Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

CATA 42100. Reading & Research. 100 Units.

Independent study with an individual faculty member.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

FREN 31505. Lire les littératures francophones : éléments d'analyse littéraire. 100 Units.

Ce cours est une initiation aux méthodes et aux techniques d'analyse littéraire. En travaillant sur des textes en vers et en prose issus des littératures francophones du Maghreb, de l'Afrique sub-saharienne et du Moyen-Orient, on apprendra à analyser les formes littéraires, les figures de sens, les procédés esthétiques et stylistiques, les structures et les voix narratives ainsi que les choix syntaxiques et lexicaux. On travaillera également sur des textes théoriques et critiques qui nous permettront d'approfondir nos lectures et de saisir les enjeux littéraires, culturels et intellectuels qui sous-tendent la création littéraire francophone.

Instructor(s): Khalid Lyamlahy     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): FREN 20500, 20501 or consent of instructor. Taught in French.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 21505

FREN 33333. Reading French for Research Purposes. 100 Units.

Reading French for Research Purposes prepares students to read and do research using scholarly texts in French. Students will build on their fundamental knowledge of French grammar and the most common vocabulary terms used in scholarly writing, while developing reading comprehension skills and working intensively with academic texts in their areas of research specialty. Students who perform well in FREN 33333/23333 will be able to synthesize key points, arguments and evidence in scholarly texts into their own research. The course also includes practice of skills necessary to pass the Academic Reading Comprehension Assessment (ARCA) in French, administered by the Office for Language Assessment (OLA). Undergraduate students have the option of taking the ARCA, or completing a final assignment in which they identify, cite, and describe the relevance of multiple French secondary texts in their discipline or to a specific project. Note: this course can be counted on a case-by-case basis and with approval from the French Undergraduate Adviser.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): PQ for 23333: FREN 10300 or 13333, placement into FREN 20100, or instructor consent. PQ for 33333: FREN 10300 or 13333, placement into FREN 20100, or the equivalent of one year college-level introductory French.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 23333

FREN 34420. Practices of Classicism in the French Seventeenth Century. 100 Units.

This seminar has two goals. One is to combine the text-based tradition of French literary studies with the image-based, comparative tradition of art history-and, in so doing, to change the taxonomies of both. The other is to re-evaluate French Classicism by attending to practices of reading, writing, performing, looking and making. The seminar's breadth is designed to appeal to all students interested in the theory and history of aesthetics, and the interleaving of visual and literary evidence. Looking will be no less important than reading, as we will conduct sessions with original objects in the Art Institute and in Regenstein Special Collections. Authors studied will include Corneille, Molière, La Fontaine, Pascal, and Descartes; among the artists, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, La Tour, and Callot. Critical readings will range from Leo Spitzer to Louis Marin and Foucault.

Instructor(s): Larry Norman and Richard Neer     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructors required for all students. For French credit, FREN 20500, 20501 or an introductory-level literature course taught in French is also required. The seminar will be conducted in English; all primary texts will be made available in both English translation and, for those with reading knowledge, in the French original. This seminar will travel to Paris during exam week (March 2027); airfare and lodging covered by university.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 24420, ARTH 45885, CDIN 44420, CMLT 44410, TAPS 44420, CDIN 24420

FREN 34690. Fairy Tales. 100 Units.

La plupart des contes de fées que vous connaissez, de "Cendrillon" au "Chat Botté", ont été écrits en français d'abord, et au dix-septième siècle, qui a été l'âge d'or de ce genre en France. Les enfants et les adultes connaissent bien les contes d'auteurs comme Charles Perrault ou les frères Grimm. En France, pourtant, les femmes ont été cruciales au développement du conte de fées, avec Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy, la comtesse de Murat, ou Gabrielle Barbot de Villeneuve (qui a écrit "La Belle et la bête"). Etant donné qu'ils sont en grande partie responsables de ce en quoi consiste, de nos jours, la beauté, et d'une certaine image de l'amour et de la place de la femme dans la société, aussi bien que de ce qui est relégué aux marges, se pencher sur la formation de ce genre et analyser ses histoires est nécessaire pour comprendre pourquoi et comment ces idées prirent racine. Est-ce que les contes de fées sont les premiers récits à mettre en scène des héroïnes de caractère, ou est-ce qu'ils n'ont fait que perpétuer le motif de la demoiselle en détresse ? S'ils étaient, comme un article l'a récemment proposé, les premières critiques du patriarcat, peut-on le percevoir également chez ceux écrits par des hommes et ceux écrits par des femmes ? Nous étudierons des contes de fées français, anciens et modernes, à la fois des textes et des adaptations cinématographiques, en nous appuyant sur des lectures théoriques au sujet du folklore et du féminisme.

