DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE
FALL 2013 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
(SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
NEW THIS FALL!
LEARN PORTUGUESE! Aprende a falar Português!
PORTUGUESE COURSES
PORT-UA 1.001 Portuguese for Beginners I
Monday, Wednesday & Thursday: 9:30am-10:45am
Miriam Ayres
Open to students with no previous training in Portuguese and to others on assignment by placement test. 4 points.
Beginning course designed to teach the elements of Portuguese grammar and language structure through a primarily oral
approach. Emphasis is on building vocabulary and language patterns to encourage spontaneous language use in and out of
the classroom.
PORT-UA 850.001 The Help: Gender, Race Relations and Domestic Service in Brazilian Culture (in
Portuguese) Tuesday & Thursday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Marta Peixoto
This is a course taught in PORTUGUESE; in some cases, papers may be written in English. Some of the readings are also
available in English translation. We will discuss an array of different kinds of texts: literature (novels, short stories,
poems, and a play), historical and anthropological studies, excerpts from manuals for employers, as well as several films,
in order to examine gender, race and class relations in Brazil from the late nineteenth- to the twentieth-first centuries
though the lens of domestic employment. How has this site of intimate exposure across class and racial differences been
variously imagined and constructed? What has been the role of gender and sexuality in relationships of such great power
imbalances? How do a culture and a national self-image that have often taken pride in the harmonious managing of
differences coexist in domestic spaces with stark socioeconomic disparities?
ADVANCED LANGUAGE COURSES
SPAN-UA 101 Advanced Spanish Conversation
Section 001: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday 9:30am - 10:45am
Patricio Orellana
Section 002: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday 11:00am - 12:15pm
Enrique Del Risco
Section 003: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Enrique Del Risco
Advanced Spanish Conversation is a four-credit advanced-level course designed to expand students’ speaking skills
beyond the practical, day-to-day language functions. The aim is to achieve a more elaborate and abstract use of the
language through the practice of pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms, and structures, within the contexts of selected subject
areas. Although the main concentration of the course is on the oral component, reading and writing skills are practiced as
well, as a basis for oral expression.
The goal of the course is to generate active participation through thought-provoking discussions and creative activities
that stimulate critical thinking as well as conversation. This is achieved through authentic readings from contemporary
sources — newspapers, magazines, literature, films, music, videos, etc. — that sensitize students to the actual concerns of
Spanish. A process of recording, transcribing and editing actual conversations will also help students better their Spanish.
Finally, various listening comprehension activities will be included to fine tune the student’s ear to Spanish sounds.
*THIS COURSE IS AN ADVANCED LANGUAGE ELECTIVE AND COUNTS TOWARDS THE SPAN MAJOR
AND MINOR*
** NATIVE SPEAKERS, PLEASE REGISTER FOR SPAN-UA 111 (you will need an access code from the
department)**
SPAN-UA 110.001 Techniques of Translation
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:30pm - 1:45pm
María José Zubieta
This course will explore the principles and problems of translation through readings and in-class workshops. The theory
will concentrate on ideas and issues about translation from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Students will develop their skills in Spanish-English translation by working with different types of genre, such as poetry,
short story, drama, film, comics, advertisements, and legal documents. The selected works will be translated into the
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student’s native language. Theoretical questions and problems will be addressed in the readings and discussed in class as
they arise within the translation exercises. Reading assignments are in Spanish and in English, but the discussions will be
conducted entirely in Spanish.
In-class workshops will focus on practice that highlights the difficulties of translating from one language into another.
Special attention will be paid to the structural differences between English and Spanish; the significance of tone and style;
the author's "voice" and the translator's "ear"; and the on-going issues of fidelity, literalness, and freedom.
Students will visit three sites in New York City that work with and depend on the Spanish-English bilingual community.
These sites are: the Museo del Barrio, El Repertorio Español, and the Southern District of New York Interpreter’s Office.
Students will write a report in Spanish on each of these three visits.
