Prior knowledge of Spanish, Italian, or French. The focus of this course will be the relationship of the salient figures, issues, and texts of colonial Spanish American historiography to the growing number of contemporary novels which take as their subject the period of conquest and colonization in order to rewrite it. We will examine the ways in which recent novels use colonial history as a point of departure from which to challenge received notions of history as well as traditional paradigms of authorship and narrative strategy. Topics to be discussed will include the question of the Other, the figure of the conquistador, cannibalism, and nature in the New World. There will be also a set of photocopied critical readings that will supplement the course's reading list.
Evaluation is based on participation, oral presentations, and a final paper.
In aesthetic terms, his films are genre studies of Hollywood melodrama, screwball comedy, and Italian neorrealism. Course requirements include weekly film screenings, take-home study questions, a group Almodovarian film project, a final paper, and class participation. The bulk of the course, however, will be devoted to the representation of the border in the later 20th century. Course readings will be in both English and Spanish, with class discussions and papers in Spanish. This seminar will explore the fragile limits of national languages in literature, and the fractures that have opened up in literary expression under the pressures of both state abuses and political, linguistic, and sexual exiles.