Course Description
Exploration of literary, socio-political, cultural, and linguistic links within an Ibero-American context. Culminates in a comparative research project that analyzes cultural productions from Spanish America and Brazil and/or Spain and Portugal. Given in Spanish and Portuguese.
Athena Title
IBERO-AMER SEMINAR
Prerequisite
[(PTSP 3010 or AFAM(ROML) 4860/6860) and PORT 3010 and PORT 4010/6010 and SPAN 3010 and SPAN 3030] or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The objective of this Senior Seminar is for students to review and integrate previous course content, and work towards a focused research project that is comparative in nature. Students will demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of the internal and external dynamics that have helped shape broad socio- historical, literary, and linguistic trends in Ibero-America. Special attention will be paid to the multinational and intertextual dialogues that have taken place within this context. Students will discuss, research and write about these links in both Spanish and Portuguese. The course will be either co-taught by one professor in Spanish and one professor in Portuguese or taught by a faculty member fluent in both languages.
Topical Outline
The focus of this seminar will vary according to the particular area of interest and expertise of the faculty teaching it. This focus will serve as a model to the students for conducting research in a comparative, Ibero-American context. In conjunction with their professor(s), students will then research, review, discuss and develop the knowledge they have acquired from their previous coursework in Spanish and Portuguese, and develop a final research project. Sample course description and topical outline: Invoking the Spirit(s) in Latin American Literature In this course we will explore, through a selected reading of Latin American works of fiction, the socio-cultural and spiritual relationship fostered between the living and the spirit world. Given the variety of these works, our definition of spirit(s) is necessarily expansive including, but not limited to, the Catholic saints, Afro-Hispanic and Afro- Brazilian religious deities, spirit guides, ghosts, the dead, supernatural forces and other divine/spiritual interventions. Our examination of Latin American fiction will span the late 19th century to the present. Required course readings will be supplemented and contextualized by relevant sociological, anthropological, historical and critical texts. Instruction, discussion, assignments and course readings will be conducted in both Portuguese and Spanish. Students will have ample opportunity to read supplementary texts in both languages. Topical Outline: 1. Introduction to religiosity in Latin America a comparative framework 2. The Catholic church in Spanish America and Brazil 3. Popular Catholicism in Spanish America and Brazil 4. Brazil's unique spirit idiom historical context 5. Spiritism in 19th century Brazil and Machado de Assis 6. Machado de Assis and deceased narration 7. The life and death of the spirit in the Brazilian Serto 8. Canudos rebellion and a microcosm of a Latin American phenomenon 9. Canudos according to Euclides da Cunha and Mario Vargas Llosa 10. Messianism and Sebastianism in Latin American culture and fiction 11. Modernization and the supernatural in 20th century Latin America 12. Jorge Amado and the Afro-Brazilian religious pantheon 13. The dead and indigenous traces in the fiction of Mexican writer Juan Rulfo 14. One family's spirits and A Chilean saga by Isabel Allende 15. Spiritualism for a Globalized "New Age" 16. Senior research projects - comparative in nature