Instructor(s): Pauline Goul     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): FREN 20500, 20501, or a literature course taught in French. Taught in French.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 24690

FREN 36220. Classicism and Romanticism. 100 Units.

This undergraduate/graduate course will examine the dynamic relationship between the French "Classicism" of the Age of Louis XIV and the later post-Revolutionary movement of Romanticism. We will pair readings of poetic, dramatic, and narrative works from the 17th century (e.g., Molière, Mme de La Fayette, Corneille, Racine) with later counterparts (Germaine de Staël, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Hugo, George Sand), probing changing conceptions of the role of literature and art, as well as shifting attitudes towards erotic love, social norms, and nature.

Instructor(s): Larry Norman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): FREN 20500 or 20501, an introductory-level literature course taught in French, or consent of instructor. Taught in French.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 26220

FREN 41815. Writing the Algerian War of Independence. 100 Units.

This course aims to examine the representation of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) in the work of Algerian and French writers. It will consider a corpus of testimonial texts, novels, and poetry in relation to the memory of the war, its traumatic experiences, and various forms of anticolonial struggle and insurgency. We will analyse the narrative, discursive, and poetic strategies used by authors to explore individual and collective memories and elaborate a politics of resistance and transformation in the Algerian context. Studied authors include Maïssa Bey, Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar, Mouloud Feraoun, Jean Sénac, Laurent Mauvignier, and Joseph Andras.

Instructor(s): Khalid Lyamlahy     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): All readings and in-class discussions will be in English. Students will have the option to write either in English or in French.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 41815, NEHC 41815

FREN 42100. Readings And Research: French. 100 Units.

Independent study with an individual faculty member.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

ITAL 32202. Italian Renaissance: Petrarch, Machiavelli, and the Wars of Popes and Kings. 100 Units.

Florence, Rome, and the Italian city-states in the age of plagues and cathedrals, Petrarch and Machiavelli, Medici and Borgia (1250-1600), with a focus on literature, philosophy, primary sources, the revival of antiquity, and the papacy's entanglement with pan-European politics. We will examine humanism, patronage, politics, corruption, assassination, feuds, art, music, magic, censorship, education, science, heresy, and the roots of the Reformation. Writing assignments focus on higher level writing skills, with a creative writing component linked to our in-class role-played reenactment of a Renaissance papal election (LARP). First-year students and non-History majors welcome.

Instructor(s): A. Palmer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Graduate students by consent only.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 22204, KNOW 12203, MDVL 12203, RENS 12203, RLST 22203, CLCV 22216, SIGN 26034, ITAL 16000, HIST 12203, HIST 32202

ITAL 32888. Narrative Frescos in Early Modern Italy. 100 Units.

In this course we will observe different ways to tell a story through painting, and we will analyze strategies used by artists in early modern Italy to describe space and time in visual terms. Students will engage with different artists, from Giotto to Raphael and Pellegrino Tibaldi, and different cultural and geographic contexts, from Padua and Bologna to Florence, Venice, and Rome, over the span of about three centuries.Students will explore a wide range of visual examples and textual sources on various subject matters, from poetry to history, from the Bible to vernacular accounts about saints, from mythology to contemporary chronicles, in order to investigate what kind of stories were told on the walls of halls and courts of honor, private rooms, or public spaces, aiming at understanding why each of them was chosen. Complex projects such as narrative mural and ceiling paintings usually involved a tight collaboration among artists, patrons, and iconographic consultants, all figures with whom students will become familiar. We will also analyse the theory behind the comparison of poetry and painting ("ut pictura poesis", "as is painting so is poetry") by investigating the meaning and the reception of this ancient concept in early modern times, and its implications on the social role of the artist. Students will investigate the significance of narrative frescos in early modern times, while also asking questions about their value and impact today.

