| Catalan 0 Ba | Introduction to Catalan Stacey Katz Bourns and members of the Department An introductory course in spoken and written Catalan, the language of approximately ten million people in Spain, France, Italy, and Andorra, and the most widely used of minoritized languages in Europe today. Native Catalan speakers include Antonio Gaudi, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Antoni Tapies, Merce Rodoreda, and Pau Casals. Emphasizing oral communication, reading, and writing, offers students contact with contemporary Catalan culture. |
| Catalan 20 | Catalan Language and Culture: a Multimedia Approach Eloi Grasset Morell and members of the Department Intermediate course introducing students to Catalan culture and boosting their oral and written skills through a wide range of resources, such as Internet, television, radio, and press. Students will get a taste of various aspects of Catalan culture: art, cinema, music, literature, traditions, cuisine, history, and more. |
| Catalan 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Eloi Grasset Morell (spring term), Stacey Katz Bourns (fall term) and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research on subjects not treated in regular courses. May be used for further language study after Catalan Ba or 20. |
| French 0 Aa | Beginning French I: French Identity through Visual Media Nicole Mills and members of the Department This elementary French course provides an introduction to French with emphasis on interpersonal communication and the interpretation and production of language in written and oral forms. Students engage in interactive communicative activities, both online and in the classroom, that provide rich exposure to the French and francophone language and culture. The course addresses the theme of identity through engagement in the discussion and interpretation of various French visual media including video, images, and film. |
| French 0 Ab | Beginning French II: Exploring Parisian Life and Identity Nicole Mills and members of the Department In the second course in the Elementary French sequence, students will engage in an online simulation of life in Paris while exploring diverse facets of Parisian identity. Through the interpretation and analysis of Parisian texts, film, paintings, and photography, students will actively engage in oral and written communication in the past, present, and future. Students will learn to make suggestions, express emotions and opinions, extend invitations, and convey hypothetical situations. |
| French 0 Acd | Intensive Beginning French: Parisian Identity through Visual Media Nicole Mills and members of the Department This intensive Beginning French course provides an accelerated introduction to Beginning French with intensive work on interpersonal communication and interpreting and producing language in written and oral forms. Students explore diverse facets of Parisian identity through the interpretation of various forms of visual media. Students learn to speak and write in the past, present, and future, make descriptions, ask questions, make comparisons, accept and refuse invitations, give advice, and express hypothetical situations, emotions, and opinions. |
| French 0 Ax | Reading Modern French Stacey Katz Bourns and members of the Department An introduction to reading and translating modern French texts for students who require only a basic knowledge of French for research purposes. French Ax presents the principle structures of French grammar in a systematic and coherent manner and, at the same time, makes reading and translation assignments as discipline-specific as possible for each student's needs. An introduction to reading and translating modern French texts for students who require only a basic knowledge of French for research purposes. French Ax presents the principle structures of French grammar in a systematic and coherent manner and, at the same time, makes reading and translation assignments as discipline-specific as possible for each student's needs. |
| French 0 C | Intermediate French Carole Bergin (fall term), Stacey Katz Bourns (spring term) and members of the Department In this intermediate level language course, students will study and discuss issues faced in contemporary France and other francophone countries. Students will interpret French and francophone culture, in particular the different customs surrounding food and friendship, through a variety of texts, films, and multimedia resources, while participating in a range of oral and written communicative activities. Students will also review and refine their knowledge of various grammatical structures. |
| French 30 | Advanced Language Review Carole Bergin (fall term), Stacey Katz Bourns (spring term) and members of the Department An advanced language course focusing on current events in France and other francophone countries as they are represented in various types of media. Students will engage in discussions and interactive written and oral activities around these current events, while using the necessary discourse strategies, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. Through analyzing and interpreting the topics presented by the media, students will also reflect on the issues of perspective, objectivity and freedom of expression in all media. |
| French 40 | Upper-level French I: The Contemporary Francophone World Through Cinema Aurelie Chevant and members of the Department An advanced French language and culture course designed to enhance all language skills. Using contemporary Francophone movies, students will study various cultural issues relevant to Francophone identity such as immigration, education, the workplace, regional differences, sexuality, relationships, etc. Students will participate in a range of written and oral activities from blog entries to short skits in class, and will produce their own short film as a final project. |
| French 50 | Upper-level French II: Recounting the Francophone Experience: Love, Loss, and Rebellion Aurelie Chevant and members of the Department This course builds on the interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational skills acquired in French 40, with a particular emphasis on honing students' writing proficiency. Students will read a broad range of stories, poems and essays, as well as view films and videos that explore timeless, ever-resonant themes: love and loss, culture and identity, and tradition and rebellion in the Francophone world. Using these texts, students will study and reproduce various genres of written and spoken French (description, portrait, film critique, etc.) |
| French 55 | Business French: Cultural and Communicative Foundations Aurelie Chevant and members of the Department This course focuses on the cultural knowledge, vocabulary, and linguistic skills and tools that are needed to work and succeed in an international French-speaking setting. It provides an overview of the organization and culture of French companies, highlighting important aspects of conducting business in France, such as attitudes, customs, written and unwritten laws, as well as economic and geographical factors. Moreover, students learn specialized French business terminology and acquire the language skills needed to understand and discuss, in speaking and writing, topics within a professional environment. |
| French 59 | French and the Community Carole Bergin An advanced French language course, where students will explore Haitian culture in the classroom and in the community. In class students will work on interactive oral and written activities using a variety of texts and media. In the community, through teaching French to Haitian-American children in community organizations within the Greater Boston area, students will develop their oral communication skills and acquire first-hand insights into Haitian culture. Introduces students to some methods for teaching a foreign language. |
| French 61 c | The New Wave: Reinventing French Cinema Stacey Katz Bourns and members of the Department In this introductory course about the Nouvelle Vague, students gain a unique perspective on French society, culture, and film in the 1950s and 1960s by studying the works of Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol (among others). Students develop their writing and reading skills through film analysis and hone their speaking ability and listening comprehension through film screenings, examination of dialogue, and class discussions. |
| French 61 g | French Grammar and Phonetics Stacey Katz Bourns This course is designed for students who wish to refine their command of French grammar and pronunciation before enrolling in upper-level French classes. The course provides an intensive review of French grammar in its various written and spoken contexts, as well as an introduction to French phonetics. Students studying stylistic differences between French and English, the rules of written French grammar, the conventions of spoken French, and the correspondence between written forms and their pronunciation. |
| French 61 h | Being French: Historical and Societal Considerations Stacey Katz Bourns and members of the Department This course examines the concept of a "French identity" from the principles of the Enlightenment to the contemporary debates and political controversies about national identity. Through the exploration of historical, literary, sociological and philosophical texts, as well as film and multimedia resources, we will focus on individuals, symbolic places, ideological discourses and narratives that have contributed to the formation and questioning of a French national identity. |
| French 61 m | Modern Stories about Paris Stacey Katz Bourns This course examines contemporary narratives set in Paris. Students explore writers' and filmmakers' perceptions of Paris and analyze the different ways in which the Parisian experience is presented. By reading and viewing stories about Paris, students gain insights into methods of narration and integrate various techniques into their own writing and speaking. They also develop a sophisticated understanding of how the French language is evolving, especially in its spoken form. |
| French 70 a | Introduction to French Literature I: From the Middle Ages to Eighteenth Century Tom Conley Readings and discussion of texts of various genres representative of central trends in French literature from the Middle Ages through the 18th century. Emphasis on developing analytical skills by tracing the transformations of ethical, literary, philosophical and social currents. |
