HISP 388 - Peninsular Seminar

Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2013/14a: Africa Begins in the Pyrenees: Race and Ethnicity in Spain. This course aims to deepen our understanding of how racialization, and specifically the idea of Africa, have manifested in the Spanish national imaginary through literary, visual and socio-political discourses from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Course discussions map out the contradictory social and aesthetic discourses that have attempted to define the Spaniard, and by extension, its Other. Our theorizations probe residual ethno-religious notions of race from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim co-habitation, the logics of assimilation used to discipline people of Roma descent, and the racial ideologies and practices employed to frame regional separatism, political groups, colonization in Africa and immigration. Course discussions and all written work are in Spanish. 

Topic for 2013/14b: Violence, Honor and Gender Construction in Golden Age Theater. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Spanish theatre became immensely popular, and moved from palace to public theatre and town square. In Spain and its colonies, theater plays began to depict a culture obsessed with honor, where a man resorted to violence when his or his wife’s honor was threatened through sexual disgrace. The seminar explores the character of this violence as a result of the strict application of the “honor code”, a complex social and rhetorical strategy whereby both men and women decided how to dispute issues of truth and reputation. Readings include selected plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca, María de Zayas, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Ms. Woods. (a) Mr. Vivalda. (b)

Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.