Latin American Studies

Latin American Studies Program

Spring 2008

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

110 WILSON HALL

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROGRAM SEE THE WEB SITE:

http://www.virginia.edu/latinamerican/

Please see the Course Offering Directory on the Registrar's web site for various times and instructors.

ANTH 345 / 745 NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES (3)

Eve Danziger

This course in an introduction to the native languages of the Americas and to the methods that linguists and anthropologists have used to record and analyze them. It covers linguistic analysis and theory as a way into knowledge of languages very different from English and the frequently studied European languages. The methods of analysis learned should enable students to make intelligent use of linguistic materials on languages in other parts of the world as well. The native languages of the Americas are many, diverse and unevenly studied. Generalizations about them all can rarely be very meaningful or penetrating. The best way to gain a genuine sense of the subject is to become familiar with one of the languages . Such familiarity will give more than acquaintance with that particular language. It will give insight into the nature of the data and problems of the field as a whole (i.e. the field of study of languages which have been, for their speakers, unwritten.) To achieve this purpose, the course is designed so that each student will be working on a different language for which adequate published materials are available. The major assignments involve that work. Pre-requisite: LGS 325, LGS 701 or ANTH 740. This course fulfills the Language Structure requirement for Linguistics majors and for Linguistics graduate students.

REGISTRATION POLICY FOR HISTORY SEMINARS

Admission to the seminars is by instructor permission. Registration will take place through the electronic online waitlist. Students should indicate their major, their year in school, courses that have prepared them for the seminar, and their interest in the topic. Students should state if they are in the History Distinguished Majors Program. Students may apply to only one seminar at a time.

History majors must register online by 5 pm on Tuesday, November 14, and will be informed by Friday, November 17 whether they have been admitted. Students in other departments will be informed once all History majors have been accommodated.

HILA 202 - Modern Latin America

Brian Owensby

This course will explore the histories of Latin America from the wars of independence to the present day. Emphasis will be on understanding the relationship between large economic structures and the lives of historical actors in political, social, and cultural context. Enrollment will be limited to 60.

HILA 280 - Dictators in Fact and Fiction

Herbert Braun

What do dictators do when they dictate to us? Why is it that so many of us across time have been so attracted to such figures, even awed by them? What turns us into followers? We may not like to admit it, but often dictators stir the hearts of their followers. How are we to understand these emotions?

In her novel about the dictator Rafael Trujillo, Julia Alvarez, states that “I wanted to immerse my readers in an epoch in the life of the Dominican Republic that I believe can only finally be understood by fiction, only finally redeemed by the imagination. A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.” She may well be right about novels, but is she also right about historical documents?

In this seminar for second-year students we will look at the relationships between three dictatorial figures, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Juan Domingo and Eva, Evita, Perón, in Argentina, and their many followers. We will read historical documents and novels about these relationships to see what they do and do not, what they can and can not, tell us. Can these written texts transport us into these relationships? Can we imagine being there, a follower of a dictator?

HILA 305 - Modern Central America

Herbert Braun

This is a course on the historical connections and tensions between material and ideological forces, between capitalism and Liberalism, in four Central American countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) from the late colonial period to the near present. It traces the struggles of local, national, and international (United States) élites to construct societies based on private property and individual liberty through the peaceful and forceful integration of indigenous people into the market economy and the participation of agrarian, mono-exporting economies in the world system. We will ask how these elites seek to build consensus, a semblance of order and legitimacy, in the midst of conflict and violence.

The reading, which is extensive, often lively, and diverse, is drawn from historical monographs, testimonials, and fiction. Students will keep a detailed journal, and write a final interpretive essay of twenty pages that will emerge from that journal. Students will come prepared each day to discuss the readings and the themes of the course.

HILA 307/AAS 307 - History of Brazil

Roquinaldo Ferreira

This class surveys the History of Brazil from early Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century to Brazilian Independence in 1822. It places the onset of the colonization of Brazil against the backdrop of the broader Portuguese empire between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. It devotes significant attention to the establishment and growth of indigenous slavery and the transition to African slavery, dwelling on the intellectual and religious debates that the establishment of slavery brought about in the colony and the metropolis. It analyzes the social, political, cultural, and religious underpinnings of colonial Brazil by seeking to integrate Brazilian history into the broader Atlantic World, primarily Africa and the Spanish colonies in the Americas. In addition to lectures and discussions, several movies on colonial Brazil will be shown.