| French 70 b | Introduction to French Literature II. 19th and 20th Centuries: Tales of Identity Janet Beizer How do we know ourselves? Traditional definitions of the self have been founded on family, gender, race, religion, nationality. We'll read a number of texts from the 19th-21st centuries that pose questions and complicate answers to questions of identity. Readings include works by Claire de Duras, Balzac, George Sand, Merimee, Colette, Nothomb, and LeClezio. |
| French 71 a | Classicism and Modernity: An Introduction to Performance Sylvaine Guyot Is the stage of the past the "other" of modern theater? We will explore the relationship between classicism and modernity by considering a set of plays representative of central trends in French drama from the early modern age to contemporary times. Readings include the most famous playwrights of both the 17th (Moliere, Corneille, Racine) and the 20th-21st centuries (Sartre, Badiou, Lagarce, N'Diaye). Special emphasis paid to the ideological power of images through theatrical workshops and video versions of recent productions. The final project consists of an excerpt to be performed in French. |
| French 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Verena A. Conley and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research on subjects not treated in regular courses. |
| French 97 | Tutorial-Sophomore Year: The Politics of Poetics: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis Alice Jardine An introduction to literary and cultural interpretation as it has evolved in French Studies since World War II. Our conversations will be structured around rigorous analysis of key literary works in relation to literary theory, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and politics. |
| French 98 | Tutorial-Junior Year Verena A. Conley and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for juniors pursuing a thesis honors track in French and Francophone Studies, culminating in the writing of a 20-25 page research paper in French. |
| French 99 | Tutorial-Senior Year Verena A. Conley and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for students writing a senior thesis. |
| French 102 | Introduction to Medieval Literature and Old French Virginie Greene Provides students with literary and cultural means of exploring French medieval literature. We will study verse and prose works from the 12th to the 15th century, using editions in Old French and translations in modern French. |
| French 105 | Marie de France and Chretien de Troyes or the Beginning of Modern Fiction Virginie Greene We will read the complete works of the most famous French authors of the twelfth century: Marie de France's Lais, Fables, and Purgatory of St. Patrick; Chretien de Troyes's five Arthurian romances, two love songs, and adaptation of Ovid's story of Philomela. We will also read other contemporary narrative works, helping us to reflect on the role of fiction in medieval culture and in our own culture. |
| French 127 | Talking About Food Janet Beizer In the 19th century food became an object of aesthetic discourse, a focus of gustatory enjoyment and verbal pleasure. Readings include 19th-century food writers and novelists, and contemporary historians, commentators, and theorists. |
| French 130 | Re-Imagining the Early Modern Subject Christie McDonald and Sylvaine Guyot Analysis of connections between sensibility and the rational in literary, artistic, philosophical and political discourses of the French 17th and 18th Century. Discussion of works by La Bruyere, Descartes, Mme de Lafayette, Poussin, Racine, Chardin, Diderot, Prevost, Rousseau, among others, in the transition from absolutism to the Revolution . |
| French 134 | Comedic Timing: Laughter on the Pre-Revolutionary Stage Helene Bilis This course examines the evolution of the French comedic genre by inviting students to reflect upon their own sense of the comical and compare it to that of pre-revolutionary audiences. Early modern theories of comedy will inform our discussions alongside present day scholarship on humor, satire, and the science of laughter. Moliere and Marivaux will anchor our exploration of the formal conventions, linguistic registers, themes, tropes, and character-types of comedy, while Corneille and Racine will enable us to draw out convergences between the comedic and tragic genres of the ancien regime. Questions of timing-the pacing of a plot, the delivery of a joke, and the staging of the unexpected-will guide our investigations as we ponder whether comedy is defined by a unique temporality. Finally, twenty-first century film and comedic routines will demonstrate the lasting influence early-modern playwrights have had on French humor. |
| French 136 | A La Francaise: French Feminisms Today Alice Jardine Close readings of postwar French fiction and theory with emphasis on what is called "the feminine" in key psychoanalytic, philosophical, and literary writings of the French poststructuralist tradition. In particular, we will focus on fifty years of dialogue between postwar theory in France and feminist practice in the United States. Writers considered include Cixous, Duras, Hyvrard, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Wittig as well as Deleuze, Derrida, and Lacan. |
| French 139 b | The 18th Century: Ethical Dilemmas Christie McDonald Questions how notions of personhood and otherness inhabit the emergent novel, exploring the way in which events and values are resisted or subsumed in literary discourse and the kind of social and political responsibility that accompanies it. Readings will be taken from the works of Charriere, Gouges, Laclos, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Sade, Voltaire, etc. |
| French 143 | Vision and Violence in 17th Century France Sylvaine Guyot Explores early modern ways of depicting and showing violence (physical, political, domestic, supernatural). The spectacle of violence represents a site of cultural conflict during the 17th century, since it implies both the pleasure taken by the viewer and the risk of imitation. Readings include plays, tragic histories, utopian and travel literature, historical and theoretical texts (Foucault, Ranciere, Marin, Elias, Lyotard), and the analysis of images (paintings, frontispieces). |
| French 148 c | Performing in French: A Production of a Modern Tragedy Sylvaine Guyot This course focuses on the preparation of a student-led production of a contemporary French play, and concludes with a performance in French at the end of the semester. To react to the challenges we will face in staging a "modern tragedy", we will examine the diversity of tragic forms and motifs since the 17th century up to our days through the close readings of a given set of plays, as well as the main trends in the contemporary staging, through the viewing and discussion of video versions of recent productions. |
| French 157 | The Hermaphroditic Imagination Janet Beizer While official scientific and social positions in the nineteenth century uphold rigid distinctions between women and men, the imaginary life of the period is haunted by the hermaphrodite and other figures that play on the margins of sexual division, challenging the separation of the spheres. We'll read and discuss hermaphroditic fictions chosen from Balzac, George Sand, Gautier, Flaubert, Zola, and Rachilde. |
| French 165 | Marcel Proust Christie McDonald In Proust's novel, A la recherche du temps perdu, questions of time and memory, truth and signification, literature and philosophy converge to ask: who am I? What does it mean to become a writer? Readings include selections from each tome of the novel and significant critical texts. Offered in conjunction with the interdisciplinary conference "Proust and the Arts" (April 2013). Students will attend related exhibits and performances, and may submit a creative final project. |
| French 167 | Parisian Cityscapes: 1960-Present Verena A. Conley Focuses on the transformations of Paris and the very concept of city under the impact of globalization and decolonization. By way of film, fiction, music, architecture and critical texts studies the effects of modernization and architectural reconstruction on the city's inhabitants. Also explores tensions between traditional and urban cultures, between the inner city and the banlieue. |
| French 174 | MEDITERRANEAN CROSSINGS: Exiles, Migrants and Refugees Verena A. Conley The Mediterranean has long been the locus of a turbulent history and of vast population movements. This course will focus specifically on the period since the middle of the twentieth century, that is, since decolonization in North Africa and the Middle East. Civil wars, political strife and economic hardship push many into voluntary, forced or even metaphoric exile, lead to massive migrations and produce refugees in record numbers. This course will study some of these movements with a triple focus on exiles, migrants and refugees, as seen through literary works and film. We will ask what artistic practices contribute and how they mediate these contexts. |
| French 177 | Poetic Revolutions Verena A. Conley Focuses on major poets of the 19th-21st centuries (Hugo, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Apollinaire, Char, Michaux, Glissant, Cixous, Deguy and others) whose revolutionary aesthetics bear on ethics and politics. |
| French 180 | "The Words to Say It": Women Writing in French from Colette to Satrapi Alice Jardine Motherhood, romantic love, independence, sexuality, citizenship, fantasy, death: these are just some of the themes explored in women's novels, written in French, in the twentieth century. We will read eight novels together, exploring how they have finally become classics, even given what they say about life and what it means for women to write about it. |
| French 189 | "Re: History" Memory and Imagination from Camus to Annie Ernaux Emmanuel Bouju We will consider the specific link between memory and imagination in the French novel dealing with History during the second half of the 20th century til today. Readings include major authors (Camus, Antelme, Duras, Perec, Simon, Semprun, Modiano, Ernaux) as well as historical and theoretical texts (Ginzburg, Sontag, Certeau, Rothberg, Agamben...). We'll thus explore the way of "transcribing History, by recording it (Rec:), rewinding it (Rew:), reviewing it and replying to it (Re: History). |