Instructor(s): F. Caneparo     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course fulfills the following requirements in the ARTH major and minor: European and American pre-1800
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 32816, ARTH 22816, ITAL 22888

ITAL 32900. Vico's New Science. 100 Units.

This course offers a close reading of Giambattista Vico's seminal work, "New Science" (1744), which aimed to challenge prevailing notions regarding the fundamental principles of humanity. Often dubbed the "last Renaissance man" or a representative of the "Counter-Enlightenment," Vico rejected the detached rationalism of his time as he set out to recover the attitude and emotions relevant to the humanities in contrast to the natural sciences. His inquiry revolves around the connection between the factum or what is "made" - anything resulting from human skills (literature, art, law, institutions, etc.) - and the verum or God-begotten truth. What kind of epistemology and interpretive methodologies arise when we turn to Vico, Descartes's scourge? In our own dissatisfaction with rational empiricism, Vico's alternative unfolds as an epic exploration through time, guiding us to witness primitive humans uttering their first word, partake in Noah's ark journey, and retrace the origins of writing and the foundation of civilizations.

Instructor(s): Rocco Rubini     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 22900, FNDL 21408, CMLT 32501, CMLT 22501

ITAL 33502. Boccaccio's Decameron. 100 Units.

One of the most important and influential works of the middle ages-and a lot funnier than the "Divine Comedy." Written in the midst of the social disruption caused by the Black Death (1348), the "Decameron" may have held readers attention for centuries because of its bawdiness, but it is also a profound exploration into the basis of faith and the meaning of death, the status of language, the construction of social hierarchy and social order, and the nature of crisis and historical change. Framed by a storytelling contest between seven young ladies and three young men who have left the city to avoid the plague, the one hundred stories of Boccaccio's "Decameron" form a structural masterpiece that anticipates the Renaissance epics, Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," and the modern short story. Students will be encouraged to further explore in individual projects the many topics raised by the text, including (and in addition to the themes mentioned above) magic, the visual arts, mercantile culture, travel and discovery, and new religious practices.

Instructor(s): H. Justin Steinberg     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21714, MDVL 23502, ITAL 23502

ITAL 35600. Poets in Crisis: Masks, Voices, and Identity in 20th-Century Italian Poetry. 100 Units.

What does it mean to be a poet when no one is listening anymore? Twentieth-century Italian poetry begins with a crisis: the poet's loss of cultural authority. No longer prophets or public heroes, poets respond by reinventing themselves in surprising-and often contradictory-ways. This course explores how Italian poets grapple with this moment by adopting bold poetic postures, from exaggerated self-confidence to irony, playfulness, and self-doubt. We will follow a lively historical path through the century, encountering unforgettable poetic figures: the poet as celebrity and cultural icon (D'Annunzio), the poet embarrassed by his own verses (Gozzano), the mischievous clown (Palazzeschi), and the disenchanted sleepwalker (Sbarbaro). These postures help us understand not only individual poets, but also the emergence of major literary movements. Students will learn how poetic identity is constructed on the page through voice, tone, imagery, and form. Through guided close readings, discussion, and writing, the course builds skills in reading poetry attentively while considering how modern poetry redefines creativity, self-expression, and the social function of art."

Instructor(s): Maria Anna Mariani     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Taught in Italian.
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 25600

ITAL 36200. Renaissance and Baroque Fairy Tales and Their Modern Rewritings. 100 Units.

We study the distinctions between myth and fairy tale, and then focus on collections of modern Western European fairy tales, including those by Straparola, Basile, and Perrault, in light of their contemporary rewritings of classics (Angela Carter, Calvino, Anne Sexton). We analyze this genre from diverse critical standpoints (e.g., historical, structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist) through the works of Croce, Propp, Bettelheim, and Marie-Louise Von Franz.

Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 36700, CMLT 26700, ITAL 26200

ITAL 38400. Pasolini. 100 Units.

This course examines each aspect of Pasolini's artistic production according to the most recent literary and cultural theories, including Gender Studies. We shall analyze his poetry (in particular "Le Ceneri di Gramsci" and "Poesie informa di rosa"), some of his novels ("Ragazzi di vita," "Una vita violenta," "Teorema," "Petrolio"), and his numerous essays on the relationship between standard Italian and dialects, semiotics and cinema, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary Western culture. We shall also discuss the following films: "Accattone," "La ricotta," "Edipo Re," "Teorema," and "Salo".

Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year.
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 38600, FNDL 28401, ITAL 28400, CMST 23500, CMST 33500, GNSE 28600

ITAL 42100. Readings And Research: Italian. 100 Units.

Independent study with an individual faculty member.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

PORT 37300. Brazilian Culture: Race, Gender, Environment. 100 Units.

This course examines Brazil's history, literature and culture through the intertwined lenses of racial formation, gender politics, and environmental change. From the nineteenth-century slaveholding society of the post-Independence period to contemporary debates over the Amazon, including topics such as urban inequality and Indigenous land rights, the course traces how culture registers and contests power. We will cover works of literature, essays, film, music, and visual art alongside key theoretical texts to understand how Brazilian writers and artists grapple with the legacies of slavery, settler colonialism, and extractive economies. Particular attention is given to Black and Indigenous intellectual traditions, feminist and queer interventions, and the cultural politics of development and climate crisis. Topics include Afro-Brazilian religions, migration and urban peripheries, land struggles, rural modernity, and the aesthetics of resistance. Students will analyze how narratives of nation and nature are shaped by race and gender, and how environmental questions are inseparable from social justice. Taught in Portuguese. Students who are not proficient in Portuguese but have advanced competence in another Romance language and believe they can follow the course should consult the instructor.

Instructor(s): Victoria Saramago     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Taught in Portuguese. Students who are not proficient in Portuguese but have advanced competence in another Romance language and believe they can follow the course should consult the instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): PORT 27300

PORT 35000. The Amazon: Literature, Culture, Environment. 100 Units.

From colonial travelers to contemporary popular culture, the Amazonian forest has been a source of endless fascination, greed and ecological concern. The numerous actors that have been shaping the region, including artists, writers, scientists, anthropologists, Indigenous peoples, and the extractive industry, among others, bring a multifaceted view of this region that has been described as the paradise on earth as much as a green hell. This course offers an overview of Amazonian history, cultures, and environmental issues that spans from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. What are the major topics, works, and polemics surrounding the ways the Amazon has been depicted and imagined? How can the region's history help us understand the state of environmental policies and Indigenous rights today? What can we learn about the Amazon from literature and film? What is the future of the Amazon in the context of Brazil's current political climate? From an interdisciplinary perspective, we will cover topics such as indigenous cultures and epistemologies, deforestation, travel writing, modern and contemporary literature, music, photography, and film, among others. Authors may include Claudia Andujar, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Euclides da Cunha, Susanna Hecht, Davi Kopenawa, the project Video in the Villages, among others.

Instructor(s): Victoria Saramago     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English, with readings available in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Conversation session in Spanish and Portuguese may be created depending on student demand.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 35555, SIGN 26059, SPAN 25555, CEGU 25000, LACS 35005, PORT 25000, LACS 25005

PORT 42100. Reading And Research. 100 Units.

Independent study with an individual faculty member.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter

RLLT 34500. Digital Approaches to Text Analysis: opening new paths for textual scholarship. 100 Units.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students of literature, and more generally the humanities, to digital humanities methodologies for the study of text. Among the various digital approaches which will be introduced in class are concordances (retrieving occurrences of words), semantic similarity detection (finding similar passages across texts), sentiment analysis, stylometry (analysis of literary style), and topic modeling (automatic classification of texts). The course will highlight how these approaches to text can provide new avenues of research, such as tracing intellectual influence over the longue durée, or uncovering the distinguishing stylistic features of an author, work, or literary movement. Students need no prior knowledge of such methods, and the course will aim at providing the basics of computer programming in Python to give students the necessary tooling to conduct a digital humanities project. The source material for the course will be drawn from literary sources, and students will be free (and encouraged) to use texts which are relevant to their own research interests.

