Graduate Information
For more detailed information including course description, sample reading list, and instructor, please visit the Registrar's Office.
Courses for Spanish
COM 574/SPA 587/LAS 574Roberto Bolaño: Adventures in Culture LandForty years after the emergence of Gabriel García Márquez, the narrative works of Roberto Bolaño have once again put Latin American literature at the center of the world's cultural mainstream. Within epics of travel, adventure and youth culture, he combined literary traditions that until then seemed incompatible. This course will explore the fictional world, the poetics, and the artistic strategies of an author that made Jim Morrison dialogue with James Joyce, who resuscitated the myth of the Latin American avant-gardes, and who in less than ten years went from being an anonymous eccentric to a New York Times bestseller.Susana Draper
SPA 536Golden-Age PoetryA close reading of selected lyric poetry of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The course will have a workshop format: every week each student will prepare a brief analysis of a given poem in order to stimulate class discussion.Ronald E. Surtz
SPA 548Seminar in Modern Spanish-American Literature: Avant Garde, Media and ModernityThis course will explore various Latin American Avant-Garde movements in a comparative context: Mexican Estridentismo, Brazilian modernismo, Chilean creacionismo. We will examine these movements in the context of other international avant gardes, from Italian Futurism to Russian constructivism; discussions will be framed by various theories of the avant-garde, from Bürger to Perloff.Rubén Gallo
LAS 402/SPA 407Latin American Studies Seminar: Architecture as a Mechanism of Social InclusionArchitecture as a mechanism of social inclusion investigates the processes that are transforming urban structures, in particular the public and common spaces. Latin America has become an urban laboratory of unique living experiences, becoming a scenario to look into new solutions for contemporary challenges. We will begin with a broader study that explores the characteristics behind the informality and urban plans, understanding the stories behind the new forms of city development, the related forms of democracy and governance in the Latin society; together with the power of architecture as a mean to transform social realities.Gian C. Mazzanti Sierra
Courses for Portuguese
POR 561Modern Brazilian Literature: Machado de AssisThis seminar will focus on the work of Machado de Assis (1839-1908). Through the analysis and discussion of recent criticism we will be able to perceive that some of the most interesting social issues of contemporary Brazil can be found in Machado's plots, thus raising questions about the relationship between literature and society, writing and politics, center and periphery.Pedro Meira Monteiro