HILA 402A/SPAN 428 – History Colloquium

Globalization from Latin America

Cross-listed with SPAN 428B

Brian Owensby

This colloquium will delve into the history of globalization from the perspective of Latin America’s history from 1492 to the present day. We will seek to understand how global forces have shaped Latin American cultures and societies, and how Latin America’s experience has influenced developments elsewhere in the world. Enrollment will be limited to 12.

HILA 402B – History Colloquium

Latin America: In Quest of Identity

Herbert Braun

In Latin America the search for identity has been a plural endeavor. Latin Americans have asked, “Who are we? Rarely have they asked, “Who am I? “

Who are we? What kind of a people are we? What kind of a civilization? What is our destiny? What are the causes of our backwardness? What lies in our future? These thoughts run through the writings of almost all of Latin America’s great thinkers.

Students in this course will write a final interpretive essay on this quest for identity based on our readings of historical and contemporary writers. This essay will be between twenty and thirty pages in length.

The course will be divided into two parts: In the first eight weeks we will read together from the writings of some of those great thinkers, including Bolívar, Sarmiento, Andrés Bello, José María Luis Mora, Lucas Alamán, Alcides Arguedas, Francisco Bulnes, José Ingenieros, José Enrique Rodó, José Martí, José Carlos Mariátegui, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Edmundo O’Gorman, Leopoldo Zea, Octavio Paz.

During the last six weeks students will read contemporary authors writing from the 1960s onward, as they ruminate on the emergence of modernity, the growth of materialism, the decline of ideology, the place of the individual and the family in society, the prospects for democracy, changing gender roles, the revolution in sexual mores, the heightened place of race and ethnicity, and the relationship between Latin America and the world. Students will select various authors depending on the directions that their essay is taking.

Most of the readings are in Spanish. Students taking this course must feel comfortable reading in Spanish. Permission of instructor is required. The final essay may be written in either English or Spanish.

PORT 101 – ELEMENTARY PORTUGUESE (3)

PORT 212 – INTERMEDIATE INTENSIVE PORTUGUESE (4)

David Haberly

Continued study of Portuguese through readings, vocabulary exercises, oral and written compositions, and grammar review.

Prerequisites & Notes

Prerequisite: PORT 111 or equivalent.

PORT 499 – INDEPENDENT STUDY

David Haberly

Studies topics in Portuguese or Brazilian literature or in Portuguese linguistics according to the interests and preparation of the students.

Prerequisites & Notes

Prerequisite: One course at the 300 level or higher, or instructor permission.

RELA 285 – CREOLE RELIGIONS OF THE AMERICAS

Jalane Schmidt

This course looks at religious creolization (hybridity, "mixing") in Latin American and Caribbean religions.

RELA 351 – ANTHROPOLOGICAL ACCOUNTS OF AFRICAN DIASPORA RELIGION

Jalane Schmidt

This course reads influential ethnographic accounts of Afro-Latin and Afro-Caribbean religions to trace changes in how communities of African descent were "known," in the anthropological literature, through these accounts of their religious practices.

SPAN 314 BUSINESS SPANISH

Maria Gutierrez

This is an advanced Spanish course that focuses on the uses of Spanish business terminology. It is designed to teach the fundamentals of practical commercial Spanish correspondence, advertising, foreign trade, insurance, transportation, and banking. Other important aspects of the course will be studying Hispanic countries’ commercial behaviors, and their present economical reality. This course is recommended only for students with a solid background in Spanish. (One or two 300-level Spanish courses required.)

SPAN 315 – Conversation Cinema Latin America

Catherine Karr-Cornejo

Prerequisites: SPAN 311 Grammar Review

Conversation course whose subject matter is Latin American cinema. Films will be discussed in the context of the history and culture of various countries.