*THIS COURSE IS AN ADVANCED LANGUAGE ELECTIVE AND COUNTS TOWARDS THE SPAN MAJOR
AND MINOR)
SPANISH COURSES
SPAN-UA 200 Critical Approaches (in Spanish)
Section 001: Tuesday & Thursday 9:30am - 10:45am
María Lourdes Dávila
Section 002: Tuesday & Thursday 11:00am - 12:15pm
Laura Amelio
Section 003: Tuesday & Thursday 12:30pm - 1:45pm
David Souto
Section 004: Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Germán Garrido
Section 005: Tuesday & Thursday 3:30pm - 4:45pm
Carlos Padrón
Crticial Approaches is a 4 credit course designed to develop writing and analytical skills in Spanish. Structured around the
questions, What is literature? What is a text?, the course looks at literary texts divided by genres (poetry, short story,
theatre novel, essay) and non-literary texts (autobiography, testimony, documentary film, chronicles), and studies textual
structure and narrative point of view and focalization as key analytical considerations. Students in this course develop
skills for close textual readings in class discussions and engage in writing as a collaborative process that includes self
correction, peer correction and correction by the instructor. The course includes a final research paper that is developed
throughout the semester and has readings from the Golden Age in Spain or slave narratives in the Caribbean to modern
theatre and the novel. Critical Approaches counts for all Spanish majors and minors in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese and is a prerequisite for most upper level courses in the department. *THIS COURSE IS AN ADVANCED
LANGUAGE ELECTIVE AND COUNTS TOWARDS THE SPAN MAJOR AND MINOR*
SPAN-UA 225 Creative Writing in Spanish (in Spanish)
Section 001: Tuesday & Thursday12:30pm – 1:45pm
Mariela Dreyfus
Section 002: Tuesday & Thursday 3:30pm - 4:45pm
Lila Zemborain
El objetivo principal de este curso es ayudar a los estudiantes a reflexionar sobre el proceso creativo mientras elaboran y
producen sus propios textos. En ambas secciones del curso, poesía y cuento corto, el estudiante podrá explorar y ampliar
sus hábitos de escritura a través de ejercicios específicos y de la lectura de textos modelo. Se discutirá el trabajo de
algunos de los poetas y cuentistas de habla hispana más influyentes del siglo XX, como Octavio Paz, Vicente Huidobro,
Jorge Luis Borges y Silvina Ocampo, así como la obra de otros escritores contemporáneos. Simultáneamente, el
estudiante aprenderá a refinar y a pulir sus textos. Se prestará especial atención a la lectura y revisión de acuerdo a las
necesidades individuales. *THIS COURSE IS AN ADVANCED LANGUAGE ELECTIVE AND COUNTS TOWARDS
THE SPAN MAJOR AND MINOR*
COURSES:
SPAN-UA.0300.001 The Iberian Atlantic
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday: 9:30-10:45AM
James Fernandez & Zeb Tortorici
Recitation, section 2. Thursday 11:00 AM–12:15 PM
Taught in English - Fernandez
Recitation, section 3. Thursday 11:00 AM–12:15 PM
Taught in Spanish - Tortorici
No pre-requisite. Recommended early in the major, concurrent with language study. This course has a lecture on
Tuesdays & Thursdays (taught in English) and two recitations on Thursdays; one recitation is taught in English and the
other in Spanish. If you have completed SPAN-UA.0200 “Critical Approaches,” you are strongly encouraged to enroll
for section 3, taught in Spanish. See note below.
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The Iberian Atlantic explores the early modern Iberian Atlantic from Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) and indigenous America
through the era of Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization that closely tied the Iberian Peninsula, Western
Africa, and the Americas to one another in a vast oceanic inter-culture and political economy. The Iberian Atlantic refers
to what is now the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking world, on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. The body of water
functioned as a conduit allowing for contact between Europe and America through conquest and the migration,
displacement, and circulation of people, goods, and capital. The course focuses on those objects of trade—as they work
themselves into cultural, intellectual, and artistic production—to study the collective imagination of populations on both
sides of the Atlantic. We encounter a range of key primary sources that include architecture, textiles, travel writing,
poetry (wine poetry!), testimonies, and visual art.
The course is divided between lectures (in English) and recitations (in either English or Spanish). Recitations are an
opportunity to discuss that week’s readings and concepts introduced during lecture in a smaller group, run by the course
professor. Field trips will be planned to several of the following: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The James Pierpont
Morgan Library, The Jewish Museum, The Hispanic Society of America, The Cloisters, El Museo del Barrio, The
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Arts of the Islamic World gallery. If you take the English section, you need to write your
papers in Spanish. PLEASE NOTE THIS COURSE WILL BE OFFERED FALL 2013 BUT WILL NOT BE
OFFERED SPRING 2014.
