Graduate Course Schedule (500 MA/ 600 PhD) 

First day PhD Seminar in Spring 2024

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SUMMER 25

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FALL 25

MA COURSES

POR 511: Portugues for Spanish Speakers T&TH 11.00-12.20 pm in EARTH&SPACE 177.  Prof. Monica Panigassi Vicentini

A one semester accelerated course in Brazilian Portuguese for students with a native of near-native command of Spanish. This course uses Spanish as a base for study of Portuguese grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. By the end of the semester students will be prepared to read advanced materials and will have acquired a basic proficiency in speaking, writing and comprehension of standard Brazilian Portuguese. A grade of B- or above will satisfy the graduate language proficiency requirement in Portuguese for the MA or PhD. Department consent is required for enrollment.

SPN 532 Interdisciplinary Approaches to Hispanic Studies. TOPIC: Indigenous Cultures T&TH 05:00-06:20 PM in PHYSICS P123. Prof. Valeria Meiller

Indigenous Cultures: The Contemporary Arts and Literatures of Abiayala. This class reframes “Latin America” as “Abiayala”—a term meaning “land in full plenitude,” originally conceived by the Guna people of present-day Panama. Adopted by Indigenous communities and their allies, Abiayala resists colonial denominations and centers Indigenous cosmologies and perspectives. Students in this course will engage with 20th- and 21st-century literature and visual art that destabilizes understandings of the region that have privileged colonial languages and the nation-state as the primary entry points for cultural analysis. Instead, students will be invited to explore non-Western approaches to land and territory through plurilingualism and relational aesthetics. To honor cultural specificity, we will approach each body of work with respect and generosity and welcome speakers from the communities studied as much as possible throughout the semester. By tuning into decolonial modes of listening, we will create new depth and dimension for the study of Abiayala's politics and aesthetics.

SPN 542 Studies in Modern Spanish Literature. TOPIC: Migration Narratives T&TH 03:30-04:50 PM in SOCBEHAV SCI S228. Prof. Daniela Flesler

Course description

SPN 573 Studies in Modern Latin American Literature. TOPIC: Rivers in Latin American Culture M&W 05:00-06:20 PM in PHYSICS P117. Prof. Javier Uriarte

This MA course will explore the representation of rivers in Latin American culture and literature, with a focus on works from the 19th century up to our present. How can different watery entities be described, imagined, interpreted, transformed from the perspective of local and indigenous communities, travelers, thinkers, and statesmen? How are local and national identities and ideas molded by the presence of waterways? Rivers have been considered central to human and non-human communication, circulation, commerce, and cultural exchanges. We will explore in depth these relationships between rivers and the human and non-human worlds, and discourses of modernization and belonging. Some authors to be discussed are Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, João Guimarães Rosa, Euclides da Cunha, Horacio Quiroga, Felisberto Hernández, Daniela Catrileo, Ramiro Sanchiz, Lucrecia Martel, Paz Encina, Carolyna Caycedo, Juan L. Ortiz, Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Aílton Krenak.

 

PHD COURSES

SPN 612. Topics Seminar. Red Theory (Indigenous Art and Practice) W 03:30-06:20 PM in HUMANITIES 2036. Prof.  Joseph Pierce

Red is a worldview, a material, an epithet, a critical stance. Red is at once an idea and a symbol; form and function. A history. A feeling. This course investigates the critical possibilities of redness, from early colonial depictions of Indigenous populations in the Americas to nineteenth century racial politics to contemporary reappropriations of redness as an identity. Focusing on the symbolic, material, and critical functions of the color red, this course deals with the racializing politics of Indigeneity, responses in art and literature, as well as the Indigenous epistemologies that take redness as a form of engagement with politics, embodiment, and place. Course will be taught in English.  Image: Upper section of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, I See Red: Snowman, 1992. Oil, acrylic, paper, newspaper, and fabric on canvas, 66 x 50 in.

Theory and practice of language teaching SPN 691 is an applied methodology and linguistics course. A required course for teaching assistants. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor, Department chair, or graduate program director. SPN 693 is to be taken in conjunction with the student's teaching assignment. Each week's discussion centers on problems of applied linguistics or grammar. Discussion will also be focused on methodology (audio-lingual method, pattern drills, language laboratory, and preparation of examinations).

SPN 695 Dissertation Prospectus M 03:30-06:20PM in HUMANITIES 2036. Prof. Paul Firbas

This seminar (conducted in Spanish and English in a workshop format) is required of all advanced PhD students at or near the end of their course work, usually in their 5th semester. While the course offers extensive practice in advanced academic writing skills, its primary objective is to help students define and articulate their doctoral research project. Therefore, this seminar requires two final outcomes: 1) the required dissertation prospectus and 2)  a fellowship proposal closely aligned with the prospectus. We will examine the key components of a strong dissertation project and research proposal in our field, including the definition of the corpus or object of study, the theoretical or methodological framework, the research plan and its feasibility, narrative structure, keywords, bibliography, and personal statement.

 

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SPRING 25

MA COURSES

SPN 506: Bilingualism MW 6.30-7.50 pm in Frey Hall 222.  Prof. Elena Davidiak

This course examines the concept of bilingualism and its various iterations, with special references to English-Spanish bilingualism. We will discuss bilingualism as a societal, structural and cognitive phenomenon, including topics such as language contact, language acquisition and loss, and speak about the unique identity, capabilities and needs of the bilingual/multilingual speaker.

SPN 510: Hispanic Cultures. Mestizo Studies MW 5.00-6.20 pm in Humanities 1023. Prof. Paul Firbas

This course studies the term mestizo from its elusive and dynamic uses in the colonial period, its systematic implementation in Latin American national discourses from the late 19th century to mid-20th century (in novels, essays, poems and visual culture) to its critique and possible reformulation in current fiction and essays.  There will be in-class written assignments, oral presentations,  short written homework and a final research project.

SPN 532:  Interdisciplinary Approaches to Hispanic Studies. Contemp Latin American Film

TuTh 6.30-7.50 pm in Humanitites 3018. Prof. Sebastián López Vergara

This course focuses on contemporary Latin American and Caribbean cinema (from the 1970s to the present) to study a series of cultural, political, and social processes that have defined the region for the last 50 years. However, rather than approaching film as history, we will think about how these audiovisual forms of representation shape and, sometimes, challenge what we know about the region and its contemporary history.

PHD COURSES

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FALL 2024

See our full Fall 2024 course list here

A one semester accelerated course in Brazilian Portuguese for students with a native of near-native command of Spanish. This course uses Spanish as a base for study of Portuguese grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. By the end of the semester students will be prepared to read advanced materials and will have acquired a basic proficiency in speaking, writing and comprehension of standard Brazilian Portuguese. A grade of B- or above will satisfy the graduate language proficiency requirement in Portuguese for the MA or PhD. Department consent is required for enrollment.

This seminar will focus on the creation of literature, visual art, performance, and music within contemporary Caribbean culture. We will examine aesthetic and critical responses to the current social, ecological, and political challenges facing the region, as well as the historical construction of the Caribbean as a zone of "hospitality”. Instead of following a strict chronological order or providing discrete accounts of national traditions, we will organize the texts around common historical and aesthetic themes to explore art's relationship to mourning, debt, political unrest, the pandemic, state violence, colonialism, ecological disasters, and tourism economies in the region.

While concentrating on the artistic production of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, we will reference dialogues with Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean texts, shedding light on key continuities and divergences constitutive of this corpus. We will also address gender politics, racial politics, gay/queer sexual politics, colonialism, political oppression, and their relation to aesthetics. Significant historical events such as Hurricanes Irma and María, Puerto Rico's Summer of 2019, Cuba's Movimiento San Isidro, Puerto Rico's Act 60, and the Dominican Republic's abortion ban will be considered in mapping artistic production.

Authors will include Achy Obejas, Allora & Calzadilla, Glorimar Marrero, Macha Colón, Johan Mijail, Yara Liceaga, Rita Indiana, Mara Pastor, Pedro Cabiya, Roque Salas, Yoss, Juan Carlos Quiñones, Jamaica Kincaid, Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, and Jorge Enrique Lage, along with critical essays by Mimi Sheller, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, and others.

This seminar studies the historical imaginary constructed around religious and racialized minorities in Spain through literature, material and visual culture, and performance. It studies the social, religious, and political processes that determined the spaces afforded to these “Others” in Iberian societies, and the historiography and memory built around them. Texts from the medieval period to the present will include selections of Alfonso X el Sabio’s Primera Crónica general and Cantigas de Santa María, mudejar architecture in its relationship to conversion efforts, El Abencerraje, selections of Cervantes’ Don Quijote, Quevedo’s Execración contra los judíos, García de la Huerta’s Raquel, Galdós’ Aita Tettouan, Goytisolo’s Don Julián, King Juan Carlos’ 1992 dual speeches celebrating al-Andalus and Sepharad, festivales de moros y cristianos, controversies surrounding mosques in Spain, Law 12/2015 de nacionalidad para los descendientes de judíos sefardíes, Ortiz’ “Fátima de los naufragios,” Gutiérrez’ Poniente and Retorno a Hansala, Bendahan’s “Condecoración,” and El Hachmi’s La hija extranjera.

In this course we will propose an alternative genealogy of 20th century Spanish cinema. Films for analysis and discussion will be chosen for their use of innovative visual and soundtechniques and experiments with new forms of story-telling. While we will prioritize films that challenge dominant ideologies (and the censors), the list of films will extend beyond the“usual suspects” identified in Spanish film history with the emergence of a dissident, anti-Francoist cinema to include lesser known films and filmmakers.

 

 

 

 

Theory and practice of language teaching. Applied methodology and linguistics in classroom situations. A required course for teaching assistants. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor, Department chair, or graduate program director. 

SUMMER 2024

See our full Summer 2024 course list here

SPRING 2024

MA Courses

SPN 503 Spanish Linguistics. #SPANISH AS HER
3 credits.TU 04:00-06:50PM. HUMANITIES 3020. Lilia Ruiz-Debbe

TOPIC: Current Issues for Spanish Heritage Speakers and Second Language Learners in formal classroom settings.

This course will focus on the Spanish Heritage Speaker and the L2 learner, specifically on the cognitive and linguistic processes that determine the route of acquisition, rate of acquisition, cross-linguistic influences, and the interlanguage variability.  

SPN 510 Hispanic Cultures. #CHILD & YA LIT
3 Credits.MW 05:30-06:50PM. PSYCHOLOGY A 146. Kathleen Vernon

TOPIC:  Children’s and Adolescent (YA) Literature in Spanish

An introduction to the study of children’s and adolescent literature and media created in Spanish, with works drawn from across Latin America, Spain, and the Latinx US. We will read and analyze texts that address a broad range of ages, from picture books for non-readers to chapter books and longer YA novels as well as comics/graphic novels and films. Primary readings will be supplemented by critical articles and book chapters that treat general concepts and methods in the field of children’s literature or offer different approaches and critical frameworks for studying individual works. We will also discuss the selection and use of children’s and adolescent literature in the classroom and the home, making a point to address the focus on children’s and adolescent literature and media in a deeply polarized world. 

SPN 523 Golden Age Literature. #THE NEW LITERA
3 credits. MW 04:00-05:20PM. CHEMISTRY 126. Victoriano Roncero-Lopez

TOPIC: La nueva literatura de España

En los siglos XVI y XVII se produjo en Europa una revolución cultural que estableció las bases de la cultura europea desde ese momento hasta nuestra época; así surgieron nuevas concepciones del hombre, de la sociedad, de la política, de la economía y de las Bellas Artes. Como consecuencia de esta revolución, la literatura y el teatro conocieron importantes avances. Sin duda, el hecho fundamental fue el nacimiento de la novela moderna, que se produjo hacia 1552 cuando se publicó Lazarillo de Tormes; también se produjo un cambio trascendental en el teatro, aunque esta innovación se retrasó hasta finales del siglo XVI y principios del XVII con la creación del teatro nacional por parte de Lope de Vega, con nuevas concepciones de la tragedia y de la comedia. Por último, a principios del siglo XVI, con la obra poética de Garcilaso de la Vega asistimos a una nueva poesía, entroncada con la cultura clásica y la italiana, pero con una adaptación a la idiosincrasia de la cultura española. Durante el semestre analizaremos textos de estas disciplinas para comprender mejor cómo reflejaron los cambios sociales que se estaban produciendo en la Europa moderna.

Spanish Language for Graduate Students:

SPN 591, 592, 593 Spanish Language Acquisition I. 4 Credits. 
Sec 01 MWF 09:00-10:15AM in FREY HALL 316
Sec 02 TUTH 11:30-01:20PM in FREY HALL 316
Sec 03 TUTH 11:30-12:50PM in LGT ENGR LAB 154
Note: Offered as SPN 111

SPN 594 Spanish Lang. Acquisition IV. 3 credits.
LEC 01 TUTH 11:30-12:50PM. SOCBEHAV SCI N310 TBA
Note: Offered as SPN 212

PhD Seminars

SPN 612: Cultures of Dispossession
Thursdays 04:00-06:50 pm in HUMANITIES 2036. Prof. Sebastian Lopez Vergara

This course is an advanced discussion of some of the main debates in critical and cultural theory that engage with questions of dispossession and struggle in the Caribbean and Latin America. In particular, we will center on colonial, racial, gender, and sexual oppression as sketched by interdisciplinary formations such as Indigenous, Black, Feminist, and Postcolonial studies in the last 30 years. We will ask: if colonialism is a structure and not an event, as anticolonial critique has established, then what are the processes that constitute and reproduce it? Are all these colonial structures gendered and racial formations, and what theories of power do we need to understand their persistence and adaptation? Moving beyond their period of emergence during Iberian imperialism, how do colonial projects and their distinct modes of violence shape the different iterations of the modern nation-state in the region? If the contemporary moment is often characterized by the reemergence of “non-modern” forms of dispossessive violence, what are the histories of our present? And, finally, what are the implications of these histories for contemporary struggles?

SPN 652: Colonial Textual Cities and Andean Borderlands
Weds:  04:00-06:50 pm in HUMANITIES 2036. Prof. Paul Firbas

This doctoral seminar explores the semiotics of Hispanic urban spaces imposed on the Andean geography and its intricate relation to textual culture and media history in the early modern period (1600 to 1750). Some of the questions that will guide our inquiry are: What was the meaning of “indio criollo” used by indigenous urban dwellers in a multiethnic city like Lima by 1600? How did Spanish cities in the Andes transform and reshape indigenous cultures? What was the impact of the new colonial cities in the global politics and culture of the Spanish Monarchy? What was the role of printed culture in the popular daily life in the viceroyalty of Peru? The course will study Spanish and Andean Renaissance and Baroque texts and textuality, focusing on a broad range of discourses and materialities, from cosmography, narrative chronicles, chorography, epic poetry, fiestas, city plans, viceregal censuses, relaciones de sucesos and newssheets, to travel accounts, including some French and English texts. The seminar includes a critical dialogue with Andean modern novels and discussions on Latin American literary theory, on historiography, philology, and methodological considerations. All students are expected to write short responses, give an in-class presentation, and write a final research paper on primary sources and critical problems studied in class. The seminar will be taught in Spanish.

SPN 662: Imagining Amazonia: labor, nature, and the State
Mondays 04:00-06:50 pm in HUMANITIES 2036. Prof. Javier Uriarte

In this course we will try to approach the immense complexity and richness that the representations of the Amazonian space have adopted throughout this last two centuries. This extraordinary complexity can be explained by the fact that this space is shared by eight different South American countries. Not just Spanish and Portuguese are spoken in these lands, but also English, and innumerable indigenous languages, some of them threatened with extinction. The several indigenous communities (with their diverse cultures and languages) living in this space (some of which have not yet encountered white men) significantly add to the cultural dynamics of the region. This explains in part that we are going to read texts originally written in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. We will also read texts by native writers and activists, and we will read the work of cultural anthropologists who have studied the native modes of thinking, representing and understanding the world and the relationships between the human and non-human. One of the central ideas that has organized this course is that the Amazonian space can only be understood if a strong comparative approach is adopted. The Amazon as discourse is in part a product of many texts, it is in itself a Babel tower.

SPN 693: Practicum in the Teaching of Spanish Language
3 credits. MW 08:30-09:50AM. HUMANITIES 105. Prof. Lilia Ruiz-Debbe

This course is to be taken in conjunction with the student's teaching assignment. Each week's discussion centers on problems of applied linguistics or grammar. Discussion will also be focused on methodology (audio-lingual method, pattern drills, language laboratory, and preparation of examinations).

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Fall 2023

See our full Fall 2023 course list here

This course traces a genealogy of Latin American and Caribbean critical theory from the beginning of the 20^th century to the contemporary moment. It will focus on a corpus of authors who produce diverse and creative approaches to multiple modern problems related to processes of capital accumulation, colonialism, racialization, and gender and sexuality, both global and local. Initially, we will study the centrality of Marxist thought in contemporary social and cultural theory. However, the course emphasizes these authors’ critical appropriation and production of social theories and histories to analyze national and regional contexts. We will study different cultural, social, political, and economic conflicts in the Andes, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Southern Cone, and we will establish relationships and dialogues between the authors who have produced theoretical and thematic fields on these conflicts. The course draws special attention to the question of land, exploitation, Indigenous and feminist politics, racial oppression and justice, and colonial dispossession, as well as different historical projects of social liberation

This course explores the radicality of Francisco de Goya’s visual world. From being the most important painter at the court of the King of Spain, to witnessing a cruel war, to being a deft, exiled artist, Goya experienced extreme situations in his life that are reflected in his radical works of art and is a living testimony of how resilience in life can be translated into unrestrained creativity despite it all. His traumas are visualized in raving works such as the print series Los desastres de la guerra (The Disaster of War), or the Pinturas Negras (Black Paintings). Students will analyze 18th and 19th-century Spanish society and history through the lens of Goya’s art, which significantly shaped Modern Hispanic visual culture and cinema. This course is imagined, on the one hand, as a journey in the life of Goya in which we will navigate the dramatic historical events that were happening during his time, so that Goya’s visual world will be our History Book. On the other hand, cinema will be a significant part of this course. We will discuss the dialogue between Goya’s painting, prints, and drawings and film production, in order to explore how influential Goya’s radicality was and still is in Spanish and international cinematography. At least one visit to one of the New York City Museums that keeps Goya’s paintings of works on paper will be offered as an extracurricular activity and will allow us to see and discuss in person important masterpieces by the artist. 