Instructor(s): Clovis Gladstone
Note(s): Students will need to bring a laptop to class.
Equivalent Course(s): RLLT 24500

RLLT 47000. Professional Academic Writing. 100 Units.

This course is open to all RLL students and will be run as a workshop. The primary goal is to work on the Qualifying Paper with the objective of producing a piece of work that might, with subsequent revision, be submitted to an academic journal for publication. This course is also appropriate for anyone who wants to work on a dissertation proposal or chapter. We will cover all aspects of professional writing, from abstracts and grant proposals to revising manuscripts after readers' reports.

Instructor(s): Rocco Rubini     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Open only to RLL students.

RLLT 48800. Foreign Language Acquisition, Research and Teaching. 100 Units.

This course provides students with a foundation in foreign language acquisition and sociolinguistic research pertinent to foreign language teaching, introduces current teaching methodologies and technologies, and discusses their usefulness in the classroom.

Instructor(s): Veronica Vegna     Terms Offered: Autumn

SPAN 33444. Fin-de-siglo, Modernización, Cultura, Exilio en Hispanoamérica: El caso de José Martí 100 Units.

Through a comprehensive study of the works of the Cuban writer José Martí, this seminar will explore key issues in the processes of cultural modernization that accelerated in Spanish America toward the end of the nineteenth century. This period witnessed the final collapse of the Spanish empire (with the loss of its last colonies, Cuba and Puerto Rico, in the War of 1898), the emergence of the United States as a new imperial power, the end of legal slavery, and the rise of an industrial, urban, and militant proletariat (a touchstone for a new conception of "social war" and of the political). All of this unfolded alongside a series of radical transformations in the cultural sphere, affecting literary aesthetics, the relationships among art, politics, and the market, and experiences of migration and exile. Martí's writing, produced largely in the United States, stands as a symptom and archive of this period. We will examine the arc of Martí's work, from his early writings and revolutionary poetry to his journalistic chronicles, culminating in his campaign diary, written in the heat of the final Cuban war of independence (1895) and an emblematic testimony to a life poised between art and politics, between desire and moral imperatives.

Instructor(s): Agnes Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Taught in Spanish. Open to advanced undergraduates with consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 33444

SPAN 33555. Learned Women: Spaces of Knowledge, Self-Actualization, and Power. 100 Units.

The hegemonic narrative of knowledge production in the Iberian Peninsula has historically centered on male writers, thus excluding contributions of women. This seminar will explore the intellectual interventions of medieval and early modern Iberian poets, professors, encyclopedists, and theologians who also happened to be women. Did these women present a perspective on knowledge-making different than their male counterparts? More importantly, what were the paths to knowledge that were available to them in a society that offered women limited social and intellectual roles? In this class we will be reading sources by Florencia Pinar, Teresa de Cartagena, Leonor López de Córdoba, Oliva Sabuco, among others; and critical pieces by Judith Butler, Andrea Dworkin, Silvia Federici, Luce Irigaray, and Sophie Lewis.

Instructor(s): Noel Blanco Mourelle     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 20300. Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 24555, SPAN 23555, GNSE 34555

SPAN 34202. Cervantes: Don Quixote. 100 Units.

In this course we will read Cervantes's "Don Quixote" (1605, 1615), paying attention to narrative aesthetics, language, genre, the politics of the novel, and the history of interpretation, among other aspects. Our close reading of the text will be informed by thorough contextualization within the social, cultural, and intellectual history of early modern Spain, Europe, and the Mediterranean, as well as by major critical and theoretical approaches to the novel.

Instructor(s): Miguel Martínez     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This course will be taught in English and has no prerequisites. Additional discussion sessions in Spanish will be available for interested students.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21221, CMLT 28101, CMLT 38101, SCTH 38250, SPAN 24202

SPAN 35555. The Amazon: Literature, Culture, Environment. 100 Units.