SPAN-UA 305.001 The Cultural History of Latin America (in Spanish)
Lecture: Monday & Wednesday 9:30am - 10:45am
Dylon Robbins
Recitation, section 2. Wednesday 11:00am – 12:15pm
TBA
Recitation, section 3. Wednesday 4:55pm – 6:10pm
TBA
This course provides an introduction to the making of modern Latin America through the study of key cultural practices in
literature, visual art, film, and performance from the 19th century to the present. The fall 2013 course will examine three
sets of problems as constituted in Latin American cultural production: 1. Representation and Difference, 2. Intimacy and
Belonging, and 3. Culture and the State. The course will take up representative examples from throughout the region as
points of departure for the discussion of these problems, as well as to challenge conventional assumptions regarding the
homogeneity of the region. Particular attention will be given to the development of critical reading skills and textual
analysis in writing assignments.
Taught in Spanish. Pre-requisite: SPAN-UA.0200 “Critical Approaches.” This course is “writing intensive,” providing
additional support for essay writing in Spanish through weekly recitations.
SPAN-UA 320.001 Advanced PoetryWorkshop (in Spanish)
Lila Zemborain
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm – 3:15pm
Students refine their skills in poetry writing through close reading of individual poems, excerpts from poetry collections,
and complete books of poems written by contemporary Latin American and Spanish poets. In class, students reflect on the
creative process of poetry writing while they work on their own poems. Collaborative work and individual meetings with
the instructor are key to the dynamics of this workshop. *THIS COURSE IS AN ADVANCED LANGUAGE
ELECTIVE AND COUNTS TOWARDS THE SPAN MAJOR AND MINOR*
SPAN-UA 355.001 Is Spanish One Language (in Spanish)
Monday & Wednesday 3:30pm – 4:45pm
Judith Némethy
This course seeks to familiarize students with the historical, geographical, ethnic, and socio-linguistic factors that
contributed to the large variety of Spanish dialects spoken in the Americas. Why do people in Costa Rica speak like those
in Uruguay and not like their neighbors in Panama? Why do Colombians have a different vocabulary in Bogotá and in
Cartagena de Indias? Or when are “tú”, “usted” or “vos” used as forms of addressing people, and by whom? A web of
factors combined to create a wide range of variations to the Castilian Spanish brought to America, itself the result of
drastic changes since its evolution from its Latin roots.
The course is organized in four modules. Starting with the study of the origins of the language spoken by the colonizers
arriving from Spain since the end of the fifteenth century, the first module will deal with the development of the distinct
dialectal zones emerging in Spanish America through the intersection of political and geographical factors with the
sociological, cultural and linguistic influence of indigenous and African groups. From the vantage point of standard
Castilian Spanish, in the second module we will study the phonic, morpho-syntactic, lexical, and semantic changes
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undergone by the language, resulting in the distinct variations spoken today. The third module will cover the dialects of
five salient geo-linguistic areas of Spanish America, through a historical overview of each region and its specific
linguistic characteristics. We will complete this analysis in the fourth module, with a brief overview of the Spanish spoken
in the United States, and the new “dialect”, Spanglish, that has emerged from it.
SPAN-UA 550.001 Topics: Lo Intimo y lo Precario (in Spanish)
Monday & Wednesday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Gabriel Giorgi
En este seminario vamos a estudiar algunos de los temas y problemas que caracterizan gran parte de la producción
literaria y cultural latinoamericana de las últimas dos décadas. El curso se organiza alrededor de dos ejes, que condensan
aspectos singulares de la producción literaria reciente en América Latina:
1) las ‘escrituras del yo’ : la cuestión de la relación entre biografía y ficción, entre intimidad y exposición pública, y de los
nuevos modos de construir la subjetividad constituye uno de los temas más recurrentes en los debates críticos del presente.
Exploraremos estas cuestiones en textos de Fernando Vallejo, Sylvia Molloy, Alan Pauls, entre otros, junto a un film de
Eduardo Coutinho.
