SPAN 397 - Peninsular Seminar

FDR: HL
Credits: 3

Prerequisites: SPAN 220 and SPAN 275. A seminar focusing on a single period, genre, motif, or writer. The specific topic will be determined jointly according to student interest and departmental approval. Recent topics have included “The Female Voice in Hispanic Literature”, “19th- and 20th-Century Spanish drama”, “Women Writers of the Golden Age”, and “Romanticism and the Generation of ‘98”. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2016, SPAN 397: Peninsular Seminar: Antonio Machado y “la palabra en el tiempo” (3). Prerequisites: SPAN 220 and 275. This seminar examines the poetry of the Spanish author Antonio Machado (1875-1939) within the context of the Spain in which he lived and worked. With special emphasis on his book, Campos de Castilla, we discover the use of a particular landscape as both background and protagonist for a variety of themes that characterize Machado’s work: the passage of time, the relationship between a specific environment and those who populate it, the question of Spain and Spaniards in their history, personal loss and grief. We give much attention to the peculiar stylistic attributes of Machado’s seemingly simple poetic expression which, in fact, masks a complex and subtle use of imagery to provoke a wide range of human emotion. (HL) Boetsch.

Fall 2015, SPAN 397-01: Peninsular Seminar: Representaciones de la Guerra Civil Española (3). This seminar examines the fundamental importance of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in literary and visual texts of the Franco and contemporary periods of Spain. Through readings of these literary and visual texts, students come to understand the evolution of often conflicting histories, ideologies, obsessions, and artistic notions surrounding the war itself and its consequences. After a review of the events leading up to the Spanish Civil War and of the prelude to the Second World War, we observe how the themes and issues of the war manifest in fiction, poetry, film, and other visual texts, paying particular attention to the Franco regime, the pact of silence, and the desire to uncover the past in myriad ways. Literature includes works by Federico García Lorca, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Carmen Laforet, Alberto Méndez, and Mercè Rodoreda. Visual texts include posters, newspapers, letters, government documents, documentaries, fictional films, and NO-DO reels from the Franco era. (HL) Mayock. Planned Offering: Fall, Winter