From colonial travelers to contemporary popular culture, the Amazonian forest has been a source of endless fascination, greed and ecological concern. The numerous actors that have been shaping the region, including artists, writers, scientists, anthropologists, Indigenous peoples, and the extractive industry, among others, bring a multifaceted view of this region that has been described as the paradise on earth as much as a green hell. This course offers an overview of Amazonian history, cultures, and environmental issues that spans from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. What are the major topics, works, and polemics surrounding the ways the Amazon has been depicted and imagined? How can the region's history help us understand the state of environmental policies and Indigenous rights today? What can we learn about the Amazon from literature and film? What is the future of the Amazon in the context of Brazil's current political climate? From an interdisciplinary perspective, we will cover topics such as indigenous cultures and epistemologies, deforestation, travel writing, modern and contemporary literature, music, photography, and film, among others. Authors may include Claudia Andujar, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Euclides da Cunha, Susanna Hecht, Davi Kopenawa, the project Video in the Villages, among others.

Instructor(s): Victoria Saramago     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Taught in English, with readings available in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Conversation session in Spanish and Portuguese may be created depending on student demand.
Equivalent Course(s): SIGN 26059, SPAN 25555, CEGU 25000, LACS 35005, PORT 35000, PORT 25000, LACS 25005

SPAN 36210. Witches, Sinners, and Saints. 100 Units.

This course examines representations of women's bodies and sexualities in early modern Iberian and colonial Latin American writings. We will study the body through a variety of lenses: the anatomical body as a site of construction of sexual difference, the witch's body as a site of sexual excess, the mystic's body as a double of the possessed body, the tortured body as a site of knowledge production, and the racialized bodies of women as sites to govern sexuality, spirituality, labor, and property in the reaches of the Spanish Empire.

Instructor(s): Larissa Brewer-García     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): For undergrads, SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor. Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26212, GNSE 36210, SPAN 26210, GNSE 26210, LACS 36212

SPAN 37660. Chilean Art and Literature During the Dictatorship. 100 Units.

On September 11, 1973, a US-backed military coup in Chile brought down the government of Salvador Allender, the first democratically elected Marxist president in Latin America. The military dictatorship that governed over the course of the following two decades brought about radical transformation to the macro- and micropolitical dynamics of Chile. This course is a survey of the art and literature produced during the years of dictatorship. We study the work of some of the most consequential literary and artistic figures active during the years of the dictatorship. The unprecedented level of experimentation in the arts and literature of this period will be studied vis-a-vis the radically shifted social and affective coordinates faced by those living in Chile during the dictatorship. Works by Catalina Parra, Diamela Eltit, Lotty Rosenfeld, Nelly Richard, Adriana Valdés, José Donoso, Raúl Zurita, and others.

Instructor(s): Sergio Delgado Moya     Terms Offered: Not offered this academic year
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 37660, LACS 27660, SPAN 27660

SPAN 38301. Poéticas Afrocaribeñas: de la esclavitud a Bad Bunny. 100 Units.

In this course, we will study key manifestations of the Afro-Hispanic Caribbean poetic tradition, from its earliest known expressions in the nineteenth century to present-day practices in hip-hop and reguetón. The course examines what is meant by Afro-Caribbean poetics, the tropological systems and thematic repertoires that have characterized it, how these have transformed over time, and the extent to which this poetry has served as a vehicle for exploring the cultural and racial identities of the region and as an instrument of resistance to various forms of extreme violence. The course will also introduce the concepts and methods necessary for poetic analysis. Materials to be studied will include the work of enslaved and free Afro-descendants in the late period of Spanish colonialism in the Americas (Plácido and J. F. Manzano); the experimental approaches of the Negrista avant-garde (Nicolás Guillén and Luis Palés Matos); feminist reformulations of these traditions (Nancy Morejón, Mayra Santos); and the music of contemporary artists such as Calle Trece, iLe, and Bad Bunny.

Instructor(s): Agnes Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): SPAN 22005 is recommended. Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 28300, RDIN 28300, LACS 28300

SPAN 42100. Rdgs/Rsch: Spanish. 100 Units.

Independent study with an individual faculty member.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter