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SPAN 5130/7130 20th Century Peninsular Literature: Disobedience in Contemporary Spanish Culture
T 3:30 - 6:00pm, Javier Krauel
This seminar introduces students to core problems and key concepts in 20C-21C literary theory and criticism. We will review some of the most important theoretical approaches that have informed literary/cultural studies over the past few decades (formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, and environmental humanities). We will pay special attention to issues of difference, performance, class, gender, race, and models of human-nature relationships. One of the main objectives of the seminar is for students to learn how to write theoretically informed papers that critically reflect on the cultural assumptions that shape our understanding of literature. To acquire such skills, we will read a range of books and articles together with literary texts. The course will conclude with some reflections on the nature of graduate studies and the profession today.

SPAN 5320/7320: Spanish American Literature, 20th and/or 21st Centuries: Latin American Novellas
Thursday 3:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m., Peter Elmore
A laboratory of experimentation as well as a challenging symbolic form, the novella is a narrative form which demands exceptional mastery of craft from its practitioners. Most of the very best Latin American authors, from high modernists like Juan Carlos Onetti to late postmodernists like Roberto Bolaño, have excelled at writing novellas. Famously, Jorge Luis Borges claimed that Bioy Casares’s La invención de Morel was “perfect” –perfection meaning, in this particular usage, free from lack, flaw, or excess. Formal rigor, strong characterization, compelling stories, thematic relevance, and distinctive style are traits shared by all the novellas we will read. From the fantastic to neo-realism, Latin American novellas have expanded the terrain of Latin American fiction. Throughout the semester we will engage in close readings and careful contextualization of each text. Critical and theoretical essays will be assigned for discussion.

SPAN 4430/5430/7430 Trends in Hispanic Linguistics: Varieties of Spoken Spanish
TTh 2:00 - 3:15pm, Javier Rivas
This course offers an overview of geographical and social variation in oral Spanish. Although we will mainly focus on the spoken varieties of Latin America (Mexican, Central American, Caribbean, Andean, and Southern Cone) and Spain (Castilian, Andalusian, and Canarian), we will also discuss contact varieties of Spanish, including Judeo-Spanish, Afro-Spanish, and Spanish-based creoles. We will examine major patterns of variation at the phonetic, phonological, and morphosyntactic levels. These patterns will be analyzed using a quantitative variationist methodology. This approach reveals that variation is structured and conditioned by both internal and external linguistic factors, including register, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. The analysis of geographical and social variation will lead to a discussion of the complex relationships among language, identity, and society.