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Bulletin Archive

This archived information is dated to the 2008-09 academic year only and may no longer be current.

For currently applicable policies and information, see the current Stanford Bulletin.

Undergraduate courses in Spanish Literature

SPANLIT 102N. Contemporary Latin American Theater

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Representative playwrights and theater troupes of Spanish speaking Latin America and the Caribbean, emphasizing the 60s and 70s. Topics: representation and politics; theatrical language and poetics; avant gardes and performance; teatro comprometido; psychodrama; influence of Brecht, Artaud, and the Theater of the Absurd. Plays by Emilio Carballido, Sabina Berman, Virgilio Piñera, Jose Triana, René Marqués, Luis Rafael Sánchez, La Candelaria, Yuyachkani, Osvaldo Dragún, Griselda Gambaro, Eduardo Pavlovsky, Egon Wolff. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Aut (Briceno, X)

SPANLIT 105N. Don Quixote

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. Topics include: theories of language and the novel; history of early modern Iberia; Muslims in Europe. Close reading technique. Sources include filmed version. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Aut (Barletta, V)

SPANLIT 106N. Contemporary Latin American Novel in Translation

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. Representative Latin American novelists who attained international readership after the literary boom. Critical readings and theoretical debates. Topics include: latinoamericanidad, reactions to magical realism, crime and the city, politics of translation, economies of prestige, revisions of dictatorship, relations with contemporary art, representations of class and gender, globalization. Works by Piglia, Vallejo, Aira, Bellatin, Melo, and Bolaño. Film adaptations by Piñeyro and Schroeder. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Spr (Hoyos, H)

SPANLIT 109Q. Ten Latin American Protagonists who Changed the World

(S,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sohomores. Life stories and portraits of Eva Peron, Frida Kalho, Che Guevara, Michelle Bachelet, sub-comandante Marcos, Lula , Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Pele, and Victor Jara. The dynamics of Latin American culture. Sources include documentaries, film, video, news, readings, and archives. GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Win (Ruffinelli, J)

SPANLIT 120. Introduction to Literary and Scholarly Research

Strategies and tactics for research and writing in the humanities; focus is on the Spanish-speaking world. How to write a research proposal; how to conduct research online and in the library; annotated bibliographies; bibliographical essays; rhetorical strategies; and common logical fallacies. WIM

3 units, Win (Surwillo, L)

SPANLIT 130. Cultural Perspectives in Iberia

The historical dynamics, linguistic plurality, and social complexity of the Iberian world. Topics include: war and revolution; absolutism and liberalism; republicanism; the crisis at the end of the century: the year 98; the civil war; dictatorships, Franco, and Salazar; the revolution of cloves and the transition towards democracy; and open society and El manifiesto por la lengua común. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Spr (Sanchez, J)

SPANLIT 131. Cultural Perspectives in the Luso-Hispanic Americas

Major theoretical debates about the construction of Latin American identities, from the 19th century to the present. Readings by writers, poets, philosophers, and historians, including Rodo, Retamar, O'Gorman, Vasconcelos, Henríquez-Ureña, Ramos, Paz, Carpentier, Lezama Lima, Borges, and Fuentes.

3-5 units, Win (Hoyos, H)

SPANLIT 136. Survey of Modern Iberian Literatures

1800 to the present. Topics include: romanticism; realism and its variants; the turn of the century; modernism and the avant garde; the Civil War; and the second half of the 20th century. Authors may include Mariano José de Larra, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rosalía de Castro, Benito Pérez Galdós, Migues de Unamuno, Pío Baroja, Joan Maragall, Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca, Salvador Espriu. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Win (Predmore, M)

SPANLIT 157. Introduction to Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Literatures

(Same as PORTLIT 157.) Topics may include: lyric and epic poetry; Jewish and Muslim literatures; the development of Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese prose; the Valencian golden age; texts of the Renaissance and Baroque; the literature of imperial expansion into Africa, Asia, and the Americas. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Aut (Barletta, V)

SPANLIT 161. Survey of Latin American Literature

From independence to the present. Topics include romantic allegories of the nation; modernism and postmodernism; avant garde poetry; regionalism versus cosmopolitanism; indigenous and indigenist literature; magical realism and the literature of the boom; Afro-Hispanic literature; and testimonial narrative. Authors: Bolívar, Bello, Gómez de Avellaneda, Isaacs, Sarmiento, Machado de Assis, Darío, Martí, Mistral, Vallejo, Huidobro, Borges, Cortázar, Neruda, Guillén,Rulfo, Ramos, Arguedas, García Márquez, Lispector, Menchú, and Bolaño. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Spr (Briceno, X)

SPANLIT 189A. Honors Research

Senior honors students enroll for 5 units in Winter while writing the honors thesis, and may enroll in 189B for 2 units in Spring while revising the thesis. Prerequisite: DLCL 189.

