Spring 2017 Seminar Descriptions
PORT 5110, SEM: Sobre a "literatura marginal" brasileira dos séculos XX e XXI: um novo olhar sobre o cânon
Professor Marcelo Schincariol Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:00-2:50 p.m.
Este curso tem como objetivo mais amplo promover uma discussão teórica sobre a noção de “literatura marginal”, tendo em conta suas repercussões nos processos de produção, recepção e circulação da obra literária. Voltando-se para o contexto da literatura brasileira dos séculos XX e XXI, e privilegiando a prosa de ficção, o enfoque recairá sobre a obra de três escritores comumente chamados de “vozes da periferia”: Paulo Lins, Ferréz e Sacolinha. Será inevitável, nesse persurso, avaliar como a literatura dita “marginal” dialoga com a tradição literária brasileira.
SPAN 5140/7140, SEM: Networks of Books, Authors, and Readers in Medieval Iberia and the Mediterranean
Professor Núria Silleras-Fernández Thursdays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
This seminar is going to explore networks of books, authors, and readers in Medieval Iberia and the Mediterranean. How did texts and ideas circulate and in which contexts? What types of motifs, topics, and ideas travelled? What books were translated and why? What books were printed in the fifteenth century and why? Were there Iberian, Mediterranean, European networks of authors and readers who circulated particular texts? What was the role of patronage in the process? We will study how Christian, Muslim, and Jews circulated texts and ideas. We will explore the notion of authorship, patronage and the social reception of literary models leading to the creation of discourses, tastes, opinions, and the emergence of norms that not only regulated behavior, but also social acceptability.
We will focus on a series of texts written in the Middle Ages as a whole, canonical and non-canonical, predominantly written in Spanish; however, in consideration of the linguistic diversity of Medieval Iberia we will also read works in other peninsular languages, and also texts belonging to other literary traditions that are fundamental to understanding Iberian cultural production.
SPAN 5220/7220, SEM: Science-Fiction and social change in Modernist Spain (1870-1936)
Professor Juan Herrero-Senés Tuesdays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
Travels to the Moon? Remote islands with Amazons? A time machine? The Apocalypse? In Spain??!! This course challenges the assumption of a realism-driven literary production in Spain by proposing a look at one of the neglected faces of peninsular cultural modernity, the output of different forms of science-fiction (hard SF, prospective fiction, microcosmic romances, pulps, utopias and dystopias) during the economical and socio-political modernization in the last decades of the 19th century up to the outbreak of the civil war. Class discussions include a theoretical approach to SF genre and its evolution, historical and socio-political contextualization, and readings from both well-known and little-known authors such as Nilo María Fabra, Clarín, Miguel de Unamuno, Luis Araquistáin, Azorín, José Lion-Depetre and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.
SPAN 5300/7300, SEM: Travel to Mythical Places
Professor Leila Gómez Wednesdays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
In this seminar, we will learn about travelers' experiences in the Western world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Specifically, we will examine the work of artists, archaeologists, writers, and photographers during their trips to other continents. We will critically analyze how the rest of the world is perceived and constructed in the travelers' writing, theories, and visual images, and how the idea of the “West” is constructed as well in these travels. Because these travelers often occupied a privileged position of enunciation, one of the main course objectives will be to explore how such a position was challenged in their encounters with local cultures, languages, people, and institutions. We will learn about their quests, their pursuits of knowledge and adventure, their fascination with the “otherness” of “mythical places,” their engagement with politics, and their return home. In many cases, they brought home objects, artifacts, samples, drawings, pictures, maps, etc. that were placed in museums and studied in labs and universities. Furthermore, we will examine the mobility, transportation, and translation of these objects to and outside the metropolis, and the importance of travels in the modern production of scientific knowledge and art.
We will study mainly European and South American travelers, their fiction, non-fiction and artistic work, among them we will discuss the travels of Désiré Charnay (photographer in Mayan Mexico), Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in Europe, Africa and the United States, Flora Tristán in Peru, Antonin Artaud and André Breton in Mexico, Diego Rivera in the Soviet Union, Tarsila do Amaral in Paris, and Roberto Bolaño in Mexico and Spain (and Africa).
SPAN 5320/7320 SEM: Crime and Writing in Modern and Contemporary Latin American Literature
Professor Peter Elmore Mondays 3:30-6:00 p.m.
Violence, deceit, transgression, evil and guilt are powerful themes running throughout Latin American texts invested in both making sense of social problems and reflecting on the practice of writing. Remarkably, criminal masterminds and authors, as well as detectives and readers, bear far more than a passing resemblance in the works of authors writing within or outside the conventions of the crime fiction genre. In this seminar, we will discuss and analyze and array of non-fiction books, short stories, and novels focusing on murder, theft, swindles, extortion, forgery, and conspiracies, among other forms of unlawful activity.
Books
Borges, Jorge Luis. Historia universal de la infamia
Arlt, Roberto. Los siete locos/Los lanzallamas
Usigli, Rodolfo. Ensayo de un crimen
Walsh, Rodolfo. Operación masacre
Vargas Llosa, Mario. La ciudad y los perros
Puig, Manuel. The Buenos Aires Affair
Fonseca, Rubem. Agosto
Piñeiro, Claudia. Las viudas de los jueves
Mendoza, Elmer. Un asesino solitario
Ortuño, Antonio. La fila india
SPAN 5430/7430 SEM: Usage-based Phonology
Professor Esther Brown Mondays & Wednesdays 2:00-3:15 p.m.
This course serves as an introduction to usage-based approaches to phonology. We will contrast functionalist and cognitive perspectives with more formal descriptions of phonological rules and representation. We will examine what phonological phenomena can tell us about the nature and size of lexical units. An emphasis will be placed on exploring phonetic, experimental, and diachronic studies in order to understand the nature of phonological representation in memory. Whenever possible, data and examples will be taken from Spanish.