; he attempts to exert his own authority and preferences as the author over the judgment of the translator, and he also invokes the name of the legendary father of Arabic translation, whose workshop was responsible for the Arabic versions of Greek philosophy that would ultimately become the backbone of Spanish intellectual life. In this seminar, we will read the foundational texts of medieval translation theory, including the work of Arabic-speaking Andalusi Jews who found themselves scattered across the Mediterranean and using translation to preserve their Andalusi identity, the Castilian translators

who helped to develop the foundational literary corpus that grew up at the court of Alfonso X, and Latin and Romance-language translators of the Quran. We will also examine the related phenomenon of cultural translation, a type of literary adaptation which, among other things, helped to create the thirteenth-century Castilian literary phenomenon of mester de clerecía. And, finally, through the work of Jacques Derrida, Gil Anidjar, and others, we will explore the ways in which medieval translation theory bears upon modern theories of translation. This course will seek to contextualize the highlighted works of literary theory within the broader social, cultural, and intellectual contexts in medieval Spain from which they emerged; consequently, the course will be suitable both for students with and without prior background in medieval literature or history. All readings will be in English, with the texts in Spanish, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew available to students who wish to read them in the original languages.

SPAN-GA 2976.001 – Nueva York Day/Time – Thursday 6-8pm Instructor – James D. Fernández In this course we will explore representations of New York (and, in some cases, the United States more broadly) in Spanish literature from the XXth and XXIst centuries. Though one of the goals of the course is to try to let questions and issues emerge from the texts themselves, we will pay particular attention to what we might call the post-imperial gaze of Spanish writers in NY, as their encounter with the Empire State often triggers reflections on Spain's own historical trajectory. Readings will come from a wide range of genres (poetry, travel book, novels, letters, diaries, etc.) and will include some texts written in English by "Spanish-American" writers such as Felipe Alfau and Prudencio Pereda. The collective goal of the course will be to produce a bilingual and annotated anthology of Spanish writing about New York. Authors may include, among others: Felipe Alfau; Joaquín Belda; Julio Camba; Joaquín Calvo Sotelo; José María Conget; Miguel Delibes; Concha Espina; García Lorca; Juan Ramón Jiménez; Carmen Laforet; Eduardo Lago; Martín Gaite; Moreno Villa; Muñoz Molina; Prudencio Pereda

SPAN-GA 2977.001 - Locating Latinidad (This course originates in the Department of English)

Day/Time - Monday 11 - 1pm

Instructor - Urayoán Noel

SPAN-GA 2978.001 - Diaries of Modernity: Latin American Chronicle, Literature, and Cultural Politics Day/Time – Thursday 2-4pm Instructor – Ana Dopico This course will consider the importance of the Latin American crónica, its engagements with modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and its continuing relevance to literature and contemporary culture. It will weight the reach and relevance of print culture chronicles, the status, form and dissemination of reportage and journalism, the aesthetics and contingencies of documentary literature and non-fiction. Keeping in mind that the Nobel Prize was recently awarded to writing in this category, we will also consider the burgeoning canon and corpus of non-fiction work and strive to make sense of those imaginaries and markets. It will examine how nineteenth century practitioners worked the genre didactically and aesthetically to establish a common Latin American imaginary, to educate a burgeoning reading public in worldly tastes and cosmopolitanisms, to take up hemispheric political problems, and to focus on the problems of uneven modernity and the comparative anxieties of Latin Americans looking to Europe and the United Status as models of progress, development and democracy. We will consider the argument that the chronicle and its relation to journalism helps to form a “minor” literature within major national and hemispheric canons. We will think about the ways in which the chronicle recasts history but also makes temporality itself a protagonist, and makes modernity and its epochal claims an obsessional object. We will also consider how the chronicle as a journalistic form emphasizes a documentary imperative and competes with photography as primary material and cultural currency. In the second half of the course, we will explore the twentieth century journalism of “master novelists” whose previous incarnations as journalists shaped their work and consider their literary experiments beyond their conventional interpretations. We will think about the force of photography and visual culture in non-fiction writing, and consider how movements like modernism, surrealism, new journalism and the marvelous real participate in a mutualistic relationship with the crónica as a journalistic and literary form. Finally we will read recent works whose authors exploit the crónicas liminal generic status to invent a new narrative transit between literature, journalism, and historiography while competing with and assimilating the aesthetics and representational force of photography and cinema. A photographic anthology will often accompany the weekly readings. We will conclude by considering contemporary blogs that seem to follow the genealogy and operations of the crónica. This part of the syllabus is in development. The course contents will be shaped by the collective and individual present the syllabus below is provisional.

SPAN-GA 3545.001- Dissertation Proposal Workshop Day/Time : Tuesday 2-4pm Instructor: Gabriela Basterra

Workshop to direct students toward the basic approaches and structure of the future dissertation, with the goal of writing a finished proposal.