Courses Taught at Reed

SPAN 312: Advanced Language and Culture – The Spanish Civil War

This advanced study of Spanish language and culture takes as its thematic focus a study of the cultural and artistic production concerning the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a tragedy that began a period of extreme violence in which more than one million Spaniards were killed and that resulted in the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, lasting until Franco’s death in 1975. 

Characterized by the Historian Helen Graham as “a war of culture,” the Spanish Civil War is the subject of a great number of cultural works as the two sides attempted to justify and motivate their cause through the production of art and through other modes of communication. This course studies the war through a focus on this cultural production, from the propaganda we find in posters produced during the war, to speeches given by Franco at its end, and literary works published by authors in exile. 

SPAN 343: Don Quixote and Narrative Theory

This course consists of a close reading of Cervantes’s masterpiece in conjunction with the works of theorists such as Michel Foucault, Gyorgy Lukács, Barbara Fuchs, and Mary Malcolm Gaylord, who have written about Don Quixote in the development and exploration of their various “theories of the novel.” To better understand the context of Don Quixote, we will begin with a careful consideration of political, cultural, and historical aspects of early modern Spain. During the final weeks of the semester we will read texts by Jorge Luis Borges and Paul Auster that exploit narrative conventions found in Don Quixote. We will end the semester with student presentations that focus on adaptations and appropriations of Don Quixote in modern narrative. [syllabus]

SPAN 362: Spanish Migrations

Historically, Spain has been considered a country of emigration, from the expulsion of Jews and Muslims in the early modern period to the colonialization of the Americas. However, in the past 40 years, Spain has become a country of immigration, primarily of people from North Africa and Latin America. This course focuses on the complex history of migration between Spain and North Africa by examining its representation in literature, film, and other cultural productions. How do contemporary artists represent what is for some immigrants a complex return to the Spanish “home” of their ancestors? How do they negotiate among a growing plurality of voices in a country that has imagined itself as homogeneous? How do they attempt to give voice to an immigrant population that has been silenced or in extreme cases erased? How might the foregrounding of migration destabilize the category of "Spanish" itself? Materials include texts and films created by Spanish and North African artists whose work has been translated into Spanish. [syllabus]

SPAN 366 Federico García Lorca: Theater and Poetry

One unit semester course. When Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he was already, at age 38, an internationally recognized author, highly admired within Spain and abroad. This course examines Lorca’s creative output, focusing mainly on his theater and poetry but also considering his visual art and work as director of “La Barraca,” a travelling theater company whose mission was to bring theater to rural areas. In our study of the author’s work, from Andalusian “folklore” poetry and early dramatic farces, to avant-garde works influenced by surrealism and cubism, to his trilogy of tragedies focusing on existential problems confronting women in rural Spain, we will examine how Lorca engages with artists like Salvador Dalí, film director Luis Buñuel, composer Manuel de Falla, and the critical debates of the early twentieth century. We will also consider theories of artistic practice like “duende” (in this context, artistic emotion) or the “cante jondo” (Andalusian “deep song” that is incorporated into flamenco music) that Lorca presents in published lectures and essays. Readings may include selected poems from the Romancero gitano, Poeta en Nueva York, and Divan de Tamarit, and the dramas Mariana Pineda, La zapatera prodigiosa, Bodas de sangre, Yerma, La casa de Bernarda Alba, El público. Prerequisite: Spanish 321 or consent of the instructor. Conference.

SPAN 370: Peninsular Modernism: Between Empire and Fascism

In 1898, in what was referred to commonly as “the Disaster,” Spain lost its final territories in the “new world” (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands) and entered into a period of political and social reform that had significant influence on literature and plastic arts. Although this period of political transformation and tremendous artistic liberty was complicated by the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, for many artists who later worked during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, it became a point of reference, a “silver age” that equaled in many respects the “golden age” of Spanish literature (the 16th and 17th centuries). This course focuses on the years 1900-1930, a period characterized by experimentation with established literary and artistic genres and the development of new forms that both allowed a more complex representation of reality and supported attempts to renovate and reform the socio-political reality of Spain. Texts studied include works by Valle-Inclán, Unamuno, García Lorca, and Ortega y Gasset as well as works of art by Santiago Rusiñol and Picasso. 

SPAN 377 Art after Dictatorship: Post-Franco Literature and Culture

One unit semester course. What happens to a culture when released from systematized repression? This course examines the creative explosion in literature and film produced in Spain after 1975, the year in which Francisco Franco died and his totalitarian regime ended.

Conference discussion will concern transformations that characterize the post-Franco era: the recuperation (or not) of historical memory, the emergence of a fluid conception of gender, and the creation of new forms of popular art. Particular attention will be given to the “movida,” the disruptive social and cultural transformations celebrated in the films of Pedro Almodóvar and others. Films and readings will include works by Almodóvar, Ventura Pons, Carmen Martín Gaite, Rosa Montero, Juan Marsé, and Eduardo Mendicutti. [syllabus]