| French 213 | In Search of a Medieval Subject Virginie Greene We will read various medieval authors ranging from Augustine to Christine de Pizan to identify a medieval subjectivity. Modern texts on subjectivity will be used as a counterpoint. |
| French 216 | The Romance of the Rose Virginie Greene Merging courtly love with Aristotelian quest for knowledge, the Roman de la Rose is one of the most influential medieval texts. We will read the Rose in company of related classical and medieval texts, such as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, troubadours poetry or the exchange of letters between Christine de Pizan and literati of her time about the Rose. We will also take into consideration manuscript illustration. . |
| French 225 | How to Read Drama. Theater History/Theories of Representation Sylvaine Guyot Examines French drama from the early-modern stage to post-dramatic theater from literary, theoretical, historical, and visual culture perspectives. We read dramatic texts (16th-21st century), theories of performance, visual sources, treatises on acting. |
| French 226 | Tragic Bodies. French Classicism Revisited Sylvaine Guyot French neoclassical tragedies are typically known for their de-emphasis of the body's presence. This seminar seeks to address this neglected topic by considering the incarnation on stage of heroism, the (re)presentation of loss and violence, and the emerging ideal of tenderness and gallantry in the drama of Corneille and Racine, as well as of few other playwrights. Special emphasis paid to the political, philosophical and aesthetic contexts. Intersection of drama, dance, and painting will be explored. Theoretical readings include Agamben, Barthes, Certeau, Didi-Huberman, Foucault, Marin, Ranciere. |
| French 240 | Rabelais Tom Conley Studies five books of Pantagruel and Gargantua with emphasis on creative energy in the facetie and comic genres. Accounts for new critical currents and projects in theater, music and cinema. |
| French 255 | Metamorphoses of the Vampire Janet Beizer The vampire myth came of age with literary modernism and shares with it an identity in displacement, fragmentation, and fluidity. Texts may include Baudelaire, Nodier, Balzac, Gautier, Maupassant, Rachilde, Stoker, Coppola, and theory. |
| French 259 | The Culture of Hysteria: From Nineteenth-Century France to Here and Now Janet Beizer As we read nineteenth-century medical, literary, and cultural texts with contemporary analogues, we ask why hysteria flourished in that time and place, and now this one, and trace the diagnosis as symptom of a broader cultural malaise. |
| French 271 | Legacies of Poststructuralism: Ecology French Style Verena A. Conley Focuses on how the environment is inscribed in works drawing on concepts from poststructuralist theories. Texts by Guattari, Latour, Nancy, Balibar, Ranciere, Stengers, Haraway, Heise, and others. Students are encouraged to pair their readings with fictional texts and other media. |
| French 280 | Lightness and Energy: the 21st Century French Fiction Emmanuel Bouju What can French novel be/do/hope for today? We will consider the possible answers to this question, by reinterpreting notions as "lightness" and "energy" amd discussing the idea of contemporary times. Readings include a series of very recent fictional and autobiographical novels, as well as theoretical texts (Barthes, Deleuze, Calvino, Hartog, Agamben, Svetlana Boym, Hartmut Rosa...). |
| French 320 | French Literature: Supervised Reading and Research |
| French 330 | Direction of Doctoral Dissertations |
| Italian 0 Aa | Beginning Italian I: Pathways to Italy Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department For students with little or no knowledge of Italian. Aims at achieving basic communication skills and vocabulary. Emphasis on oral expression and listening comprehension. The cultural component examines everyday life through a comparative perspective: families, shopping, food culture. This course will give you the language you need to communicate effectively in Italy, and is the best way to prepare for a summer study in Italy. Course materials include workbook, audio-lab, and video. |
| Italian 0 Ab | Beginning Italian II: The Art and Craft of Italy Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Continuation of Italian Aa, second semester beginning level. Increasing emphasis on reading and writing. The cultural component includes units on fashion, music, literature and film, as well as capsules on the history of modern Italy, through select readings and a feature-length film. Course materials include workbook, audio-lab and video. |
| Italian 0 Acd | Intensive Beginning Italian: Special Course: Gateway to Italy Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department A complete first-year course in one term for students with no knowledge of Italian, focused on developing all four communicative skills. Students are introduced to contemporary Italian culture through a variety of topics from everyday life (family, shopping, food, fashion) to the arts (music, literature, cinema). Materials include films and cultural readings that present capsules on the history of modern Italy. Excellent choice for students planning to study in Italy. |
| Italian 0 Ax | Reading Italian Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department For students (both undergraduate and graduate) with little or no knowledge of Italian. Aims at the rapid development of reading skills as a tool for research. Selections of materials in accordance with the needs of the participants. |
| Italian 0 C | Intermediate Italian: Romance! Mystery? Noir... Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Discover the "colors" or Italian pop lit, from romance to crime stories to graphic novels. This course aims to build reading skills, and includes a structured review of grammar. Course materials include multi-media projects that increase language proficiency and cultural awareness. |
| Italian 30 | Upper-Level Italian: Italian Through Art Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Revisiting structures and refining speaking and writing skills through an arts interface. Students work closely with the collection at the Harvard Art Museum for assignments that build on receptive and productive communicative skills. Course materials may include films, popular music, operatic libretti and literary texts. Consult course website for current semester topics. |
| Italian 40 | Advanced Oral Expression and Performance Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Ciak, si parla! Students develop oral expression and communication skills through the close reading of texts that are meant for performance, such as plays, film scripts, poetry, and music. Variation in diction and presentation techniques culminates in the adaptation and production of one or more of these texts for a public performance at the end of the term. Consult course website for current semester topics. |
| Italian 50 | Advanced Written Expression. Italy in Other Words Elvira G. DiFabio (fall term), Maria Grazia Lolla (spring term), and members of the Department Italia scritta e descritta. A theme-based course designed to develop advanced competence in written expression through guided examination of stylistics and pragmatics. The course includes readings from a variety of literary genres, films, workshops, and a series of guest lectures by our faculty on design, women and society, cinema, fiction, and other subjects. Consult the course website for current semester topics. |
| Italian 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research on subjects not treated in regular courses. |
| Italian 96 r | Italian and the Community: Italy. Academic Internships in Italian Language and Culture: Special Course Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department An opportunity to engage in the practical applications of Italian language and culture in an immersion environment. Internships may include placement in a variety of sectors, including public education, the media and the arts. Students must submit a written proposal to Dr. DiFabio by August 31, 2014 for Fall term enrollment and by January 23, 2015 for Spring term enrollment. |
| Italian 98 | Tutorial-Junior Year Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for juniors pursuing a thesis honors track in Italian Studies, culminating in the writing of a 20-25 page research paper in Italian. |
| Italian 99 | Tutorial-Senior Year Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for students writing a senior thesis in Italian. |
| Italian 103 | Italian Travels Elvira G. DiFabio An exploration of the identities of Italy through travel, including that of Italians living abroad and non-Italians in contemporary Italy. Students will investigate these issues from a wide variety of sources, including literary and historical voyages, sociological texts, news reports and feature films. Frequent oral and written assignments. |
| Italian 104 | Effetto Commedia: What Makes Italians Laugh? Elvira G. DiFabio Comedy Italian-style in cinema and its origins, from Toto to Benigni. Presents students with another dimension of Italian culture, while increasing communicative effectiveness. Presentational skills addressed through weekly written assignments and oral reports; grammar review in context. Weekly feature-length film. |
| Italian 105 | From the Book to the Kitchen Table Elvira G. DiFabio Percorsi tra letteratura e cucina. An exploration of the ideas and identities of Italy through food, beginning with Pellegrino Artusi's seminal gastronomic writing, and moving through historical, linguistic, sociological pathways. In addition to various texts, students will engage in hands-on kitchen experiences. Frequent oral and written assignments reinforce language skills and academic literacy in the target language. |
| Italian 110 | Italian Mysteries Maria Grazia Lolla The single best-selling genre in modern times, the mystery has been embraced by Italian novelists and academics alike. Whether the goal was searching for the motive or the culprit of a crime or redressing a past or present injustice, or quesitoning the limits of our investigations of the past, the mystery has attracted the attention of internationally renown figures such as Umberto Eco, Leonardo Sciascia, Carlo Ginzburg, Andrea Camilleri, Michelangelo Antonioni and Alessandro Manzoni. Beginning with contemporary best-sellers, the course will cover a variety of genres - novels, comic books, films, historical writing - from the nineteenth century to the present. |