SPAN 330 – Literary Analysis

SPAN 311, Grammar Review, must be completed before enrolling in SPAN 330 or an AP Spanish Language score of 5

NB: Students with an AP Spanish Literature score of 4 or 5 may not take this course for credit.

PLEASE NOTE: SPANISH 330, LITERARY ANALYSIS, IS A PREREQUISITE FOR ALL LITERATURE SURVEYS (340, 341, 342, 343) AND ALL LITERATURE AND CULTURE CLASSES. THIS IS A DEPARTMENT REQUIREMENT.

Drawing upon readings from different periods of both Spanish and Latin American literature, this course introduces the student to the fundamentals of analyzing narrative, lyric poetry, and drama. Through daily readings and discussions, as well as several exams and papers, the student will develop a critical vocabulary that will allow him or her to make convincing oral and written arguments about the relationship between what a literary text says and how it says it. All work will be conducted in Spanish. This course is a pre-requisite for all further work in literature and culture & civilization in the Spanish program. It is also a required course for Spanish majors.

SPAN 341 Survey Spanish Literature II, 3 credits

This course provides an overview of literature and society in Spain from the eighteenth century until today.

SPAN 343 Survey Latin American Literature II, 3 credits

Gustavo Pellón

MWF 12:00-12:50

Spanish 330 Literary Analysis is a prerequisite for this course.

This course is a survey of Spanish American literature. The objective of the course is to introduce students to major authors, works, and literary movements of Spanish America from 1900 to the present. Students will read poetry and short prose selections from an anthology (Voces de Hispanoamérica) as well as a novel (Gabriel García Márquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada). We will also see a few films.

Written work will consist of unannounced quizzes and short writing assignments, two short papers (3 and 6 pages respectively) and a two part exam: the first part will be taken in class and will deal will require recall of information, the second part will be an open-book, open-notebook take-home essay exam.

PROFESSOR: Gustavo Pellón, 122 Wilson, e-mail: pellon@virginia.edu

OFFICE HOURS: MWF 3-4

GRADING CRITERIA:

Your grade will be based on the quizzes and short writing assignments (25%), papers (50%) and the exam (25%). The ability to think and write clearly and critically is considered a major goal of this course. Students are therefore expected to take great care in the planning and execution of all written work. What will ultimately decide your grade is your ability to think clearly about the literary texts we read and how you express your thoughts. Note that your evaluation will always depend on both your ideas and correct use of Spanish grammar, and they will be weighed equally. Attendance is required.

Grading Scale for the course. Note that this scale is different from that used in lower level classes.

A+ 100-99 4

A 98-95 4

A- 94-90 3.7

B+ 89-88 3.3

B 87-85 3.0

B- 84-80 2.7

C+ 79-78 2.3

C 77-75 2

C- 74-70 1.7

D+ 69-68 1.3

D 67-65 1

D- 64-60 .7

F 59 0

DEPARTMENTAL POLICY ON TOLERANCE:

The faculty and teaching assistants of the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese wish to foster an environment in which all students, regardless of race, gender, age, religious affiliation, sexual preference, or physical disability are encouraged to learn and to develop their skills. If you have comments or suggestions regarding the way these aims are being pursued in this class please do not hesitate to tell your instructor. If you would prefer to speak to someone other than your instructor, please call our Academic Ombudsman Deborah Parker 924 4654.

SPAN 428/528 Latin America Culture & Civilization, 3 credits

Daniel Chávez

SPAN 428B Globalization From Latin America, 3 credits

Cross-Listed with HILA 402A

Brian Owensby

SPAN 474 Women Between Cultures: US Latinas in their Writing, 3 credits

Mané Lagos

In the last decades, Chicanas, Nuyoricans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, Dominican-Americans, and Latin American women living and writing in the United States have created an important corpus that deals with issues of cultural identity and being a woman in-between two cultures. This course will examine how Latina women have articulated the experience of living within two sets of cultural codes, considering variants such as class, race, religious beliefs, language, etc. Class conducted in Spanish; readings are in English. Class participation, oral presentation, two exams, one paper.

