Current Quarter
SPRING 2013
Spanport 410-0 Studies in Early Modern Literatures and Cultures
Cervantes and the Rise of the Novel
Professor Fernandez-Morera
Offered: Mon 2-5pm
Course Description
According to Dostoievsky, Cervantes’ Don Quixote was the greatest novel ever written. Cervantes’ formidable presence can be found in many other European, U.S. American, and Latin American writers, from Fielding, Sterne, Flaubert and Mark Twain to Jorge Luis Borges and Mario Vargas Llosa. The figure of Don Quixote has become one the enduring myths of Western civilization, and it has had an impact on other forms of human creativity, from painting to ballet, to tone poems to plays to musicals to film. This class will focus on Don Quixote and its position in the development of the novel, paying attention to its formal devices, its historical context, and its thematic richness within the narrative genre. Two or three preceding and subsequent narratives will also be read as part of the comparative approach of this class. All works will be read in their original language whenever possible.
Evaluation Method
Attendance and Participation in the discussion: 35% Oral Reports: 25% Final Paper: 40%
Spanport 430-0 Topics in Latino/a Literatures & Cultures
From Cultural Nationalism to Globalization
Professor Frances Aparicio
Offered: Tues 2-5pm
Course Description
How have US Latino/a scholars theorized cultural difference, postcolonial cultural hybridity, and the multiple forms of Othering and racialization of this community? Through detailed readings since the cultural nationalism since the 1960s and 70s, the feminism of the 80s, the Latinidad of the 90s, along with the scholarship of the new millennium, we can trace the various scholarly discourses about US Latino/as that critique dominant practices of subordination and foreground Latino/as as active agents of resistance and transculturation. We will examine the essentialized collective identities informed by cultural nationalism and its ensuing critiques by feminists and queers; the cultural politics of mainstreaming throughout the 1980s; theorizations of hybridity in border studies; the politics of representation and discourse analysis through tropicalizations; transnational identities and flows; the commodification of cultures and ethnicities of the global economy; and the impact of neoliberalism on cultural identity. Course requirements will include a class presentation, weekly critiques of the readings, and a final 10 page original research paper on a selected topic. Students will present their work in class at the end of the quarter.
Evaluation Method
Class participation 10% Presentations 20% Final Exam 50% Writing assignments 20%