2) figuras de abandono, de la precariedad y del desamparo recurren, de los modos más diversos, en gran parte de las
ficciones literarias recientes, reflejando, de modos directos u oblicuos según los casos, transformaciones radicales de lo
político y de la relación entre política y literatura. Vamos a explorar cómo la literatura reformula diferentes modalidades
jurídicas, económicas, afectivas, sociales del “abandono” como signo del presente, a partir de textos de Rodolfo Fogwill,
Martin Kohan, y Roberto Bolaño, entre otros, y films de Lucrecia Martel y Federico León.
SPAN-UA 550.002 Topics: Kitsch, Decadence, and Melodrama in Turn of the Century Latin American Cultures (in
Spanish)
Monday & Wednesday: 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Laura Torres
Latin American cultures from both turns of the century are related through apocalyptic narratives associated with
modernity or with post-modernity, with decadence or disease, and with the height of market aesthetics. Both turns of the
century are characterized by processes of internationalization or globalization, by the exploration of different modes of
exhibition and consumption, and by the rise of subjectivities and sensibilities produced by technologies of mass culture.
This course proposes a transhistorical understanding of the concept “turn of the century” that relates the narratives of
19th-century Latin America with debates arising at the end of the 20th. We will organize the course by topics and
juxtapose cultural materials from both turns of the century to examine how contemporary texts reflect (un)critically on the
cultures of nineteenth century Latin America.
Although the main focus of this course will be on literary works, we will use different kinds of materials ranging from
paintings to photographs, to soap operas and performances. Some of the works studied will be José Asunción Silva’s De
sobremesa (1895), Amado Nervo’s El bachiller (1895), José María Vargas Vila’s Flor de fango (1895), Rubén Darío’s
Los raros (1905), Delmira Agustini’s Los calices vacíos (1914), Julio Ruelas’s paintings, Mario Bellatin’s Salón de
belleza (1994), Fernando Vallejo’s Chapolas negras (1995), Carlos Monsiváis’s Los rituales del caos (1995), Guillermo
Gómez Peña’s Apocalypsis mañana (2002), Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante’s Stuff (1999), Daniela Rosell’s Ricas y
famosas (1999), and Pablo Helguera’s Instituto de la telenovela (2002), among others.
SPAN-UA 625.001 Transatlantic Avant Gardes (in Spanish)
Tuesday & Thursday 11:00am - 12:15pm
Jordana Mendelson
Mobility, travel and cultural transmission mark the artistic and literary avant-gardes of the twentieth century in Europe
and the Americas, especially among those artists and writers who established contacts with their colleagues across the
Atlantic. Often these moments of contact generated specific works of art, exhibitions, and publications. This course will
study a selection of the works produced among Spanish speaking artists and writers, paying special attention to the
original moments of their production. We will begin with theoretical texts on modernity, and move from there to focus on
the different “locations” in which cross-continental exchange took place among artists and writers from Spain and Latin
America. Texts will be read in Spanish; some secondary material may be assigned in English. An interest in the visual arts
is highly recommended.
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SPAN-UA 763.001 Literature and Revolution in Latin America (in Spanish)
Thursday : 3:30pm -6:10pm
Sibylle Fischer
What makes a revolution, and how do we tell the story? Latin America has a long history of insurgencies against the state,
as well as military counter-insurgency. The history we will be tackling in this seminar starts with the revolutionary wars in
the early 19th century and the radical struggle against black slavery, and includes the Mexican revolution of 1910, the
Cuban revolution of 1959, the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 70s and their violent suppression by the
military, and the recent emergence of political movements in Venezuela and Bolivia that reclaim the revolutionary mantel.
