In this context, we will study fictions by Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico), and Rosario Castellanos (México), among others. Fiction written by women authors will constitute one of our main lines of investigation. We will pay careful attention to the African and indigenous roots of the Latin American imagination as it blended with the legacy of European literature. As we read, we will analyze the sociopolitical and aesthetic implications of a number of concepts associated with the literatures of the Spanish-speaking Americas-such as the notion of “magical realism,” a term that needs careful deconstruction since it has profound connections with forms of fantasy practiced globally in different literary traditions. We will then proceed to study the legacy of foundational authors of the Latin American canon, including Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Juan Rulfo (Mexico), and María Luisa Bombal (Chile). We will begin our exploration by reading pioneering works by Fernando Pessoa (Portugal) and Emilia Pardo-Bazán (Spain). In this course, we will examine fictional works from all over the Spanish-speaking world, as well as a small number of representative Luso-Brazilian texts originally written in Portuguese. For this reason, biweekly individual conferences will alternate with biweekly group conferences, during which we will explore “student-life” issues and develop some group identity. Since this is a First-Year Studies class, other important goals include helping students with the transition to college life, developing good study habits, and improving their critical writing skills. Along with these stories, plays, novels, and movies, students will have to read some “historical” materials (essays and selected chapters from history books) to gain a fundamental understanding of German history. Films such as The Murderers Are Among Us, The Marriage of Maria Braun, The Lives of the Others, Good Bye, Lenin, and Barbara will give students visual representations of the most important cultural and historical issues since 1945. In the spring semester, the seminar will focus entirely on postwar German literature and film after 1945 and, especially, the question of how writers and intellectuals have dealt with the Holocaust, National Socialism, the Communist dictatorship, and German reunification since 1990. Caligari, Dracula, and Metropolis) and finish the term with a reading of Feuchtwanger’s novel, The Oppermans, to understand the main ideological tenets of National Socialism. We will also watch and discuss several Expressionist movies from the 1920s (among them, The Cabinet of Dr. In the fall semester, we will analyze some German “classics,” such as The Suffering of Young Werther Romantic tales, along with a famous text by Sigmund Freud and some modern prose by Hesse, Thomas Mann, Kafka, Rilke, and Irmgard Keun. In this course, students will learn about the major cultural and historical developments in Germany since the late 18th century through an in-depth analysis of masterpieces of German literature (novels, stories, plays) and film.
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