SPAN 290 - Topics in Latin American Culture and Literature

FDR: HL
Credits: 4
Planned Offering: Spring

Prerequisite: Three credits at the 200-level Spanish course and instructor consent. This course offers students the opportunity to further their knowledge of the culture and literature of a specific Latin American country, and their awareness of Latin America in general, through the study of special cultural and literary topics. Readings, discussions, and assignments occur primarily in Spanish. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Topic for Spring 2012:

SPAN 290: El universo literario de Jorge Luis Borges (4). This course is an introduction to the complex literary world of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and offers students the opportunity to read and analyze some of his most representative works. The course centers on Borges’s short stories, but students also read works by other authors, as well as a selection of Borges’s poetry and essays. These additional readings contextualize Borges’s fictional production and help students understand his poetics and worldview. Additionally, the class analyzes two movies relevant to Borges’s work. The readings and class discussions highlight some of the most important thematic aspects of Borges’s oeuvre, such as the labyrinth, the double. and the gaucho, as well as his use of literary genres like the fantastic, the detective genre, and the short story-essay, a narrative genre whose emergence can be credited to Borges himself. (HL) Pinto-Bailey.