We will take a close look at films (mostly) and novels (some) from Latin America that give us accounts of the experience
of politics turning violent, of revolutionary wars won and lost, and of dreams realized and squashed. How is that story
told, and by what means? Is it a new narrative, told by new means? An iteration of an age-old plot? Are there patterns to
be discerned? How does gender figure in the plots of revolution? What is the role of violence? Films to be discussed may
include Fernando de Fuentes’ Revolution trilogy (Mexico, 1930s), Bolívar soy yo (Triana, Colombia 2002), short
documentaries by Santiago Alvarez (Cuba 1960s), Lucía (Solás, Cuba 1969), Memorias del subdesarrollo (Gutiérrez
Alea, Cuba 1968), El otro Francisco (Sergio Giral, Cuba 1973), Queimada (Pontecorvo, Italy 1969), Terra em Transe
(Glauber Rocha, Brazil 1966), La hora de los hornos (Solanas, Argentina 1968), La sangre del cóndor (Sanjinés, Bolivia
1969), Che (Soderbergh, U.S.A. 2008), La batalla de Chile and Chile, la memoria obstinada (Guzmán, Chile, 1975-79,
1997), Taita Boves (Lamata, Venezuela 2010). Written texts may include Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo (Mexico 1915),
Ribogerta Menchú, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala 1983) Carlos Fuentes, Gringo Viejo (Mexico 1985), Alejo
Carpentier, El siglo de las luces (Cuba 1962). The seminar will be taught in Spanish, but the films will be available with
English subtitles. Requirements: weekly half-page response papers, 2 5-page papers (critical analysis of a film or a novel),
and a final exam (take-home).
SPAN-UA 765.001 The Man, the Myth, the Martyr: The Many Afterlives of Federico García Lorca
(in Spanish)
Monday & Wednesday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Bryan Cameron
“Yo soy revolucionario, porque no hay un verdadero poeta que no sea revolucionario.”
– Federico García Lorca
As Spain’s best-known modern poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) has, rather improbably, achieved
cult status since his assassination in 1936. Over the last several decades, particularly following the death of Francisco
Franco in 1975, the Andalusian iconoclast has become a highly contested cultural icon and political martyr both at home
and abroad. The purpose of this seminar will be to examine the nearly mythical aura surrounding both García Lorca and
his literary production, which has undeniably shaped the reception of his poetic and dramatic works since being killed by
Nationalist soldiers at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. We will open the semester with close readings of García
Lorca’s early poetry, which deals themes related to Andalusia and gypsy identity (Poema del cante jondo; Romancero
gitano), before moving on to the apocalyptic dreamscapes presented in the surrealist Poeta en Nueva York and the highly
imaginative film screenplay he also composed in New York (Viaje a la luna). Next, we will study the context surrounding
Spain’s Second Republic (1931-1939) before reading theatrical masterworks such as Yerma and La casa de Bernarda
Alba, which are often classified as rural tragedies. The course will conclude by analyzing the national and international
reception of García Lorca’s work, especially after his murder in the summer of 1936 – a crime that crusaders within
Spain’s Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica are still determined to solve by exhuming the poet’s
body from an unmarked grave in the hills of Granada.
Over the course of the semester we will explore themes related to gender, sexuality, desire, alterity, modernity, politics,
ideology and aesthetic innovation in the early twentieth century. We will also study visual arts, written texts and filmic
works by other Spanish intellectuals such as Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Rafael Alberti (19021999), Luis Cernuda (1902-1963), Antonio Machado (1875-1939), Dámaso Alonso (1898-1990) and Juan Ramón
Jiménez (1881-1958) in an effort to contextualize García Lorca’s works within a broader framework. Additionally, we
will view cinematic representations of García Lorca – produced after Franco’s death – in order to scrutinize the motives
behind his posthumous ascension from lyrical virtuoso to political martyr. In the end, one question persists: What is the
relationship between García Lorca’s work, his politically motivated murder and his astoundingly disparate critical
afterlives?
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Tentative units of study:
The Early Years (1898-1927)
Aesthetic and Political Avant-Gardes
Representation and Alterity
Spain and Modernity
Last Days, Death and García Lorca’s Posthumous Fame
SPAN-UA 950.001 Spanish Cinema (in Spanish)
Tuesday & Thursday 3:30pm-4:45pm
Jo Labanyi
The course, taught in Spanish, offers a survey of Spanish cinema from the 1960s to the present, through the study of 12
key films, with particular emphasis on the last two decades. Contextual information will be given about relevant political
and social factors. The classes will provide training in the cultural analysis of film texts, paying attention to how they
create meaning by implication as well as statement. Gender will be a key issue; the course will introduce students to
gender theory, which has been central to the discipline of cinema studies. Class and ethnicity will be important issues in
some of the films studied. Several of the films refer indirectly to the Spanish Civil War; others deal with memory in a
more personal context. The course also aims to provide an introduction to the analysis of film form. By the end of the
course, students should have the ability to analyze camerawork, mise-en-scène (décor, costume), performance style,
editing, and soundtrack, in order to appreciate how the audiovisual medium of film produces meanings through the
interrelationship of these elements. Spectatorship will be a major concern throughout the course, raising issues related to
the mechanics of the gaze and to processes of identification. We will also consider the ways in which films affect the
viewer at the level of bodily sensation (“the haptic”).
