Spanish and PortugueseEnvironmental Humanities: Theory, Method, and Practice
SPAN 543-401
Prof. Bethany Wiggin
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Environmental Humanities: Theory, Methods, Practice is a seminar-style course designed to introduce students to the trans- and interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities. Weekly readings and discussions will be complemented by guest speakers from a range of disciplines including ecology, atmospheric science, computing, history of science, medicine, anthropology, literature, and the visual arts. Participants will develop their own research questions and a final project, with special consideration given to building the multi-disciplinary collaborative teams research in the environmental humanities often requires.
Medieval Iberian Romance: Literatures in Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan 1100-1448
SPAN 630-401
Prof. Michael Solomon and Carlos Pios
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Quiero fer una prosa en romanz paladino, / en qual suele el pueblo fablar con so vezino,/ ca no so tan letrado por fer otro latino: /bien valdra, commo creo, un vaso de bon vino. (Berceo, Vida de santo Domingo)
This seminar provides an overview of the major literatures in Romance from the medieval Iberian Peninsula. We begin with early Galician-Portuguese troubadour lyrics followed by a survey of the early Castilian ballads and the rise clerical verse (mester de clerezia). The course ends with an overview of late medieval Catalan prose, including Tirant lo Blanc and Curial and Guelfa.
In this seminar we will pay special philological attention to Romance language evolution, the concept of the Iberian interliterary system, and the material conditions of literary transmission—manuscripts. The seminar will also incorporate two guest lecturers on Catalan language and literature, Montserrat Piera (Temple University) and Toni Esposito (University of Pennsylvania--Spanish and Portuguese).
The sessions will be conducted in English. For reading purposes, all participants should be able to read at least one Romance language.
Evaluation will be based class participation and three take-home exams/worksheets.
Animism, Feminism, and Cultural Emancipation: Three Contemporary Lines of Flight
SPAN 686-301
Prof. Luis Moreno Caballud
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Taking as a point of departure the current ecological, political, and existential crises that are determining the fate of capitalism in Spain and the world, we will study the crucial role of aesthetics in displacing neoliberal subjectivities. Particularly, we will investigate three contemporary literary and artistic lines of flight: an animist line, which displaces the contemporary crisis of experience by questioning the Western dualism between subject and object; a feminist line, which understands the creation of imaginaries as one of the everyday necessary material activities that sustain life; and an equalitarian line, which confronts the privatization of artistic creation and tries to uncover the abundant capabilities that we suppress in ourselves when we enter into the logic of individualist cultural authority.
The Global Picaresque: Precarity, Exploitation, and World Literature
SPAN 697-301
Prof. Jorge Téllez
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The picaresque, because of its versatile and adaptable nature, has spread widely across languages and literary traditions from the 16th century until the present. This seminar examines the potential and limits of world literature theory by studying the picaresque from a global perspective.
We will discuss texts ranging from the early modern period to the 21st century and reflect on how literary forms travel and change. Central to the topics of this course are concerns related to colonialism and postcolonialism, canon formation, the relationship between genre and gender, and the place and role of literature in society. Readings will include classics such as Lazarillo de Tormes but also works by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Alejo Carpentier, V. S. Naipaul, Teresa Solana, Valeria Luiselli, Emmannuel Carrèrere, Indra Sinha, Aravind Ariga, among others.