| Italian 115 | Italian Cinema and the Poetics of Refuse Adam Muri-Rosenthal A journey through some of Italy's most canonical films from Neorealism to the present, focusing specifically on filmmakers' depiction of garbage, garbage collectors and the residual. While for Neorealist directors, this depiction is synecdochic of an artistic vision that endeavors to capture reality at its most unprepared, subsequently, it comes to represent the increasing complexity of the mimetic undertaking in an Italian society thrust rapidly into the late stages of capitalism. Filmmakers studied include De Sica, Antonioni, Fellini, Garrone, Rohrwacher and others. |
| Italian 132 | Deconstructing Rome Federica G. Pedriali (University of Edinburgh) The course uses Paolo Sorrentino's latest Roman films "Il divo" (2008) and "La grande bellezza" (2013) to frame a selective deconstruction of the Eternal City. Units of work include Genius of Rome (broadly based on a long view of the city's primary logistics: place and time), Grand Narratives (focussing on an evolving Roman mythology driven by polarised qualifiers and tags), Individual Trajectories (looking a tthe impact made by Rome on travellers from different periods) and The Hope of Rome: Resurrection vs Resurgence (Tackling the city's role in and since the Risorgimento and particularly under facism). An additional feature of this main menu will be ample selections from films and works of fiction inspired by Rome, involving films by Rossellini, Fellini, Germi, Antonioni, De Sica, and Pasolini and novels by Moravia, Pasolini, Gadda, and Morante. In a fitting methodological twist, the continuing centrality of Rome in the age of globalisation will emerge from the application of key theoretical raedings by contemporary thinkers and planners. |
| Italian 133 | New Course: Italy: The Seven Deadly Sins Federica G. Pedriali (University of Edinburgh) The course complements other RLL Catalog offerings on the collective construction of national identities. Classes will be structured around polarised provocations based on samples of good and bad international PR since the early modern period, including politics, wars, the European Union, public figures, migration, stereotypes and a variety of globally recognised Italian icons such as mafia, Pinocchio, facism and the Vespa. Classics of the ageless debate on Italy (e.g., Leopardi and Madame de Stael), her beauty and femininity (Gundle 2007), her virtue as sin or her sin as virtue (drawing primarily but not exclusively from Machiavelli), will feed into a present-day people profile organised in seven units/deadly accidents of Italianness: Beauty, Distinction, Genius, Heart, Mobility, Stamina and Voice. |
| Italian 141 | Renaissance Epic: War, Identity, Desire Francesco Erspamer We analyze the driving forces behind epic in the classic and medieval world-war, identity, and desire-and their transformation at the dawn of modernity. In order to prepare for the close reading of Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, we will study and discuss selected cantos from the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Chanson de Roland, Dante's Divine Comedy, Boiardo's Orlando innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. |
| Italian 171 | Cultural History and Nation-Making: 1870-1920 Maria Grazia Lolla Introduction to the cultural history of Italy from the Risorgimento to the dawn of Fascism: war, work, education, music, fashion, festivals and cooking. Students will explore the interaction between literary texts and other cultural forms. |
| Italian 180 | Making Italians: Poetry and Novel in the 19th Century Francesco Erspamer The course discusses the two masterpieces of modern Italian literature, Giacomo Leopardi's Canti (Poems) and Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), against the background of Risorgimento, the unification of Italy, and the affirmation of modernity. |
| Italian 184 | Italian Women Filmmakers in the New Millennium Stefania Benini One of the most promising trends of the New Italian Cinema is the recent cinematic production of Italian women filmmakers. We will explore how these women directors have developed stylistically and thematically the historical legacy of their "maestre" and "maestri," from Lina Wertmuller and Liliana Cavani to Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. We will discuss space and subjectivity in Marina Spada's cinema, time and coming of age in Susanna Nicchiarelli's films, the sacred in Roberta Torre and Alice Rohrwacher's movies, personal and generational legacies in the cinematic production of Alina Marazzi and the Comencini sisters, and queer desire in the films of Donatella Maiorca and Laura Muscardin. We will consider these Italian filmmakers through the lens of feminist film theory within the context of Italian post-feminist culture and in relation to national and transnational cinematic traditions. |
| Italian 201 r | Italian Studies Colloquium Francesco Erspamer Current scholars in the field of Italian Studies present their most recent works on literature, art and architecture, history, and the social sciences. Students also learn how to conduct video interviews and write book reviews. |
| Italian 240 | Gadda Goes to War: Provocations around the State-Stage Federica G. Pedriali (University of Edinburgh) This course explores Fabrizio Gifuni's recent stage adaptation of the WWI diaries and anti-Mussolini writings by Italy's greatest modernist writier, Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973). The play, which took Italy by storm at the time of the 2011 political elections, will allow us to focus on the subject at war with the state from the perspective of the global negatives resulting from the management of the country as spectacle. As part of a close reading of this powerful intersemiotic critique of Italy as today's Denmark, for today's Hamlets, we will look into what, in the context of present day media regimes, continues to give stage performance the edge over other forms of creative critical citizenship. Extensive selected passages from Gadda's major works will inform plenary seminars and student presentations encouraging intersections with other Catalogue courses via theory (from Agamben to Zizek), context (Italy in the 20thc, during the WWs, under facism and today) and content (individual resistence to imagined, coming and present communities). |
| Italian 242 | Locating Utopos Federica G. Pedriali (University of Edinburgh) The course problematises utopian thought across a variety of platforms, focusing on text, architecture and film, and using the totalitarian regimes of 20thc Europe for additional case study verification. Units of work will range from Foundational Texts (e.g., Plato's "Republic", Thomas More's "Utopia" and Campanella's "Citta del sole") to Current Theory (e.g., the various applications of Utopian Studies in combination with Gender Studies), encouraging students to locate Utopos (the hero without name, story or place) within key anthropological needs (primarily, safety in numbers and hope in a just future). Classes will be conducted in English, and will consist of a mix of seminar presentations, plenary discussion and editorial work, this as part of the publication project supplementing the coursework. |
| Italian 262 | About Time: Nostalgia, Apocalypse, and Change in Italian Culture Francesco Erspamer Studies the development of the concept of time in modern thought, with examples drawn mostly from Italian literature. Readings include Galileo, Vico, Leopardi, Verga, Pirandello, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Buzzati. |
| Italian 320 | Italian Literature: Supervised Reading and Research |
| Italian 330 | Direction of Doctoral Dissertations |
| Latin American Studies 70 | Modernity, Culture and Politics in Latin America Mariano Siskind Introduces students to central debates and problems that have shaped Latin American culture. We address questions of cultural identity, gender, race, politics, economics and aesthetics by looking at historical and literary texts, films, visual arts and urban development from an interdisciplinary perspective. We analyze colonial encounters; revolutions; US-Latin American relations; popular cultures from tango and samba to football and carnaval; Latin American cities and slums; and memory, trauma and traces of the region's dictatorships. |
| Latin American Studies 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Mariano Siskind and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research on subjects not treated in regular courses. |
| Latin American Studies 98 | Tutorial-Junior Year Mariano Siskind and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for juniors pursuing a thesis honors track in Latin American Studies, culminating in the writing of a 20-25 page research paper in either Spanish or Portuguese. |
| Latin American Studies 99 | Tutorial-Senior Year Mariano Siskind and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for honors seniors writing a thesis. |
| Portuguese 0 Aa | Beginning Portuguese I Viviane Gontijo and members of the Department An introductory course designed to introduce the student with little or no knowledge of the language to the Portuguese-speaking world. Focuses on fundamental communication skills -- listening, speaking, reading, and writing -- and, at the same time, provides exposure to Portuguese-speaking cultures through media broadcasts, literature, films, music, and videos. |
| Portuguese 0 Ab | Beginning Portuguese II Viviane Gontijo and members of the Department This course is a continuation of Portuguese Aa. By the end of the course, students should be able to communicate with native speakers about a wide range of topics, and they should have acquired insights into basic elements of Luso-Brazilian culture. |
| Portuguese 0 Ac | Beginning Portuguese for Spanish Speakers I Viviane Gontijo An introductory language course designed for Spanish-speakers. Along with the fundamental communication skills-understanding, speaking, reading and writing-the course will focus on those features of Portuguese which are most difficult for Spanish speakers: pronunciation, idioms and grammatical structures particular to Portuguese. Students will be introduced to the cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world through readings and authentic materials, including films, music, and videotapes. |
| Portuguese 0 Acd | Intensive Beginning Portuguese Viviane Gontijo and members of the Department This intensive Beginning Portuguese course provides an accelerated introduction to Portuguese with emphasis on interpersonal communication and interpreting and producing language in written and oral forms. Goals include building students' vocabulary, fluency, proficiency, and confidence. Students are exposed to Brazilian Portuguese and culture through music, cinema, and various media sources. The course covers the equivalent of a full first-year of Portuguese language study. |
| Portuguese 0 Ad | Beginning Portuguese for Spanish Speakers II Viviane Gontijo and members of the Department A continuation of Portuguese Ac. By the end of the second term, students should be able to communicate easily with native speakers and be acquainted with basic elements of Luso-Brazilian culture. |
| Portuguese 0 Ba | Introduction to Portuguese Clemence Jouet-Pastre and members of the Department A basic introductory course for students who can devote only one term to the study of Portuguese. Teaches fundamental communication skills-understanding, speaking, reading and writing-but does not offer a complete study of grammar. |
| Portuguese 0 C | Intermediate Portuguese Clemence Jouet-Pastre (fall term) and Everton Vargas da Costa (spring term) An intermediate course for students interested in expanding and strengthening their Portuguese language skills. Reading, writing, and conversational competency is emphasized through the study of the Luso-African-Brazilian cultures. The course aims to promote cross-cultural understanding through the use of authentic materials such as literary texts, multimedia, film, music, and videos. |
| Portuguese 30 | Brasil hoje: Contemporary Brazilian Culture through Media Clemence Jouet-Pastre (fall term), Viviane Gontijo (spring term), and members of the Department Engages in systematic grammar review, along with practice in writing and vocabulary enrichment, while examining contemporary Brazil as presented in Portuguese-language press, television, literature, and film. Analyzes the ways Brazilians and non-Brazilians construct different and conflicting images of Brazil and "Brazilianness." Issues of race relations, national identity, ethnicity, and gender addressed. Discussions based on historical and literary texts, advertisements, films, videotapes of Brazilian television, and current issues of newspapers and magazines. |
| Portuguese 40 | Images of Brazil: Contemporary Brazilian Cinema Clemence Jouet-Pastre (fall term), Viviane Gontijo (spring term) and members of the Department Examines major Brazilian films in their historical, political, and social context. Class discussion also focuses on documentaries, reviews, and critical articles. In-depth textual and grammatical analysis, vocabulary building, reflections on the similarities and differences of the oral and written Portuguese will lead students to achieve a high level of competency. |
| Portuguese 59 | Portuguese and the Community Viviane Gontijo and members of the Department An advanced language course examining the Luso-African-Brazilian experience in the US. Promotes community engagement as a vehicle for greater linguistic fluency and cultural understanding. Students will be placed with Boston-area community organizations and agencies. Class work focuses on readings and films by and about Luso-African-Brazilians and specific uses of Portuguese language from these communities. Authors include D. Macedo, Braga Martes, Margolis, Sales, Albues, and Villas Boas. |
| Portuguese 61 | Performing Arts in The Portuguese-Speaking World Stephen Bocskay Through plays, visual media, poetry, songs, and other cultural creations, this course discusses historic and cultural connections between Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and Sao Tome and Principe). The course uses the performing arts as a point of departure for cultural and linguistic development, having class discussions and student presentations as a basis for journal entries, essay writing, and performance. Grammar review and stylistic analysis are integrated with activities and projects throughout the course. |
| Portuguese 90 ml | Brazilian Popular Music and Literature Stephen Bocskay Explores the relationship between Brazilian popular music traditions and literature. |
| Portuguese 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Josiah Blackmore and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research on subjects not covered in regular courses. |
| Portuguese 97 | Tutorial-Sophomore Year: O Novissimo Cinema Brasileiro Stephen Bocskay What exactly is the Novissimo Cinema Brasileiro? Does it entail a new aesthetics and politics of Brazilian society? In this course, we will explore the interplay between social movements, politics and culture and the most recent developments in Brazilian cinema and literature. Students will be expected to engage actively with literary works and films through essays and oral presentations. Some of the writers and filmmakers discussed are Bernardo Carvalho, Fernando Coimbra, Kleber Mendonca Filho, Jorge Furtado, Daniel Galera, Ricardo Lisias, Gabriel Mascaro, Jose Luiz Passos, Darcy Ribeiro and Adirley Queiros. Critical readings include works by Giorgio Agambem, Alain Badiou, David Bordwell, Vilem Flusser, Frederic Jameson, Randal Johnson, Ann Kaplan, Laura Marks, Karl Marx, Gilles Mouellic, Silviano Santiago, Roberto Schwarz, Ismail Xavier, and Slavoj Žižek. |
| Portuguese 98 | Tutorial-Junior Year Josiah Blackmore and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for juniors pursuing a thesis honors track in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, culminating in the writing of a 20-25 page research paper in Portuguese. |
| Portuguese 99 | Tutorial-Senior Year Josiah Blackmore and members of the Department For honors seniors writing a thesis. |
| Portuguese 105 | New Perspectives on Brazilian Poetry Stephen Bocskay This course explores the works of major poets and songwriters associated with the following key literary movements: Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism, Pre-Modernism, Modernism, Concretism, Neo-Concretism, and Postmodernism. Students will be expected to engage actively with poetry through written work and oral presentations, among other scholarly projects. Poetic texts featured include Castro Alves, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Mario de Andrade, Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Mario Faustino, Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Jorge de Lima, Salgado Maranhao, Cecilia Meireles, Vinicius de Moraes, Milton Nascimento, Torquato Neto, Adelia Prado, Sousandrade, and Caetano Veloso. Some of the critical readings discussed are Roland Barthes, Homi Bhabha, Antonio Candido, Jonathan Culler, Gilberto Freyre, Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, Walter Mignolo, Mario Pedrosa, and Roberto Schwarz. |
| Portuguese 123 a | Portuguese Literary Studies I Josiah Blackmore An overview of the literature of Portugal centering on its major figures and aesthetic movements, with attention given to selected moments in cultural history through the eighteenth century. Readings and discussions will include analyses of specific texts and considerations of topics such as gender, sexuality, race, and globalization in the Portuguese context. |
| Portuguese 123 b | Portuguese Literary Studies II Josiah Blackmore A continuation of Portuguese 123a, with an emphaasis on the nineteenth century and modernity. |
| Portuguese 182 | The Worlds of Camoes Josiah Blackmore A study of the Renaissance Portuguese imagination through the work of Luis de Camoes. The course will center on the epic and lyric poetry of Camoes as a way to think broadly about the literary and intellectual currents of the 16th century. Empire, the structure of the cosmos, and mythography will figure into our analyses. To promote an understanding of the international culture of letters and humanism, authors from Spain, Italy, and France will also be included. Prerequisite: Reading knowledge of Portuguese. |
| Portuguese 220 | Theorists of the Sea Josiah Blackmore An inquiry into the ocean as literary and cultural principle in Portugal. We will study maritime texts across many genres and periods (with an emphasis on earlier works), and supplement our readings and discussions with the holdings of Houghton Library. |
| Portuguese 246 | Modernism and Voodoo: African Diaspora Cosmogonies and the Brazilian Avant-gardes Rodrigo Lopes de Barros The purpose of this course is to analyze the role and influence that African-derived religions had on the construction of the 20th century avant-gardes in Brazil. African Art and Religions influenced many defining figures of Brazilian culture from literature to visual arts and music, becoming a remarkable phenomenon that touches many fields of knowledge such as art history, anthropology, political science, cinema, philosophy, urbanism, literary criticism, ethnomusicology, folklore and religion. During this course, it will be proposed to use the dialectical image of Brazilian modernist movements and African-derived religions as an episode with a focus on Brazil as a model to approach the cultural tensions under aesthetic and political agendas, revolutionary and conservative social thoughts, cosmopolitan and national claims of modernity, and utopian propositions to the transformation of art and society. |
| Portuguese 264 | Colonial Brazil Josiah Blackmore We will study the literary culture of colonial Brazil, with consideration of Brazil's place in transatlantic enterprise. |
| Portuguese 321 | Literature of Brazil: Supervised Reading and Research |
| Portuguese 322 | Literature of Portugal: Supervised Reading and Research |
| Portuguese 330 | Direction of Doctoral Dissertations |
| Romance Languages 300 | Seminar for Dissertation Writing in the Romance Literatures Addresses audience, voice, and ethics of critical writing (quotation, acknowledgement, controversy); and practical strategies for prospectus preparation, chapter organization, conference and job talks, publication. Meetings use manuscript work-shopping, reading, oral presentations, and guest lectures. |
| Romance Studies 79 | Romance Languages and Cultures in Comparative Perspective Elvira G. DiFabio and members of the Department Highlights of the similarities and differences among the Romance languages, beginning with an overview of the historical development of the Romance languages from Latin, and moving on to the comparison of linguistic identifiers of French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; may also include a discussion of Catalan. Topics will cover comparative phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as some cross-cultural experiences such as immigration and translation. |