In addition to the two classes a week, there will be weekly screenings of the films studied. All students are expected to
attend the screenings, unless you have a conflict with another course, in which case you can view the films in the Avery
Fisher Media Center (Bobst, 2nd floor). NB most of the films are available only in PAL (European format) and need to be
viewed on one of the multi-region DVD players in Avery Fisher.
ENGLISH COURSES
SPAN-UA 302.001 Muslim Spain Literature and Society (in English)
Monday & Wednesday 11:00am-12:15pm
Sarah Pearce
Cross-listed with: MEIU-UA 706 & COLIT-UA 302
This course will offer intermediate- and upper-level students an introduction to the literatures and cultures of medieval
Spain, with particular focus on the those that flourished in areas under Muslim rule. In addition to reading literature, we
will consider the ways in which literary texts functioned in society as well as the ways in which in they can be read as a
reflection of social and historical concerns. Students will read canonical works of literature alongside other types of
writing, such as economic and historical documents and will have consider material and artistic evidence alongside the
textual record. Because of the focus on literature in its historical and material context, students will have the opportunity
to make use of many cultural and historical resources in New York City and the greater metropolitan area in the form of
visits to museums, libraries and other relevant sites. Topics covered may include: interactions between Jews, Christians,
and Muslims; the roles of women and the family in the Middle Ages; multilingualism; concepts of kingship and just rule;
depictions of heroism and vanity; religious observance and practice; and the rise of early forms of national identity.
SPAN-UA 951.001 Topics: Storytelling as Seduction (in English)
Wednesday 3:30pm-6:10pm
Gabriela Basterra
Cross-listed with COLT-UA 951
What makes storytelling so seductive?
Narrative creates the illusion of coherence by arranging experience as meaningful action in time through the
invention of a plot. This course studies the ways in which contemporary narratives help us to imagine a
significance for ourselves. By relating us to a beginning and to an end, narrative provides a sense of place, time
and finality, the illusion of belonging in the world. When we narrate, remarks Paul Ricoeur, we create a
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horizon of possibilities. Yet the allure of narrative is not always easy to discern. If, for example, we select
events and arrange them from the viewpoint of the character’s death, obliterating duration and process, those
events may be perceived as tragic. But organizing events from the viewpoint of the end is a choice, and not
always an innocent one.
Other questions: Do narrative roads not taken constitute historical possibilities left uninvented, unexplored?
Would the human capacity for action be enlarged by envisioning ‘virtual histories’ and imagining the ‘what
if…?’ When narrative closure is postponed or suspended, is sense suspended, too? Why are narratives of
failure so seductive? What happens when a particular experience becomes unavailable to language? How does
a trauma acquire the status of cause in psychoanalytic narrations? How do particular ways of sense-making
shape the ‘necessary fictions’ that constitute us as subjects? How do we confront narratives that frustrate our
expectations or that resist interpretation altogether, placing themselves beyond our reach?
Narratives may include works by Machado de Assis, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Samuel
Beckett, Robert Antelme, Federico García Lorca, Fernando Arrabal, Carme Riera, Juan Goytisolo, Ana María
Moix, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Javier Tomeo, Juan José Millás, Almudena Grandes, Orson Welles. Essays
by Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin,
Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Blanchot, Judith Butler, Elaine Scarry, Adriana Cavarero, Hayden
White.
SPAN-UA 980.001 Internship
Lourdes Dávila
Students wishing to do a for-credit internship should make an appointment to speak with Professor Dávila.
Majors may apply for an internship for either 4 credits or 2 credits, depending the number of hours they work.