5 units, Win (Staff)

SPANLIT 189B. Honors Research

Open to juniors with consent of adviser while drafting honors proposal. Open to senior honors students while revising honors thesis. Prerequisites for seniors: 189A, DLCL 189.

2 units, Spr (Staff)

SPANLIT 193. The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar

The evolution of Spain's most recognizable director from marginal, transgressive amateur cinema to polished visual style. The deliberate blurring of frontiers between mass and high culture; his use of metafilmic allusions and attention to sexuality, extreme experiences, and marginal characters. From his early work to recent award-winning films. Prerequisite: spoken Spanish. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Aut (Ballo, J)

SPANLIT 199. Individual Work

Open only to students in the department, or by consent of instructor.

1-12 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff), Sum (Staff)

SPANLIT 219. The Iberian Inquisitions on Trial: Literature, Painting, Cinema, and History

Comparative analysis of how the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions have been represented during their time and in the present. Sources include trial documents, literature (Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Saramago, Delibes, Riera), paintings (Berruguete, Goya), movies (Ripstein, Uribe), and current scholarship. Cultural, aesthetic, and political connotations and significance. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Win (Builes, R)

SPANLIT 230E. Writing on the Ocean: The Tragic Maritime Literature of the Iberian Empires

The political and aesthetic dimensions of literary products of the Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish empires that uncover trauma and defeat and chronicle natural disaster, piracy, kidnap, and rape, human and financial loss. These texts open the door to issues such as colonialism, slavery, nation building, religion, gender, and science. Sources include Martorell, Curial e Güelfa, Guevara, Camões, Cervantes, and Portuguese shipwreck narratives. Discussions and texts in English; originals available.

3-5 units, Spr (Builes, R)

SPANLIT 241. The Short Story: Theory and Praxis

Creative writing workshop in Spanish. Latin American and Spanish short stories through the theory and craft of this genre. The formal elements of fiction including character and plot development, point of view, and creating a scene. Students write an original short story. Readings include Cervantes, Clarín, Borges, Ayala, García Márquez, and Piglia. No previous experience with creative writing required.

3-5 units, Aut (Santana, C)

SPANLIT 247E. Magical Realism and Globalization

Is magical realism a genre, a style, a politics, or a label for elaborate fiction from the Third World? Seminal works and their role in the 20th century. Topics include: postcolonial discourse, myth and truth, tradition versus modernity, and realism versus fantasy. Novels, plays, and short stories by García Márquez, Rushdie, and Morrison; films by Schlondorff and Begnigni; essays by Roh and Carpentier. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Aut (Hoyos, H)

SPANLIT 248. Politics, Terrorism, and Documentary Films in South America

State terrorism and revolution in S. America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay) from 1980 to 2008 through testimonies, literary and history texts, and documentary films. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Spr (Ruffinelli, J)

SPANLIT 275. Cuban Cinema since the Revolution

Fifty years of Cuban cinema, with an emphasis on the social and political changes inside the Cuban revolution and its reflections and consequences in film production. Films which deal the role of women in society (Retrato de Teresa), migration (Memorias del subdesarrollo, Lejanía), history (La última cena, Lucia), youth (Personal Belongings, El telón de azúcar), including films made by Cubans in the U.S. (El super).

3-5 units, Win (Ruffinelli, J)

SPANLIT 278. Senior Seminar: The Novelas ejemplares by Miguel de Cervantes and the Culture of the Baroque

Cervantes' representation of a new world characterized by geographical, social and cultural plurality. Topics include: the Baroque space (Deleuze); the fascination of alterity; the imperative of honor and the hermeneutic of defaud and disappointment; the theatralization of the environment and the new rhetoric; the language of the body and women as protagonist; neoplatonism; a new conciousness of authorship. Texts by Cervantes, Mraraval, and Villari. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Spr (Sanchez, J)

SPANLIT 278A. Senior Seminar: Love and Politics in Latin America from Romanticism to Postmodernism

Tthe relationship between love and power through representative literary texts from the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics: romanticism and the nation; modernism and postmodernism; affinities and kinship; love and desire; and gender, sexualities, and revolution. Authors: Isaacs, Bombal, Girondo, Vallejo, Neruda, García Marquéz, Córtazar, Valenzuela, Lispector. Film adaptations: El beso de la mujer araña, La virgen de los sicarios, Dona Flor e Seus dois maridos. May be repeated for credit.

3-5 units, Win (Briceno, X)

SPANLIT 293E. Baroque and Neobaroque

(Same as COMPLIT 233, ENGLISH 233.) The literary, cultural, and political implications of the 17th-century phenomenon formed in response to the conditions of the 16th century including humanism, absolutism, and early capitalism, and dispersed through Europe, the Americas, and Asia. If the Baroque is a universal code of this period, how do its vehicles, such as tragic drama, Ciceronian prose, and metaphysical poetry, converse with one another? The neobaroque as a complex reaction to the remains of the baroque in Latin American cultures, with attention to the mode in recent Brazilian literary theory and Mexican poetry.

5 units, Win (Greene, R)

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