“Politics of Crime” examines, through critical analysis, the carceral system in the Iberian Peninsula. We will focus on what was called the “penitentiary question”, that is, the penitentiary reforms, looking particularly at how intellectual reformists envisioned the existence of the prison buildings within the cities and in the colonies, how they faced the treatment of prisoners inside the prisons themselves as well as their social reintegration on release. Particular attention will be given to the nineteenth century, but we will also look at the cultural representations of the criminal through literature and film and at the treatment of political prisoners during the Civil War (1936) and contemporary society. Finally, we will consider the issue of overseas prisons in the nineteenth century, especially in the Philippines.  We will study a variety of sources: archival documents (building plans, penal codes, etc.), literary texts, paintings, films, documentaries, and newspaper articles, among others.  Classes will include lectures, discussions, audio-visual material, and students presentations.

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Summer 2023

See our full Summer 2023 course list here

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Spring 2023

This course is about Critical Disability Studies, from a theoretical, historical, and cultural point of view. We will discuss how disability is constructed and viewed in contemporary society. We will inquire into who is considered disabled and what the consequences of being discriminated against are. We will focus on physical and intellectual diversities to understand them. In fact, in this course, we will discuss the importance of language and the differences between using the vocable disability and/or diversity. We will study the representation of the disabled body in culture, both in the US and in Iberian cultural production (ie Spain) from the nineteenth century until nowadays. Through specific case studies, we will study human and cultural differences and discuss issues of gender, race, varying abilities and disabilities, socioeconomic levels, and sexual orientation. We will put into question the construction of an “abled” society. We will also focus on medicine and science, as medical discourse and treatises have established what a disability is. We will understand that disability is a social construct. One session this semester will focus on prenatal testing and abortion.

Readings will include Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Tobin Siebers, Lennard J. Davis, The United Nations’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Susan Antebi, Benjamin Fraser, Miguel Gallardo, Cristina Morales, Ruth Hubbard, Alison Kafer, Benito Pérez Galdós, among others. We will also study visual culture (painting, comic, film). Guest speakers will be invited.

MA COURSES

SPN 513 Spanish as Second Language Acq
Prof. Lilia Ruiz-Debbe
TU 04:45-07:35PM HUMANITIES 1023

This topic examines how language development in bilingual individuals is different from that of monolinguals, how individuals learn their first language (L1), how they learn their second language (L2), and the relationship between both languages, including how L1 affects the understanding of L2 in the user's mind. Prerequisite: SPN 393 or LIN 101 or HUL 324. Offered also as SPN 465.

SPN 532 Interdic Appr Hispanic Studies: URUGUAYAN WEIRDOS
Prof. Javier Uriarte
W 04:25-07:15PM MELVILLE 4315

This course explores the slippery and theoretically complex category of "raro" (strange, weird, uncanny, exceptional), which has been central in the writings of canonical Latin American writers such as Rubén Darío. In the twentieth century, Uruguayan critic Ángel Rama used the notion to characterize a type of "anti-realist" writing that was not necessarily fantastic but that could imply a non-conventional way of seeing, describing and relating to the world. In fact, most of the canonical Uruguayan writers have been described as "raros": from Felisberto Hernández to Juan Carlos Onetti, from Delmira Agustini to Marosa di Giorgio, from Armonia Somers to Mario Levrero, from Lautréamont to contemporary writers such as Pablo Casacuberta or Teresa Puppo. These are some of the authors we will discuss as we explore the different articulations of "weirdness" in their work. Students will acquire a basic familiarity with canonical Uruguayan works and authors as we will work on the figure of the narrator, the notion of "autoficción", and the characteristics of fantastic and anti-realist literature. Offered also as SPN 405.

SPN 573 Studies in Modern Latin America: PHOTOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS
Prof. Joseph Pierce
TH 04:45-07:35PM EARTH&SPACE 069

Photography has played an important role in creating national subjects, defining intimate relationships, and establishing a visual grammar of modern culture. In the late-nineteenth century, the popularization of photography coincided with the institutionalization of positivist thought and method, and thus both anthropology and scientific racism across the Americas, often in concert with nascent museum archives. The museum, the photographer, and the scientist all worked in concert to create this field of modern visuality. This course traces the origins of both photography and anthropology in Latin America, paying special attention to how Indigenous and Afro-diasporic subjects were studied, framed, and photographed. These subjects were not simply passive figures in anthropological and photographic regimes but endeavored to create their own forms of visual culture, resistance, and refusal. This course will attend to the contradictory impulses of representation and knowledge that developed in this period of modernization. Offered also as SPN 435.

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Fall 2022

Topics courses:

Theater in 17th century Spain became the most important and popular form of cultural entertainment. Playwrights of that period understood very well the formula to attract a great variety of public: men and women; middle class and nobility, even the monarchs, attended the performances regularly in the «corrales de comedias». The audience witnessed  love relationships, tragedy, power struggles, philosophical or religious dilemmas. These plays showed empowered women, who controlled their lives, and the country’s government.  Through a comprehensive analysis of  plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molinas. And Calderón de la Barca we will discover the way of life and thinking of 17th century Spanish society.

The Cuban Revolution and Its Discontents: Film, Music, Literature

As Jennifer Lambe and Michael Bustamante have stated, "the field of Cuban revolutionary history is at once saturated and, paradoxically, “underdeveloped.”" In this course we will study the cultural production generated during the Cuban Revolution from the years immediately preceding its triumph, roughly from the assault at the Cuartel Moncada in 1953, through present-day political and artistic manifestations. We will study the 1960s and the 1970s most intensively, as the signal years of revolutionary aesthetics and counter-aesthetics, with some attention to the 1990s Special Period in Times of Peace and recent resistance movements in the 21st-century, such as the Movimiento San Isidro of 2021.

Through film, visual culture, music, and literature, we will pay special attention to gender politics, racial politics and gay/queer sexual politics, critiquing the established political discourse (which we will study in speeches by Fidel Castro and other items of official policy) and tracing a current of oppositional discourses and also mixed discourses that struggle with the desire for inclusion in revolutionary goals, on the one hand, and the absence of civil society, on the other.

Specific issues studied include the situation of Woman in the Revolution as “a Revolution within the Revolution,” in Fidel Castro’s 1966 phrase; the rich visual culture of the Revolution, with the 1959 establishment of the Instituto Cubano de las Artes e Industrias Cinematográficas (the venerable ICAIC) and a blossoming of comic books and animation; the development of revolutionary music and the privileging of the trova over other Cuban sounds; and the relationship to international liberationist movements, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean. Authors, filmmakers and musicians studied include Dulce María Loynaz, Virgilio Piñera, Julio García Espinosa, Lydia Cabrera, Wifredo Lam, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Sara Gómez, Juan Padrón, Néstor Almendros, Lourdes Casal, Reinaldo Arenas, Jesús Díaz, Reina María Rodríguez, Nancy Morejón, Heberto Padilla, Silvio Rodríguez, Celeste Mendoza and Los Aldeanos.

SPN 542 Studies in Modern Spanish Lit. Topic: Domestic work

SPN 652 Colonial Latin-American Cultures. Topic: Colonial Textualities in the Extended Andes

This doctoral seminar studies the complex uses of writing and print culture in the extended Andean region (from Panama to Chile) from 1550 to 1750. Although our main focus will be on materials produced in European codes within the colonial context, such as chronicles, maps, epic poems, relaciones de sucesos or news pamphlets, the seminar will also study the interaction of Spanish and indigenous languages and semiotic artifacts. Our discussions will include 20th century narratives and criticism (i.e. J.M. Arguedas and William Rowe) to trace the history and transformations of some critical categories for our understanding of Andean cultures  (i.e. the lettered city). All students are expected to write a final research paper on colonial or early modern primary sources based on the material and critical problems studied in class. The seminar will be taught in Spanish. For more information, please contact paul.firbas@stonybrook.edu 

 SPN 662 19th-Century Latin-Am Cultures. Topic:  Lit and Politics in Latin American, 19th Century

This course on Literature and Politics in 19th century Latin America will be an in-depth study of influential texts from the region that have sought to rethink the status of the new republics after independence. We will analyze the ways in which these works establish symbolic forms of exclusion that have concrete effects on reality. How is the notion of citizenship understood, and which are the symbolic new boundaries of the nation? At the same time, the course will focus on the presence of voices of people writing from the margins of the new republics and that struggle to be considered as part of them. How were issues of gender, race and sexuality negotiated in these tumultuous and eventful years? Two aspects that will be particularly discussed have to do with the territorial component of the nation-state. We will explore how borders were reconfigured and how the national space was imagined, represented and, sometimes, conquered. The discursive logic of inclusion-exclusion had concrete effects on the ground, as it constituted the reasoning behind war, conquest, or actual policies that had the objective of erasing or invisiblilzing certain groups. We will also pay attention to the discussions surrounding race and the abolition of slavery, particularly in Brazil and the Caribbean. Particularly at a time when the interests in the field have moved away from the nineteenth century, we will seek to reassert the importance of the political and aesthetic discussions of the period as essential for the understanding of contemporary cultural and political debates. Authors to be studied include Simón Bolívar, Esteban Echeverría, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Mármol, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Alberto Blest Gana, Clorinda Matto de Turner, José Martí, Rubén Darío, José Hernández, Joaquim Nabuco, Eduardo Acevedo Díaz, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, José de Alencar.    

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SUMMER 2022

BASIC AND INTERMEDIATE LANGUAGE COURSES  (PDF Brochure)

SESSION 1

• SPN 591: Spanish Language Acquisition I
• SPN 592: Spanish Language Acquisition II
• SPN 593: Spanish Lang Acquisition III

SESSION 2

• SPN 591: Spanish Language Acquisition I
• SPN 592: Spanish Language Acquisition II
• SPN 594: Spanish Lang. Acquisition IV 

CULTURE AND LITERATURE COURSES (Poster 510 and 515)

 

 

SUMMER 2022

Topics course:

SPN 510 Hispanic Cultures- Puerto Rican Poetry & Diaspora

FLEX 1:00 AM 1:00 AM

Online Asynchronous

Carlos Vicéns

An introduction to the study of 20th and 21st Puerto Rican poetry. This course will focus on the transformations of poetic language that have taken place in and through the scope of the Island and its diasporas. Through books of poetry, poetry journals, and anthologies, we will question the natures of these transformations vis-à-vis the political and social realities of Puerto Rico, its modernization but continuous colonial status, and the phantasmagorical presences of polemical and revolutionary figures within the text itself, such as Pedro Albizu Campos, Luis Muñoz Marín, Lolita Lebrón, and Juan Antonio Corretjer. We will also start questioning the complex, and sometimes paradoxical relationships between poetry and politics. This seminar may be repeated for credit when the topic changes. Conducted in Spanish.

SPN 515 Spanish Comp and Translation

FLEX 1:00 AM 1:00 AM

Online Asynchronous

Elena Davidiak

This course is aimed at developing an understanding of the general principles of written translation, as well as providing an overview of the grammatical, lexical and stylistic similarities and differences between English and Spanish.  The students will also be acquiring  practical skills in translating between English and Spanish by working on a variety of written texts, including literary pieces, and discussing their projects.

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Spring 2022

SPN 510  Hispanic Cultures

Paul Firbas

(cl#47696)       TU/TH  4:45pm - 6:05pm

Topic: Mestizo studies

Description: This course studies, in the first part, the history of the term mestizo from its elusive and dynamic uses in the colonial period (as seen in legal documents, narrative accounts, poetry and other textual and visual materials) to its systematic implementation in Latin American national discourses in the early to mid 20th century, as seen in cultural essays, novels and paintings of the "indigenista", "negrista," and "criollista" movements. In the second part, we will explore the current vitality of the term in literary and cultural studies (in contrast to transculturation, heterogeneity, diversity, etc), in new formal political projects (i.e. constitutions), as well as in recent indigenous texts and performances. In general terms, the course is an interrogation of race and ethnicity in Latin America (focusing in Mexico and the Andean region), mainly through close and contextual reading of texts in Spanish, but also through visual culture.

SPN 532 Interdisciplinary approaches  

Fernando Loffredo

(cl#48098)       TU/TH   6:30pm - 7:50pm

Topic: Travelling Objects

Description: This course explores the visual culture of the global Spanish Empire through a cluster of exciting stories of traveling objects. We will analyze early modern global history through the lens of the circulation of things, ideas, and artworks as a practice that significantly shaped Hispanic culture. The course is imagined as a journey in which we will navigate and discuss the mutual cultural exchanges between Spain and its territories in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, as part of an extraordinarily extended network of political relationships and conflicts. After having introduced and discussed theories on “mobility,” “circulation,” and “the contact zone,” we will take advantage of this theoretical framework to examine several outstanding cases of objects and commodities that travelled across the early modern Spanish world.

SPN 573: Studies in Modern Latin Am Lit

Sally Sabo

(cl#55611)   M/W   6:05pm - 7:25pm

Topic: Border Crossings

Description: This class, taught in Spanish, will explore the term frontera (border/boundary) as it relates to the struggle to survive within or leaving the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala).  We will analyze the term frontera from a geographical, ideological, economic, and social perspective, with a focus on the experiences of citizens of the Northern Triangle as they navigate and flee the poverty, corruption, and violence plaguing their nations. Literature studied will include El sueño de retorno by Salvadoran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya; ElPaís de Toó, by Guatemalan novelist Rodrigo Rey Rosa; La odisea del norte by Salvadoran novelist Mario Bencastro; excerpts from nonfictional works, including Caravana by Guatemalan reporter Alberto Pradilla; and the film Sin Nombre (Fukunaga, 2009). During this course, we will challenge our own “thinking boundaries” as we explore the themes of hope, fear, uncertainty, stability, belonging, and exclusion. The role of gangs, relevant current events, and Guatemala and El Salvador’s post-civil war societies will be discussed.

SPN 609: Literary and Cultural Theories

Joseph Pierce

(cl#55342)      W   4:25pm - 7:15pm

An introduction to literary and cultural theory centered on the central questions that animate theoretical discussion among literary and cultural scholars today. Special emphasis is placed on theoretical discourses and practices originating in Latin America and Spain as well as how scholars in these regions have incorporated, modified and enhanced theories produced elsewhere.

A required course for students in the Spanish Ph.D. program.

SPN 623 Early Modern Iberian Cultures

Victor Roncero Lopez

(cl# 55614)   TH 3:00pm - 5:50pm

Topic:  Validos in XVII century Spain

Description:  With the death of Philip II in 1598, a significant change took place in the mechanics of governance in Spain, which resulted in the emergence of a new political figure: the valido o privado. Philip III did not have the desire nor the ability to govern, so he delegated all his power in the hands of the Duke of Lerma, who became the most powerful man in the Empire. Painters, playwrights, and political writers saw in this new governing figure a very interesting character to portray in their works. At the same time favourites like the Duke of Lerma and the Count Duke of Olivares used painters like Rubens, Maino or Velázquez, and writers and playwrights like Quevedo, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, and Saavedra Fajardo as propagandists who presented them as extraordinary statesmen to the rest of the nobility and Spanish society. These artists and political theorists tried to establish the functions and limits to the political power of the validos. In this seminar we will analyze: paintings by Rubens, Velázquez, Maino, among others; plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina and Calderón de la Barca, and theoretical works by Quevedo and Saavedra Fajardo.

SPN 685 Caribbean Cultures

Lena Burgos-Lafuente

(cl#55343)   M  4:25pm - 7:15pm

Topic:  El Caribe elemental : natura, pensamiento, poiesis.

As we discussed in a 2017 conference here at Stony Brook, the Caribbean has been the first and last place to confront the legacy, dislocations and myths of colonialism. Ever since Eric Williams’s pioneering work in the 1940s, which placed Caribbean slavery and labor patterns at the heart of industrial capitalism, scholars, poets, writers, performers and film-makers have sought to come to terms with this sociocultural archipelago and its didactic role in mediating the imperatives of western “modernity.” Since since European colonization began, Caribbean societies have been structured by a central paradox, deemed to be both ‘backward’—an outpost of the deranged, dragooned, deracinated and degraded – and a microcosm of futurity—where flux, fluidity and competing trajectories of confluence produced something entirely new and even laudable that was not limited to capital.

This course examines a number of works that put forth, embody or question the putative poetics of the Caribbean. We first redefine the space of the transatlantic Caribbean, taking note of islands, cosmopolitanism, and world capitalism as keys to its phenomenological existence. Both Antonio Benítez Rojo and Édouard Glissant, two distinguished thinkers of Caribbean aesthetics, proposed concepts to explicate the particularity and contemporaneity of the Caribbean region (the repeating island and the poetics of relation, respectively), which will be our starting point to discuss the elemental forces of earth and water that have long played a role in Caribbean poetics, as well as the conceptual trappings of Caribbean intellectual life and its presumed objects. Both writers question the fixity of islands that traditional national-popular conceptualizations long upheld. From there, we proceed with two parts, Political Geographies and Writings of Disaster. We will study classic Caribbeanist texts alongside other texts that initiative other dialogues around temporality and perception.

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Please click on semester link for course offerings: WINTER 2022 (January 4 - 22, 2022)

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Winter 2022

SPN 582: The Hispanic Tradition in The United States

Online/asynchronous lecture

Zaida Corniel

Topic: NYC in the Hispanic/Latinx Imaginary

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course aims to explore literary and visual narratives produced by Hispanic/ Latinx authors and artists portraying the city of New York. Readings will include texts from the 19^th century till the present. It will be taught in Spanish. Some readings might be in English.

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HLL Graduate Course Archive

Summer 2021 to Spring 2017