PORT 5110, Brazilian Literature
Professor Marcello Schincario, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays 12:00-12:15 pm
Este curso propõe uma discussão teórica sobre a ficção policial, tendo em conta o percurso desta no âmbito da história da literatura brasileira dos séculos XX e XXI. Os estudantes terão oportunidade de discutir elementos relativos à criação literária, à (des)construção do formulaico e, finalmente, a questões sobre a autoficção.
SPAN 5200/7200, SEM: Don Quijote
Professor Julio Baena, Wednesdays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
In this seminar, we will do no more, and no less, than to read Cervantes’ Don Quijote. This book (or books: there’s two of them, or plenty of them, from another angle) will provide at the same time its own critical reading, because Cervantes happens to be the best Cervantista that ever lived. This is not to say, of course, that we will not be referring to a chosen collection of books and articles about Don Quijote (chosen, because the bibliography on the subject has been impossible to handle for a long time already), but we will concentrate on reading. Closely reading; slowly reading; passionately or coldly reading. Don Quijote’s Prologue is addressed to the “desocupado lector”: a reader as idle as the country hidalgo that becomes Don Quijote de la Mancha. This first, subterranean irony marks the seminar, because we—unlike the hidalgo or the prologuist’s intended reader, but like Don Quijote—are indeed busy, our otium since long vanquished by nec-otium. We will read, because reading is the pivotal verb associated with books, and Don Quijote is a book about books, about everything that can be thought of in relation to books: fiction or non-fiction, or even fiction about meta-fiction; writing or forgetting, or even burning and recycling the (paper or idea) body of a book.
All genres that existed at Cervantes’ time are incorporated in Don Quijote: re-used, re-packaged, un-packaged, killed or resurrected. To say that Don Quijote is “the first modern novel” is, even in its importance, very little. To highlight its status as the most canonical of Spanish books is actually to try to suppress its true power. I propose that we read this book as a forbidden book, as a subversive contraption (or rather: as a contraption for subversion), the way it has been read by those who have dented the walls of cultural asphyxiation: a Borges, a Joyce, a Foucault.
I have ordered at the bookstore the edition by Tom Lathrop (inexpensive, and faithful). If you prefer, read Martí de Riquer’s edition (because it does not pretend to re-write the Quijote either). Other editions are also good (Avalle-Arce, Murillo, Sevilla/Rey...). But please stay away from Francisco Rico’s edition. He re-writes Don Quijote, with unmitigated chuztspah; he takes away—for instance—the errors and mistakes that “plague” all other editions. But to take away those “errors” from Don Quijote is like taking away the blue from a blue cheese, because it is “rotten”. We will talk about that beautiful “blue bacteria” in Don Quijote as well. In other words, we will try to use Don Quijote, in its amazingly subversive power, against the fetish of Don Quijote presented by those who quote from it constantly (and often erroneously), without having read it.
If you are interested in pre- and early- modern issues, this seminar will deepen your knowledge of what was said and though circa 1600 in Spain, but I have always been more interested in what a book says than in what it said. And this is one of those books that keep speaking, of us, of the present.
SPAN 5220/7220, SEM: The Rise and Fall of Spanish Intellectuals
Professor Javier Krauel, Tuesdays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
This course will investigate the contested meaning and function of the intellectual in early twentieth-century Spain (roughly from 1898 to 1939) and compare it to what is happening today. Students will explore the varieties of public intellectual life in early twentieth-century Spain by becoming familiar with some the time’s most prominent philosophers, social theorists, novelists, and activists (from Miguel de Unamuno and José Ortega y Gasset to Margarita Nelken and María Zambrano.) We will also read historical and theoretical texts that will help us understand the current eclipse of the figure of the “critical intellectual,” one that seems overshadowed both by experts close to power and by social movements critical of established hierarchies. This seminar will have a strong theoretical and historical component, as we will investigate cultural conditions, academic institutions, and the media in the dissemination of ideas. Possible theoretical and historical readings include texts by Zygmunt Bauman, Santos Juliá, Edward Said, Enzo Traverso, and Raymond Williams.
SPAN 5300/7300, SEM: Readings in Nineteenth Century Literature: Ideology & Genre
Professor Juan Pablo Dabove, Mondays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
This seminar focuses on canonical narrative texts from Latin America. Two central themes will dominate the critical examination of the texts. First, the liberal / conservative divide. This divide defined the century, and it manifested itself differently in different countries: from all-out civil war in Mexico, to spirited but peaceful debates in the Argentine press around topics such as civil marriage or the separation of Church and State, to participation in patronage networks in Imperial Brazil. But, beyond this, the seminar will examine how this divide was not (or not only) presented as a mere topic in texts that will be analyzed, but how it defined the narrative form itself (the nature of the conflict that guides the narrative, the treatment of time, space, language, the construction of the characters, the nature and performance of emotions, among other points). The second theme will consider how Latin American writers appropriated and transformed European genres (the historical novel, the romance, the gothic, the scientific / fantastic hybrid), motifs and stock characters, according to specific needs and identity paradigms.
A tentative list of texts (in alphabetical order):
- Acosta de Samper, Soledad. Los piratas en Cartagena
- Alencar, José de. O Guaraní
- Altamirano, Ignacio. El Zarco.
- Darío, Rubén. Cuentos fantásticos.
- Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis. Sab.
- Gorriti, Juana Manuela. Sueños y realidades
- López, Vicente Fidel. La novia del hereje.
- Lugones, Leopoldo. Las fuerzas extrañas.
- Mármol, José. Amalia.
- Matto de Turner, Clorinda. Aves sin nido.
SPAN 5430/74340 SEM: Lexical Frequency and Contextual Conditioning Effects
Professor Esther Brown, Tuesdays, Thursdays 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Research on variable production of linguistic forms has provided a clear understanding of the ways in which factors of the target context can shape realizations of sounds, words and constructions. Studies investigating variation in speech seek to consider, or statistically control, linguistic, extralinguistic and/or discourse~pragmatic factors operating upon the target form of interest, because these predictors constrain the variation in anticipated ways. Usage-based research has determined that these forms, which reflect the probabilistic conditioning of the factors of the production context, become registered in memory as variant forms of words (and/or constructions). Thus, contexts of use affect linguistic productions and such productions, in turn, can impact lexical representations. Nevertheless, words and constructions differ significantly with regard to their exposure to conditioning factors of the discourse context. That is, opportunity biases arise naturally in use whereby some words co-occur with specific conditioning factors significantly more than others. In this seminar, we will closely examine research claims regarding the role of word frequency in linguistic variation to explore untested correlations between word frequency and contextual conditioning effects. Evidence will be drawn primarily from studies of Spanish.