Spanish and PortugueseContemporary Iberian Cultures and the Crisis of Western Modernity
SPAN 686-301
Prof. Luis Moreno Caballud
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The starting point of the seminar will be a look at the deeply destructive aspects of Western modernity that have led to its current crisis: the colonization and genocide of peoples classified as "backward", the conversion of planet Earth into a resource for exploitation in order to obtain capital, and the hierarchization of living beings through anthropocentrism, racialization, and hetero-normative patriarchy.
We will look at the recent history of Iberian cultures in process of “modernization” as a case study that will allow us to build broader dialogues, especially with studies on the Americas. We will stop at various moments in the Iberian historical cycle that goes from the great migrations from the countryside to the city in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, through the arrival of neoliberalism already in the post-dictatorship, until reaching the current ecological and economical crisis. We will try to articulate elements for a “cultural history from below”, including, for example, representations of peasant and community cultures in documentaries from the end of the Franco regime, militant research on the precarization of work from feminist traditions at the end of the century, and artistic experimentations in which elements of popular traditions converge with others from avant-garde lineages.
We will combine the analysis of these specific materials with the investigation of broad theoretical debates around issues of coloniality, gender, race, migrations, “minorized” cultures, communality, forms of subjectivation in capitalism, and rebellious and autonomous cultural practices.
Foundations of Socio-Critical Analysis-Latin America: Rama, Franco, Schwarz
SPAN 690-301
Prof. Ericka Beckman
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Studies three major figures in Latin American literary criticism since the 1970s: Ángel Rama, Jean Franco, and Roberto Schwarz. We will analyze these critics’ works in relation to historical periods (marked by events such as the Cuban Revolution, military dictatorships, the onset of neoliberalism) and intellectual currents (including dependency theory, the Latin American “Boom,” and feminism). We will also specify how these critics contribute unique insights, from Latin America, into a wider tradition of socio-critical literary analysis.
Colonial Latin America Studies in the 21st Century
SPAN 692-301
Prof. Jorge Téllez
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This seminar is organized around the concepts of coloniality and modernity. Our main objective will be to showcase the relevance of colonial studies to understand our current world. We will examine the emergence and development of the field of colonial Latin American studies through the reading of key texts from the colonial period, and contemporary criticism and theory. We will consider notions such as colonial discourse, coloniality of power, decoloniality, as well as postcolonial theory, to study recent interdisciplinary approaches that aim to revise the colonial canon and the ways we understand it. At the core of this seminar, there is a question about the current position of colonial Latin American studies within the larger context of the humanities, and about its relevance to reflect on contemporary artistic, economic, social, and political issues. Primary sources include, but are not limited to, Hernán Cortés, Cabeza de Vaca, Bartolomé de las Casas, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Catalina de Erauso, and Úrsula de Jesús.
Imagining Underdevelopment in the Americas
SPAN 697-301
Prof. John Patrick Leary
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This course will bring humanistic scrutiny to the concepts of “development” and “underdevelopment.” The following pair of broad questions motivates our inquiry here. How have development’s “subjects,” typically those in the global North, and its “objects” in the global South imagined the possibilities, requirements, and costs of development? And how can a cultural-studies approach illuminate what we typically think of as economic categories? We will begin the course by studying the 19th-century notions of national progress that preceded the ascension of development thinking in the mid-20th century, the flourishing of modernization theory in the Cold War, and then turn to mid-century Cuba as a case study to explore the connections between gender, modernity, labor, and “tradition” in the literature of underdevelopment.