| Romance Studies 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Luis M. Giron Negron and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research in subjects not treated in regular courses. |
| Romance Studies 98 | Tutorial-Junior Year Luis M. Giron Negron and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for juniors pursuing a thesis honors track in Romance Studies, culminating in the writing of a 20-25 page research paper in a Romance language. |
| Romance Studies 99 | Tutorial-Senior Year Luis M. Giron Negron and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for students writing a senior thesis in Romance Studies. |
| Romance Studies 101 | Romance Translation: Theory and Practice Elvira G. DiFabio Translating for art's sake, or to form a national literature? Better yet, to foster ideological debate. And what about all those bad translations? Do you even need to know the original language? Come explore the theory and practice of translation in and from the Romance languages. Includes workshops on a variety of styles, literary devices, pragmatics, semantic and cultural distinctions. |
| Romance Studies 109 | The Global Game: Soccer, Politics, and Popular Culture Francesco Erspamer and Mariano Siskind Soccer is not only the sport of the world, but a most socially significant practice. In Latin America and Europe it is a staple feature of popular culture, closely connected with national politics. The course will make use of filmic, visual, literary, theoretical, and historical materials to analyze the relationship of soccer to social movements, colonialism, violence, gender, architecture, music, and the star system (Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Totti, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi). |
| Romance Studies 111 | The World of Romance Language Cinemas: A Classical Age Tom Conley Studies early and classical cinemas in France, Italy, and Spain through comparative and close analysis. Includes films by Renoir, Vigo, Melville; Rossellini, de Sica, Visconti; Bunuel, Garcia Berlanga, Erice. |
| Romance Studies 201 | Questions of Theory Jeffrey Schnapp and John T. Hamilton The seminar is built around a sequence of fundamental questions regarding the literary disciplines, their history and epistemology. Discussions are instigated by readings in philology, stylistics, the history of ideas, semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, film theory, genetic criticism, literary sociology, cultural studies, and digital humanities. |
| Romance Studies 205 | Civic Humanities Doris Sommer and Francesco Erspamer An introduction to a developing field, Civic Humanities explores the arts and humanistic interpretation through a centuries-long tradition of civic engagement. Here the humanities are a site for promoting innovation and skills for active citizenship. Democracy and aesthetic judgment developed together to project citizens as co-artists of social constructions. Readings in this tradition of enlightened aesthetics include Kant, Schiller, Dewey, Freire, Gramsci, Ranciere, Mockus, Boal, Kester, Elster, Florida, Nussbaum, and Pasolini. Guest lectures by doctors, lawyers, political leaders, business experts, and public artists will develop specific areas of innovation and represent potential mentors for students as they design original projects. |
| Romance Studies 219 | Digital Humanities 2.0: a metaLAB(at)Harvard seminar Jeffrey Schnapp A seminar and workshop for the development of semester-long projects, the course provides an introduction to new scholarly models in the arts and humanities via readings, case studies and conversations with expert practitioners. |
| Romance Studies 220 | Fragments of a Material History of Literature Jeffrey Schnapp Literary studies examined from the perspective of the practices that have shaped ideas concerning literature, writing, speech, and communication: from scrolls and codices to the rise of printing and typewriting to digital writing. |
| Romance Studies 242 | Graduate Seminar: Transatlantic Poetics Mary M. Gaylord and Josiah Blackmore The seminar studies transatlantic enterprises of Spain and Portugal through their prolific cultures of textuality. Epic, chronicles, lyric and other 15th to 17th-century genres will be scrutinized for influences of Atlantic itineraries, real and imagined, on projects of poetic "making". Authors include Garcilaso, Caminha, Ercilla, Camoes, Gongora, Cervantes, Lope, Alarcon, Quevedo, Zurara, and others. |
| Spanish 0 Aa | Beginning Spanish I Maria celeste Moreno palmero (spring term), Maria Luisa Parra-Velasco (fall term) and members of the Department A basic beginning semester course for students with no previous study of Spanish. Emphasis on speaking, writing, reading, and listening, as the basis for the development of all three Communication Modes (Interpersonal, Interpretive, and Presentational). Hispanic cultures will be introduced through a variety of texts, including readings, music, art, and film. |
| Spanish 0 Ab | Beginning Spanish II Maria celeste Moreno palmero (fall term), Maria Luisa Parra-Velasco (spring term) and members of the Department For students with the equivalent of one semester previous study of Spanish. Emphasis on strengthening students' interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational skills in both oral and written Spanish. Hispanic cultures are presented through a variety of authentic texts, including short pieces of literature, essays, and newspaper articles. Music, art, and film are also included. After Spanish Aa and Ab, students should be able to engage in everyday conversations with native speakers, and read straightforward texts, both fiction and non-fiction, with relative ease. |
| Spanish 0 Acd | Intensive Beginning Spanish: Special Course Johanna Damgaard Liander (fall term), Maria celeste Moreno palmero (spring term) and members of the Department A beginning class for students with no previous formal training in Spanish but with competence in at least one foreign language. Emphasis on communication skills. Language instruction supplemented by cultural and literary readings and film. |
| Spanish 0 Ax | Reading Spanish Adriana Gutierrez and members of the Department An introduction to reading and translating modern Spanish texts for students who require only a basic knowledge of Spanish for research purposes. Spanish Ax presents the principal structures of Spanish grammar in a systematic and coherent manner and, at the same time, makes reading and translation assignments as discipline-specific as possible for each student's needs. |
| Spanish 0 C | Intermediate Spanish Adriana Gutierrez and members of the Department An intermediate language and culture class that aims to consolidate and expand the skills of listening comprehension, speaking, reading and writing in Spanish. Includes a comprehensive review of the grammar and reinforces linguistic acquisition through texts, movies, art and multi-media projects to acquaint students with cultural issues relevant to the Spanish-speaking world. |
| Spanish 30 | Advanced Spanish Language I: Four Countries and their Cultures Johanna Damgaard Liander and members of the Department An advanced language class that reinforces the practice of oral and written communication in Spanish through topics in contemporary cultural materials from Spain and Latin America. Students will focus on improving proficiency, refining pronunciation and acquiring vocabulary. In addition to in-class discussions, course work involves grammar review and practice in writing. Consult course website for current semester topics. |
| Spanish 35 | Spanish for Latino Students Maria Luisa Parra-Velasco and members of the Department Designed for Latino students, this course builds on students' previous knowledge of Spanish to expand and strengthen their oral and written interpersonal, interpretive and presentational communicative skills. Spanish grammar is reviewed using a functional approach to highlight differences found in informal and academic contexts. Students explore the topics of language, cultures and identity in the U.S and in the Spanish-speaking world , using a variety of texts and genres, music, videos, films and visual arts. |
| Spanish 40 | Advanced Spanish Language II: Viewing the Hispanic World Johanna Damgaard Liander and members of the Department An advanced language and culture class that further develops linguistic competence using a region or regions of the Hispanic world as a focus for class discussion, grammar review, and an introduction to Hispanic social contexts and texts. Course materials may also include films, interviews, paintings, photography, music, selections from the press, as well as literary or historical readings. Frequent written and oral assignments, and a thorough review of grammar. Consult course website for current semester topics. |
| Spanish 50 | Writing and Performance Adriana Gutierrez and members of the Department An advanced language course designed to strengthen and develop competence in written expression. Close reading of texts in literary and non-literary genres will help students refine personal style. The performance of short excerpts of plays, combined with advanced work on oral expression and phonetics, will help students increase their fluency and ease of expression. |
| Spanish 59 | Spanish and the Community Maria Luisa Parra-Velasco and members of the Department An advanced language course that examines the richness and complexity of the Latino experience in the US while promoting community engagement as a vehicle for greater linguistic fluency and cultural understanding. Students are placed with community organizations within the Boston area and volunteer for four hours a week. Class work focuses on expanding students' oral and written proficiency in Spanish through discussing and analyzing readings, arts, and films by and about Latinos in the US. |
| Spanish 59 h | Spanish for Latino Students II: Connecting with Communities Maria Luisa Parra-Velasco An advanced language course for Spanish heritage learners that aims to: strengthen students' oral and written linguistic range, with emphasis on Spanish use for academic contexts; and to further develop students' critical language and social awareness around important issues for Latinos in our globalized era: Spanish as global language, identity, language rights, global migration and labor, U.S.-Latino America relations, food and environment, the 'war on drugs'. Students explore these topics through various genres (newspapers and academic articles, debates, literary essays, short novels, poetry, visual art, film and music) and through 4 hours a week of community service. |
| Spanish 61 n | Advanced Spanish Language and Culture: The Ethics of Business Adriana Gutierrez and members of the Department An advanced language and culture class that examines literature and films portraying the political, sociological, financial and environmental impact of multinational companies doing business in Latin America. Students' linguistic competency is developed through discussion of the ethics of business, grammar reviews, and weekly writing assignments. Students will also choose a specific project for a business in Latin America and research its possible outcome and social, political, and environmental consequences. |
| Spanish 70 a | Heroes, Rogues, Lovers, Rebels, Saints: Voices from Medieval and Early Modern Spain Mary M. Gaylord and members of the Department Who are the Cid, Lazarillo, Rosaura and Segismundo? As we explore the texts and historical contexts that produced iconic figures like the matamoros, the sentimental Moor, the picaro, the soldier-poet, the mystic, the rebellious vassal and the cross-dressed woman, we bring their voices to life through dramatic reading and performance. |
| Spanish 70 c | Documenting Spanish Modernity: A Survey of Spanish Literature and Culture from 1700 Daniel Aguirre Oteiza From philosophical essays to newspaper articles, from romantic tragedy to turn-of-the-century films, from early autobiography to dirty realism, from academic landscape painting to comic strips, this course will present a provocatively diverse set of documents that will help understand Spain's equivocal and frequently contested Modernity. |
| Spanish 71 a | Continuity and Discontinuity in Colonial Latin America To Be Determined An overview of literary and cultural production in the Americas before and after the Spanish invasion. Topics include pre-Columbian visual and verbal expressions; discovery, invention, conquest, and resistance; the historiography of the New World; native depictions of the colonial world. |
| Spanish 71 b | Introduction to Modern Latin American Literature Mariano Siskind and members of the Department This course is a survey of Latin American Literature from the last decades of the 19th century to the present. It offers an overview of the most salient moments in modern Latin American cultural history, placing emphasis on the ways in which specific literary works relate to the social and political developments that have shaped the region since the late 19th century. Readings by Machado de Assis, Rulfo, Borges, Gioconda Belli, Bellatin, Pizarnik, and others. |
| Spanish 71 cb | Modern Survey: Civilization and Barbarism in Latin American Literature Nicole Delia Legnani In Latin American literature, the opposition between civilization and barbarism has defined America since its "discovery" by Columbus. With a focus on the intersections of time, space, language and violence in seminal texts, we look at ways their authors position the Americas and their peoples in universal history. We will also consider the role of the public intellectual and writer as political figure and founder of new national movements. Authors include Columbus, Las Casas, Teresa de Mier, Sarmiento, Marti, Dario, Gallegos, Cesar Vallejo, Borges, Arguedas, Vargas Llosa, Fernando Vallejo and Bolano. |
| Spanish 80 t | Words of Which History is Made: Translation Workshop on 20th-Century Spain Daniel Aguirre Oteiza Through close readings and translations centering on 20th-century Spanish history, culture, and society, students hone their linguistic, grammatical, and stylistic skills, and acquire the interpretive skills required to comprehend and analyze increasingly complex literary and cultural texts. Course materials include short stories, newspaper articles, memoirs, travel journals, and historical essays. |
| Spanish 90 dq | Who is Don Quixote? Mary M. Gaylord Get to know the man who says, "I know who I am", his friends and loves, his models and rivals. This introduction to central episodes of Cervantes' masterpiece asks what it is about Don Quixote's actions, words, convictions and contradictions that makes him ubiquitous in literary and artistic imagination. Course materials include film, music, and visual arts. |
| Spanish 90 n | Border Flux and Border Subjects: Cultural Practices of the US-Mexico Border Sergio Delgado This course is structured around a set of art and literary works that engage the US-Mexico border. It seeks to understand the fluid nature of the border region along with its recurring themes and dynamics, focusing on the complex links between literary texts, artistic practices, and the increasingly pressing social and political issues of the region. Materials include works by Monsivais, Bolano, Anzaldua, Daniel Sada, Gomez-Pena, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez. |
| Spanish 90 np | Invaders as Ancestors, Gods and Vampires Nicole Delia Legnani In Latin American literature, familiar and unfamiliar beings, under the guise of gods, ancestors or vampire-like creatures, dominate representations of conquest and invasion. Drawing on texts by Indian and Spanish authors alike, we examine the reception of these mythic beings and their place in historical narratives of the conquest of Mexico, the American Southwest, and the Andes. As part of our exploration of the genres of indigenous historiography, students may present a graphic essay or performance with an accompanying "Scholar-Artist Statement" as their final project. |
| Spanish 90 p | Pre-Textos: Las artes interpretan Doris Sommer and Adriana Gutierrez Texts become prompts for art-making in this class. By inspiring painting, dance, play, music, sculpture, costumes, texts lead to deep and daring interpretations. Latin American classics that might otherwise seem difficult become raw material for creativity as students stretch their command of Spanish. They learn that arts interpret and explore meanings and that theory is a user-friendly afterthought. This training prepares facilitation of Pre-Texts workshops in Boston and abroad. |
| Spanish 91 r | Supervised Reading and Research Johanna Damgaard Liander and members of the Department Tutorial supervision of research on subjects not treated in regular courses. |
| Spanish 97 | Tutorial-Sophomore Year Luis Fernandez-Cifuentes Theory in Praxis: Students will read, write, and speak about different modes of analysis of poetry, narrative prose, and cinema (stylistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, gender studies, etc.), as practiced by a variety of pioneering scholars and artists, from Yuri Lotman and Barbara Johnson to Sergei Eisenstein and Laura Mulvey. Students will in turn put to work those modes of analysis on a number of Spanish and Latin American texts and films. |
| Spanish 98 | Tutorial-Junior Year Johanna Damgaard Liander and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for juniors pursuing a thesis honors track in Hispanic Studies, culminating in the writing of a 20-25 page research paper in Spanish. |
| Spanish 99 | Tutorial-Senior Year Johanna Damgaard Liander and members of the Department Weekly individual instruction for honors seniors writing a thesis. Completion of two terms of Spanish 99 is required of all seniors pursuing a thesis honors track. |
| Spanish 109 | Displacing Spain: Workshop on 20th and 21st-Century Transatlantic Poetry Daniel Aguirre Oteiza We will read, listen to, and play with poems dealing with transatlantic perspectives on and from modern Spain. Close attention paid to the relation between poetry and identity, motherland, exile, and nomadism in Spanish and Latin American poets such as Bolano, Cernuda, Dario, Garcia Lorca, Neruda, Peri Rossi, and Vallejo, among others. Includes formal and thematic analysis of poems and hands-on work with texts in Spanish through translation. |
| Spanish 110 | Hispanic Literature: The Middle Ages Luis M. Giron Negron Introduction to Old Spanish literature from origins through 15th century. Close reading of works in historical context, including: Cantar de Mio Cid and La Celestina. Includes critical approaches and overarching themes in medieval Iberian literatures. |
| Spanish 112 | You Will Win, But You Won't Convince: Discussing the Spanish Civil War Daniel Aguirre Oteiza Examines the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) as a key event for understanding the "causes" that have shaped 20th- and 21st-century Spanish culture and society within the context of recent Western history. Focus on the relation between memory, history, and representation in cultural works ranging from the years prior to the conflict up to the present (narrative, poetry, testimonies, memoirs, film, visual arts, etc.). |
| Spanish 118 | Transversal Poetics: Workshop on Translation and "Transcreation" of Latin American Poetry Sergio Delgado An inquiry into the notion of transversal poetics: the theory and practice of poetry as a form of expression that brings together distinct ways of making sense with language. Structured as a workshop, course includes in-class exercises in translation and transcreation. Course conceived in conjunction with a symposium of Latin American poetry to take place in November 2013, featuring poets read in class. |
| Spanish 120 | Medieval Spain in the Poem of the Cid Luis M. Giron Negron Major themes and critical approaches in the study of the Castilian epic poem Cantar de mio Cid and the Cidian tradition (especially in the Romancero). |
| Spanish 122 | Figures and Fictions of Venture Capital and the Law in the Spanish Conquest Nicole Delia Legnani What is a conquest? How does enterprise (empresa) relate to chivalry, conquest and business? We explore the Spanish tropes of profitable violence in the West Indies and contextualize the development of the "laws of peoples" (jus gentium) by Spanish jurists within the corpus of commercial law employed by the empresarios of the 15th and 16th centuries. Topics include carried interest, the state of exception, sovereignty, friendship and enmity, profitable violence, orthodoxy and heterodoxy. In addition to examining laws, contracts, and chronicles of conquest, we read selections of an Inquisition trial and a bid made by indigenous elites of the Andes to purchase limited sovereignty from Philip II. |
