For the Graduate School Catalog please follow this link:

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/catalogs/grad/graduate.pdf#courses

 

Graduate Courses Descriptions – Fall 2011

SPANISH

SPAN/PORT 301: Literary Analysis and Theory

F 1:10-3:30  Andres Zamora

This course is intended as a basic introduction to twentieth-century and contemporary literary
theory at a graduate level.  One of its objectives will be to provide the students with a survey of theoretical models, terminologies and working tools for literary analysis.  We will read general introductions and relevant texts of Russian formalism, New Criticism, reader oriented theories, Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalytic literary theory, feminisms, poststructuralism, postmodernism, cultural studies, New Historicism, postcolonial studies, and gender studies.   We will complement the theoretical readings with a selection of different pieces of textual criticism.

SPAN/PORT 310: Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

(Also listed as Portuguese 310) M 3:10-5:40 Virginia Scott

Principles and practices of teaching a second language, with concentration on recent interactive

and communicative models of foreign language instruction. Goals of the course are 1) to introduce principles of Second Language Acquisition and learning, 2) to critically read relevant literature in the area(s), and 3) to develop FL instructor's awareness through reflective and critical thinking. Classroom observations, journal writing, development of materials, and a small action research project are expected. Required of all entering teaching assistants.

SPAN 336: Self-Writing in Latin America

W 3:10-5:30 Benigno Trigo

We will trace a modern history of self-writing in Latin America. We will begin with a study of

some excerpts from St. Augustine's Confessions and Santa Teresa de Jesús's Vida, and will continue with representative works from the twentieth century. We will study a number of topics raised by this practice. Among the topics we will discuss are the construction of the national subject, of the masculine and the feminine subject, of the modern experimental subject, and of the othered or subaltern subject. We will engage questions regarding the nationalist function of autobiography, the traps and promises of testimonial writing, the rhetorical nature of self-writing, the aporias of the Romantic autobiographical subject, the effect of the body on self-writing, and the possibility of writing identity as a transgression and even a separation from familiar cultural values and from the mother tongue. We will study examples of this genre from the following writers: Francisco Manzano, Teresa de la Parra, Elena Poniatowska, Rigoberta Menchú, Clarice Lispector, and Felisberto Hernández.

SPAN 343: Early Modern Spanish Drama

Topic: The Comedia and Beyond

R 3:10-5:30 Edward Friedman

The course will begin with the frustrated but talented dramatist Miguel de Cervantes, will focus on Lope de Vega and the development of the comedia nueva, and will consider representative works of the neoclassical and Romantic periods. Emphasis will be on reading and discussion of individual plays, a consideration of their multiple contexts, and a survey of dramatic theory from classical antiquity to the present, including performance theory.

Texts will include:

Miguel de Cervantes, "El retablo de las maravillas," La Numancia

Lope de Vega,  "Arte nuevo  de hacer  comedias  en  este tiempo," El  caballero  de Olmedo,

Fuenteovejuna, La dama boba, El castigo sin venganza

Tirso de Molina, El burlador de Sevilla

Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El médico de su honra, La vida es sueño

María de Zayas, La traición en la amistad

Ana Caro, Valor, agravio y mujer

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Los empeños de una casa

Leandro Fernández de Moratín, El sí de las niñas

Ángel Saavedra, Duque de Rivas, Don Álvaro, o la fuerza del sino

José Zorrilla, Don Juan Tenorio

Mark Fortier, Theory/Theatre: An Introduction

Selected criticism

There will be a reading assignment and a short written exercise for each week. Evaluation will be

based on the exercises and class participation (70%) and a final paper of ten to twelve pages

(30%). The class will be given in Spanish. The final paper may be in Spanish or English.

PORTUGUESE

PORT 102: Intensive Elementary Portuguese (Available to grads for AUDIT only)

01 MTRF 10:05-10:55 Camille Sutton

02 MTRF 1:10-2:00    Heather Mcrae

An accelerated introduction to reading, writing, speaking and listening. Emphasis on practical usage. Open to students with prior study of another Romance language or by permission of instructor. [4 hours]

PORT 200 Intermediate Portuguese

MWF 12:10-1:00 Marcio Bahia

Intermediate Portuguese 200 is a course offering for students who have taken Portuguese 100B,

102 or have acquired Portuguese background elsewhere and wish to continue studying the language.  The course is designed to offer a review of grammar through the use of music and other cultural elements (film, television programs, web resources, etc).

PORT 225 Brazilian Cutlure through Native Material

MWF 1:10-2:00 Emanuelle Oliveria

In this course we will have an overview of contemporary Brazilian culture through the analysis

of cultural objects as diverse as sitcoms, soap operas, movies and songs. Students will practice oral and written argumentative skills through the analysis of texts and video-texts by political

commentators such as Arnaldo Jabor (Globo TV News) or renowned  movie critics such as Isabela  Boscov (Veja  Magazine).  The  clash of the traditional and  the  modern  in  Brazilian families will be discussed through the analysis of popular sitcoms such as A Grande Família, Sai de Baixo and Toma Lá Dá Cá.  Students will understand how civil society fights against urban violence and poverty through cultural NGOs such as Nós do Morro and Afroreggae. And the correlations between soccer, crime and religion will be explored through movies such as Linha de Passe (Salles, 2008) and Carandiru (Babenco, 2003).

PORT 294: Special Topics in Portuguese Language, Literature or Civilization

Topic: Machado, Clarice, Pessoa

TR 9:35-10:50 Earl Fitz

This course concentrates on three of the Portuguese language's greatest writers, the Brazilians Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector, and the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, often hailed as the last of the great European modernists.  The texts we will read are the following: Machado de Assis: O Alienista, Esau e Jaco, and Memorial de Aires, plus selected works from his theater and poetry; Clarice Lispector: A Paixão Segundo G. H., A Via Crucis do Corpo, and Agua Viva (the text that, in French translation, provided Helene Cixous with the prototype for her very influential theory of "l'écriture feminine"); and, from Pessoa, poems in his own voice as well as poems in the voices of his famous heteronyms.

PORT 385: The Experimental Novel in Brazil and Spanish America

TR 1:10-2:25 Earl Fitz

This seminar focuses on the nature and form of the experimental novel in Spanish America and Brazil during the 1920s and 1930s, a period of extraordinary narrative inventiveness for Latin American fiction and one that prepares the ground for both Borges and the rise of the later "nueva narrativa hispanoamericana."  We will be reading such texts as Memórias Póstumas de Bras Cubas, Macunaíma, Serafim Ponte Grande, Parque Industrial, La casa de cartón, and Los siete locos and we will be discussing, via a variety of critical essays, both the historical circumstances of this fecund but restive era (the Great Depression) and the theoretical revolution (deriving from Saussure's linguistics) that, for language and literature, underpins it.