Interns must work at least 10 hours for A 2-credit internship entails a minimum of 10 hours of work per week; a
4-credit internship entails at least 16 hours per week. Consult our Blackboard site to see available internships. In
addition to the work, students turn in journals, meet with professor Dávila, give a presentation at the end of their
internship, and turn in a midterm and final paper. You are welcome to pursue internship possibilities beyond
those listed on the Blackboard site: if you find an internship on your own, make an appointment with Professor
Davila to discuss it. A 4-credit internship, or two semesters of 2-credit internship may count as one course
toward the major requirements for all majors in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
SPAN-UA 995.001 Senior Honors Seminar
Thursday 11:00am-1:45pm
Gigi Dopico-Black
The Honors program in Spanish & Portuguese is a unique opportunity for students in one of our five major tracks to
undertake a sustained research project. In the course of a year, students will be able to work closely with individual
faculty members, while also having the chance to develop their own voice in scholarship and writing. The Honors
program consists of a two-term sequence. In the fall semester, Honors students meet weekly in a workshop-type setting
where they will develop their topics and projects under the guidance of the Honors Director and in discussion with their
peers. By the end of the semester, every student will have a well-developed project, including a workable outline and a
bibliography. Every student will also have found an individual faculty advisor with whom to work in the spring semester
while finishing the Honors thesis. The spring segment of the Honors Seminar is devoted to the writing of the thesis (40-60
pages). Students will arrange for an independent study with their individual faculty advisors, with meeting times to be
determined by each student and his or her faculty member. There are no regularly scheduled class meetings in the spring.
SPAN-UA 998 Independent Study
Jordana Mendelson
For majors only, no exceptions. By permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Majors who have completed preliminary requirements for the major (“foundations” courses) may have the
opportunity to pursue directed research for 2 or 4 credits under the supervision of a professor in the department,
in most cases a professor with whom they have previously taken an upper level literature/culture course.
Students should first contact the professor to discuss this possibility; the student and professor will devise a
syllabus to be submitted for approval to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
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MAP:
MAP-UA 541.001 Cultures and Context: New World Encounters
Monday & Wednesday 12:30pm – 1:45pm
Zeb Tortorici
Rcts TBA
What was America before it was called “America”? How did indigenous peoples understand and document their first
encounters with Europeans and Africans? We focus on how the convergence of indigenous, African, European, and Asian
peoples in the Americas created complex cultures, societies, ethnicities, and forms of religiosity. Beginning with the
“discovery” of the “Indies” by Christopher Columbus in 1492, we work our way thematically and chronologically through
the centuries of conquest and colonial rule, up until the wars of independence in the early nineteenth century. We also
examine the historical context before 1492 in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East (with an emphasis
on how particular Old World encounters affected New World encounters).
MAP-UA 544.001 Cultures and Context: Spain
Tuesday & Thursday 3:30pm – 4:45pm
Rcts TBA
Thomas Abercrombie
Spanish modernity, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: Spain has not been a major world power in over 200
years, during which its competitors and successor empires (France, Britain, and the U.S.) branded it, via a
conglomeration of ideas called the “Black Legend,” as a backwards and feudal bastion of superstition and
intolerance, good only for anthropologists and tourists. A hotbed of state-building in antiquity, Spain emerged
as a center of Renaissance learning under Arab and Berber rule. While the rest of Europe languished in
feudalism, its seven centuries co-existence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews saw the rebirth of classical
knowledge, the spread of literacy, the development of a human-centered cosmology, the emergence of narrative
self-making and the novel, and Europe’s first primarily urban society, where philosophy, the sciences,
architecture, and the arts flourished. After Christian princes defeated the last Islamic foothold in the Peninsula
in 1492, Castilian language and culture was the backbone of Spain’s imperial expansion across the Atlantic and
produced the first modern, disciplining state, the privileging of individualism, private property, and capitalism,
and theses of popular sovereignty, the nation state, and theories of racial inequality. Outpaced in
industrialization by the late 18th-century, still Spain (and the new nations of Spanish America) kept pace with
liberal reforms that culminated in the clash of competing fascist-capitalist and democratic-socialist ideologies,
leading to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, and the re-birth of Spanish democracy in the
post-Franco and European Union era, and Spain’s current avant-garde role in culture and the arts. Materials
include history, ethnography, literature, and film.
For more information please email us at: spanish.dus@nyu.edu
NS 8-1-13
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