2017-18 Graduate Courses
Fall 2017
SPANPORT 455 - Comparative Studies in Latin American Cultures
Radical Women: Feminist Critique and Feminine Writing in Latin America.
The seminar seeks to critically engage the intersection between feminist critical theory and feminine literature in contemporary Latin American culture. We will examine the critical potential of feminist critical thought to de-essentialize concepts of identity, de-naturalize ideas of embodiment and experience, open spaces of creative construction of dissident subjectivities and reactivate the plurality of heterogeneous sense-making forms. By destabilizing archives, historiographies, hegemonic discourses, we explore how contemporary feminist thought illuminates the cultural-ideological dimension of conflicts of value, signification, power, representation and interpretation that inform the social and political practices of identity, resistance and opposition. The course aims to offer a view of theoretical production of both Latin American and Anglo-European feminisms, holding a plurality of expressions and conflicts resulting from multiple intersecting identities. Finally, the new interpretive frames posed by globalization will be analyzed, as well as the way in which Latin American feminisms have confronted neoliberal regimes and built an internationalist theoretical and political perspective.
Tuesdays 2:00 - 4:50pm
Winter 2018
SPANPORT 430: Sound(ing) Race, Gender and Class: Readings in Latinx Popular Music and Literature
This seminar will introduce students to Latinx cultural studies through an analysis of Latinx popular sonic traditions and literary texts. While musical traditions circulate hemispherically across Latin America, specific sounds and rhythms have been central sites for the construction of Latinx postcolonial identities. Salsa, corridos, cumbias, bachatas, and nortenas, for instance, have become expressive cultures that articulate the postcolonial experiences of diverse ethnic communities in Latino USA who have had limited access to high forms of art and literacy.The course will begin by introducing students to various theories about popular culture and music –concepts such as productive pleasure, listening as a critical act, and performance as the embodiment of resisting identities—that diverge from the aesthetic approaches to literary texts. What does it mean to listen rather than to read? How can we construct social meanings out of musical performances? How does the concept of voice relate to Latinx decolonial knowledge? By listening to musical performances, learning about particular musical genres, and reading literary texts that propose a critical dialogue with these sonic traditions, we will be able to expand not only our understanding of Latinx expressive and popular cultures as critical sites of resistance, but also to engage methodologically and theoretically in popular music as a site where sounds challenge the logocentric hegemony of reading in our production of knowledge. Course requirements include a class presentation, weekly written responses to the readings, and a final, 8-10 page original research paper.
Instructor: Frances R. Aparicio
Tuesdays 2:00 - 4:50pm
SPANPORT 480: Brazilian Modernism and Modernity: From Imitation to Anthropophagy and Beyond
In this course, we will discuss the anxieties created by notions of “imitation” at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century in Brazil, and the debates they created not only in the field of aesthetics, but also in the pseudoscientific discourse of sexology, criminology and psychopathology. We will be particularly interested in understanding how these debates on modernity and imitation of French culture evolved through the post-1922 Modernism avant-gardes, and the anthropophagic movement in particular, and the extent to which the latter represented a solution for the anxieties and aspirations of the writers of the period. We will focus on fictional works by Brazilian writers ranging from the abolition of slavery (1888) and the proclamation of the Republic (1889), to the 1920’s avant-garde movements. We will also engage with contemporary theories of imitation and repletion Reading knowledge of Portuguese or Spanish is helpful, but not required.
Primary works will include: Raul Pompeia’s O Ateneu (1888) [Trans. The Atheneum, ISBN: 0810130793); Aluízio de Azevedo’s O Cortiço (1890) [trans. The Slum, ISBN-10: 0195121872]; Machado de Assis’ Dom Casmurro (1899) trans. Dom Casmurro: a novel ISBN-13: 978-0374523039; João do Rio’s Vertiginous Life (1911); Oswald de Andrade (TBD); Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma (1928).
Theoretical works may include works by Antonio Cândido and Roberto Schwarz, Viveiros de Castro (Cannibal Metaphysics), Gabriel Tarde, Harold Bloom, Gilles Delleuze, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, René Girard
Instructor: César Braga-Pinto
Mondays 2:00 - 4:50pm
SPANPORT 495: Practicum in Scholarly Writing and Publication
This required seminar focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects of scholarly writing and publication. Reading and discussion, as well as writing assignments, aim to help students become more familiar with different ways in which they will be able to engage with other scholars and critics in their respective fields and areas of specialization. Students will take up the mechanics of scholarly publication, modes of scholarly research and reading, and genres of scholarly writing. The primary goal for each student will be to produce a draft of a publishable scholarly article, based on a paper written for a previous course. Other requirements include: a book review linked to the seminar paper; a formal abstract of the seminar paper; and written feedback on other students’ writing. Seminar meetings will combine group discussion and oral presentations, workshop sessions focusing on written assignments, and, as needed, individual-tutorial meetings.
Instructor: Lucille Kerr
Thursdays 2:00 - 4:50pm
Spring 2018
SPANPORT 410: Introduction to Colonial Latin America: Narrative, History, Theory
This course offers a critical overview of the epistemological practices and ideological underpinnings that shaped the multi-faceted process of colonialism in what we call today Latin America. Focusing on indigenous, mestizo and European texts produced from the late fifteenth century to the late seventeenth century, we will explore the diverse power struggles, strategies of negotiation, and misunderstandings that underlie the production of the foundational textual knowledge in and about America.
Key to this course is the debate on the social and political consequences that the introduction of the European technology of writing had on Native American societies. A fundamental tool for colonial administration and Christian evangelization, alphabetic writing fostered both spaces of incorporation and of exclusion of indigenous peoples. We will analyze how writing shaped a particular notion of literary canon and of archive that tied knowledge to alphabetic writing, while framing indigenous peoples as objects to be analyzed, but not as subjects who produced knowledge. The colonial concept of literacy and the more recent postcolonial critical redefinitions of it will guide this approach.
This course also aims to frame the debates on colonial literature beyond the axis of literacy. For that, we will discuss how the concept of legibility can allow us to have a better understanding of the process of marginalization of native pre-Hispanic modes of inscription and communication, but also of native uses of alphabetic writing.
Going from colonial texts to theory, this course intends to familiarize students with major contemporary critical theories and debates that have led to a productive destabilization of terms and concepts such as indigeneity, indianness, discovery, conquest, colonization, empire, mestizaje, hybridity, and otherness.
Readings will be in English and Spanish. Class discussion will be in Spanish. All written work should be done in Spanish.
Instructor: Laura Leon Llerena
Mondays 2:00 - 4:50pm
SPANPORT 480: Toward a Decolonial Critical Theory
This course will consider key texts in Frankfurt School Critical Theory alongside Decolonial Thought and Decolonial Feminism. Discussions will consider conception of critique at work in these texts in order to construct a decolonial critical theory of society. Readings will include texts by György Lukács, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Aníbal Quijano, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Santiago Castro-Gómez, María Lugones, Yuderkis Espinosa-Miñoso, and Gloria Anzaldúa.
Instructor: Rocio Zambrana
Wednesdays 2:00 - 4:45pm