| Spanish 124 | Don Quixote and the Art of Reading Mary M. Gaylord In the beginning was the book. From his library the hidalgo, bent on writing himself into History, sallies forth into a world of actors, storytellers, and readers. How do books come by their power to shape individuals and their world? We read Cervantes' masterpiece alongside seminal Renaissance works his characters and readers knew (Erasmus, Vives, More, Castiglione), and modern studies of reading and print culture. |
| Spanish 125 | The New Art of Telling Stories in Spanish: Cervantes's Novelas Ejemplares and Other Short Fiction for Early Modern Spain Mary M. Gaylord Before the novel was the novella. Early modern short stories hold up revealing mirrors to society, history and literature, offering - as Horace recommends - instruction and entertainment for an expanding readership in a changing world. Works studied include picaresque, Moorish tales, miscellanies, joke-books, Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares (1613) and Maria Zaya's tragic love stories. Taught in Spanish |
| Spanish 126 | Performing Latinidad Lorgia H. Garcia Pena What exactly does the word "latinidad" mean? How has "the Latino" been constructed in U.S. culture? What has been the importance of "latinidad" in the social and political history of people of Latin American descent in this country? What place does "latinidad" occupy within the North American academy? Our course attempts to respond to these inquiries through an analysis of Latino performance and its representation within particular literary and cultural productions: poetry, theater, film, and stand-up comedy. |
| Spanish 149 | Filming the Text Luis Fernandez-Cifuentes We will explore the complex process that takes place when certain literary texts (novels like Unamuno's La tia Tula; short stories like Aldecoa's Los pajaros de Badem-Badem or Garcia Morales's El Sur; and, especially, plays like Garcia Lorca's Bodas de sangre or Valle-Inclan's Divinas palabras) are transformed into films by such prominent directors as Luis Bunuel, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura, and Mario Camus. |
| Spanish 152 | Magical Realism and Its Discontent: Latin American Novels That Didn't Boom Mariano Siskind Carpentier and Garcia Marquez found a narrative form to express Latin America's aesthetic particularity through magic and marvel. Since the publication of Cien anos de soledad, its remarkable impact generated different experimental responses attempting to work through Latin American social reality in very different ways. We read novels and short stories by Carpentier, Garcia Marquez, Rulfo, Cortazar, Borges, Donoso, Saer, Cabrera Infante, Glantz, Bolano, Fuguet, Bellatin and Aira. Also comics and films. |
| Spanish 158 | Transversal Poetics: Workshops on Translation and Transcreation of Latin American Poetry Sergio Delgado An inquiry into the notion of transversal poetics: the theory and practice of poetry as a form of expression that brings together distinct ways of making sense with language. Structured as a workshop. Assignments include: translation of poems into English; rendition of poems into formats other than print (fliers, broadsheets, slideshows, installations, etc.). Readings by Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Zurita, Kamenszain, Cucurto, Maquieira. Course conceived in conjunction with Latin American poetry symposium November 2013. |
| Spanish 171 | Barcelona and the Catalan Culture Eloi Grasset Morell The course offers an interdisciplinary approach to Barcelona, a multilayered space furnished by Roman, French, Muslim, and Spanish legacies that shaped a singular culture and language. Developing from periods of egalitarian social and political institutions in the Middle Ages to strong socioeconomic industrial development in the 19th century and later tourism, Spain's most European city is inscribed by a deep sense of civic and industrious society permanently seeking innovation and modernity, yet facing the consequences of its complex past. Through readings of historians, art critics, urban designers, and writers, and supported by visual materials, the course offers an integrated perspective which opens questions in every field of the Humanities and the Social Sciences on Catalan and Hispanic Cultures. |
| Spanish 173 | Madrid, fin-de-siecle Luis Fernandez-Cifuentes Madrid's first turn of the century as a modern metropolis was marked by the innovative visions of the "generation of 1898" (the year Spain's colonial empire ended); the second, by the aftermath of Franco's dictatorship. This course will articulate comparative analyses of multicultural issues around those two historical "ends": from the architecture of the Gran Via and Baroja's engravings to the Castellana "skyscrapers" and Antonio Lopez's paintings; from Valle-Inclan's plays to Almodovar's films; from workers' movements to socialist democracy. |
| Spanish 179 | Regarding the Pain of Spain Daniel Aguirre Oteiza We will explore modern representations of violence in Spanish history through close analyses of short stories, novels, memoirs, paintings, and films by Spanish and some Latin American authors. Issues discussed may include la Espana negra, black humor, bullfighting, colonial power, concentration camps, gothic horror, sexual abuse, state repression, terrorism. |
| Spanish 194 | The Borges Machine Mariano Siskind We study Jorge Luis Borges's poetry, short stories, and essays; from Fervor de Buenos Aires to El Aleph; from his scripts and the films based on them to the cultural constellations that rose around him, as well as those his work created. We will think of Borges as a writer, but also as literary machine, an artifice that produces meaning in the works of other writers and in cultural formations beyond Argentina and Latin America. |
| Spanish 201 | Historia de la lengua espanola Luis M. Giron Negron Introduccion a la historia de la lengua espanola desde sus origenes hasta el presente. Escarceos en linguistica historica en el marco de la historia literaria y el estudio comparado de las lenguas romanicas. Acercamiento interdisciplinario. |
| Spanish 242 | Being and Knowing in Latina Theory Mayra Rivera Rivera (Divinity School) This graduate-level seminar course engages philosophers and literary theorists who analyze the relationship between geopolitics, language, and the prouction of knowledge drawing from Latino/a and Latin American intellectual traditions. Readings include works by Linda Martin Alcoff, Walter Mignolo, and Edouard Glissant, among others. |
| Spanish 243 | Foundational Fiction and Film Doris Sommer Through novels that helped to consolidate nation-states in Latin America, explores modernity as personal and public lessons in laissez-faire. Sequels in film, telenovelas, performances show tenacity of genre. Links between creativity and citizenship. Theorists include Anderson, Foucault, Arendt, Lukacs, Flaubert. |
| Spanish 244 | The Logic of Sensationalism Sergio Delgado Probes sensationalism as register of violent crimes and traumatic experiences. Posits sensation as break with or interruption of storytelling, narrative, discourse, etc. Readings and visual materials by Fernando Vallejo, Bolano, Metinides, Moris, Kristeva, Deleuze, Yudice. |
| Spanish 254 | Imagining Caribbean Communities: Border, Nations, and Diaspora in Contemporary Hispanic Caribbean Literatures Lorgia H. Garcia Pena This course explores the imagining of Caribbean communities through literary and cultural representations. Setting off from the concept of Pan-Caribbean solidarity that Jose Marti imagined at the end of the nineteenth century, we will look at the ways in which notions of Caribbean communities have been imagined, and deployed through literary and cultural representation. Focusing on questions of race, class, nation, and migration(s) our course will create a dialogue among late nineteenth and early twentieth century canonical Caribbean thinkers such as Juan Bosch, and Eugenio Maria de Hostos and lesser-known contemporary writers like Rita Indiana Hernandez and Rey Andujar. Our course will be organized thematically, proposing a trans-national and trans-historical view of Caribbean intellectual and literary history. The theoretical framework will engage current race, nation, migration, and transnational feminist theories with a focus on Caribbean criticism. |
| Spanish 261 | The Return of World Literature: Placing Latin America, Debating Universalism Mariano Siskind With Moretti and Casanova, world literature has made a comeback. Is there room for 'the Latin American universal'? We read Goethe, Hegel, Marx, Sanin Cano, Reyes, Borges, Wilcock, Copi, Bolano, Latin American films and music. |
| Spanish 269 | Body Matters and Market Forces in Latin American Literature and Culture Sergio Delgado Traces and analyzes social and symbolic dynamics of urban commodity capitalism. Emphasis on the body and perception as contested sites of coercion and critical agency. Readings by Benjamin, Arlt, Adorno, Siqueiros, Merleau-Ponty, Paz, Eltit. |
| Spanish 281 r | Graduate Seminar: New Worlds of Early Modern Poetry in Spanish Mary M. Gaylord Imitation of Latin and Italian models, rediscovery of Spain's medieval traditions and global exploration reshape 16th- and 17th-century lyric and epic, redefining poetic language itself. |
| Spanish 285 cr | Graduate Seminar: Money and Realism in Galdos's Times Luis Fernandez-Cifuentes The function and circulation of money in realism's representations of modern urban societies: monetary value and the modern concepts of need, wealth, happiness, poverty, and labor; money and gender; economics and the rhetoric of realism. |
| Spanish 285 r | Spanish Literature: Seminar: Filming the Text Luis Fernandez-Cifuentes We will explore the complex process that takes place when certain literary texts (novels like Unamuno's La tia Tula or Galdos's Nazarin; short stories like Aldecoa's Young Sanchez or Garcia Morales's El Sur; and, especially, plays like Carlos Arniches's La senorita de Trevelez or Valle-Inclan's Divinas palabras) are transformed into films by such prominent directors as Luis Bunuel, Juan Antonio Bardem, Victor Erice, Miguel Picazo, Mario Camus, and others. |
| Spanish 320 | Spanish and Hispanic-American Literature: Supervised Reading and Research |
| Spanish 330 | Direction of Doctoral Dissertations |