Class Schedule for Spring 2024

This class introduces students to a variety of literary works from Latin American Independences to the Spanish Civil War, with emphasis on their relationship to historical events and critical representation of Iberian and Latin American societies.

The “long nineteenth century” is the century of crisis, flanked by revolutions, transformations and wars. We will cover from the Wars of Independence in Latin America and the Napoleonic Wars in the Iberian Peninsula to the Spanish Civil War. We will study changes in the key concepts that articulate 19th and early 20th century debates in a Transatlantic framework, without losing sight of the intellectual context that runs parallel to the changes in these concepts: revolution and freedom, nation building and subject formation, civilization, progress, national identity (creole identity, subaltern identities, “Spanishness” and “casticismo”), democracy, modernity, modernization. Among other topics, will trace: the colonial legacy in the hegemonic nation building projects of the intellectual liberal elites; the conflict between lettered elites and popular masses; bourgeois revolutions; imperial nostalgia for the lost colonies; building of national identity in Spain; the inextricability of fiction from politics; aesthetic innovations at the brink of the Spanish civil war. Students will:

• Identify and explain key cultural problems of the Hispanic world from the early 19th century to the mid-twentieth century
• Compare and contrast regional and socio-cultural differences, as well as hemispheric tendencies, in Latin American and Spanish literary production
• Situate assigned literary texts and other types of cultural production in the context of the historical events, social movements and aesthetic currents that influence them, and in contrast to other literary and cultural periods
• Distinguish the ways in which literary texts and other forms of cultural production thematize social conflict relating to gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, language and other cultural differences
• Identify the ways in which the formal elements in a given literary text (such as genre, figurative language and point of view) point us toward appropriate or useful interpretations
• Write logical, convincing critical argument as response to a critical question, using evidence from primary literary and historical documents as well as secondary essays by modern scholars
• Demonstrate continued improvement in written and spoken expression in Spanish, with increased attention to accuracy and fluency

Spanish 343, along with other courses in the Hispanic Cultures through Literature series, fulfill the arts and letters group requirement. They cover broad historical periods, geographic areas, and genres of aesthetic production, provide students with an overview of how literary texts and other forms of cultural production thematize social issues relating to gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, language and other cultural differences. Students also focus on the study of how formal elements of literary production (genre, figurative language, point of view, etc.) point us toward appropriate or useful interpretations. These courses also continue to develop students’ abilities to write logical, convincing arguments as response to a critical question, using evidence from primary literary and historical documents as well as secondary essays by modern scholars.

Spanish 343, along with other courses in the Hispanic Cultures through Literature series, also fulfill the multicultural group requirement. Their Transatlantic orientation obliges students to compare and contrast regional and socio-cultural differences, as well as hemispheric tendencies, in Latin American and Spanish literary production.