SPAN 480 Essays of Identity, 3 credits

Ruth Hill

Prerequisites: 311 or 411 and 330.

This course will focus on attempts (essays) to define Latin America and the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through an analysis of non-fiction (long and short essays, newspaper articles) and a handful of fictional works (dramas and novels), plus secondary readings in anthropology, history, and law. We will be looking at topics such as gender, class, race, development, nationalism, constitutionalism, and modernity.

All students are required to meet with their assigned study group outside of class each week and turn in 3-5 pp. reports every week. Students will write three exams, plus the final exam, and take unannounced quizzes on the daily readings. Active and intelligent participation in classroom dialogues is a must; attendance is not enough. Reading load is heavy and all written assignments and lectures in Spanish.

SPAN 486 Contemporary Latin American Short Story, 3 credits

Donald Shaw

The course will be based on analyses of mainstream short stories by Spanish American authors from Horacio Quiroga to Rosario Ferré in broadly chronological order, including Borges, Rulfo, Cortázar and Valenzuela. There will be discussion of methods of dealing critically with short stories and of the place of the authors in the development of modern fiction in Spanish America. The course will be based on a xerox packet of short stories. Grades will be based on three short essays two in Spanish and one in English.

Spanish 491/591: Spanish Women Writers, 1450-1800: The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

Alison Weber

This course will explore texts written by women in Spanish from the late Middle Ages to 1800. The unifying theme will be the creation of feminist consciousness. Among the issues we will consider are how women claimed the authority to write or teach during periods when these activities were discouraged; women’s religious expression and its relationship to self-actualization; the means by which women writers emulated, rejected or appropriated male-authored models; the development of a separate feminine literary tradition; and women’s awareness of gender roles as historically constructed. Pre-requisites: Spanish 330 (or equivalent experience); highly recommended: at least two other literature or culture courses in Spanish at 300 or 400 level. Active participation and extensive writing will be expected. Distinguished majors and BAMT students should register under the 591 rubric. The course will be conducted in Spanish.

SPAN 783 Latin American Poetry, 3 credits

Fernando Operé

This is a course of Latin American poetry that with a balance between popular and canonize poetry. In the first group will study poesía gauchesca (Hilario Ascasubi, José Hernández, and some contemporary forms of the gauchesca poetry). We will also see some poetry that found its way into musical expressions and were popularized in the entire continent (el corrido mexicano, el bolero and el tango). Part of the course will deal with popular interpretations of 19th and 20th century poetry, from romantic to modernist trend (Heredia, Martí, Lugones) and the end up with the most popular of Neruda.

SPAN 784 Spanish American Fiction

Gustavo Pellón

This course will present a panorama of contemporary Spanish American literature’s main trends through the study of novellas published between 1935 and the end of the 20th century. These texts raise issues related to literature and writing, as well as gender, political and social conditions, family traditions, etc. Authors include María Luisa Bombal (La última niebla), Julio Cortázar (El perseguidor), Felisberto Hernández (Las hortensias), Julieta Campos (“Celina o los gatos”), Carlos Fuentes (Aura), Gabriel García Márquez (El coronel no tiene quien le escriba), Mario Vargas Llosa (Los cachorros), Luisa Valenzuela (“Cambio de armas”), Rosario Ferré (“La bella durmiente”), Senel Paz (El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo), Antonio Skármeta (No pasó nada), and César Aira (Cómo me hice monja). Class participation, oral presentation, short essays, exam or term paper.

SOC 341 – Race & Ethnicity/Race & Ethnic Relations (3)

This course provides a graduate level introduction to the field of Race and Ethnicity. As such, it attempts to cover a broad spectrum of topics, focusing on the theoretical and consequential aspects of conceptions of race and ethnicity. Of necessity, the course also has a historical focus, since modern-day debates over race are strongly conditioned by the past. Moreover, to really understand issues of race and ethnicity, we must take a cross-cultural perspective, since these debates have often been skewed by a focus on the wrenching problems produced by racial/ethnic conflict in the United States. By adopting these perspectives, the course seeks to provide insight into the complexities that surround issues of race and ethnicity.