SPAN 412-000: Topics In Hispanic Culture: Matza & Tortillas (Spring 2010)

Description: This course will address the historical position and cultural production of Spanish and Latin American Jewry, focusing first on early and modern Spain, then shifting focus to contemporary Latin America, with particular attention to Jewish participation in the national life of Argentina, Mexico, and Cuba.  Beginning with medieval Spain and moving to the present, we will contrast the self-representations of Jewish writers with their depiction by non-Jewish authors as a means of understanding how majority cultures construct an "Other" belonging to a minority culture, and how diasporic Jewish subjects in the Hispanic world have historically framed their identity while negotiating the pressures of exile and immigration, antisemitism, and political violence.  By looking at examples as diverse as Spain's marranos and the Jewish gauchos of Argentina, the course will examine what it means to "live on the hyphen," that is, to negotiate the tensions between ethnicity and nation, between the process of assimilation and the preservation of differences.  Readings-both historical and creative-will highlight the role of memory in constructing symbolic representations through which cultural, ethnic, and religious identity is expressed. 

Texts: Readings will be interdisciplinary and will be drawn from a wide variety of discourses: narrative fiction, poetry, essays, drama, autobiographical memoirs, film, cookbooks, historical documents (for instance, records of public debates; trials of the Inquisition), legal codes, newspaper accounts, and musical recordings.  Representative authors/texts may include: Riera, En el último azul; Gerchunoff, Los gauchos judíos; Shúa, El libro de los recuerdos; Rozenbacher, Réquiem para una noche del sábado; Glantz, Las genealogías; Behar, The Vulnerable Observer; Obejas, Days of Awe.   Additional primary and critical readings available on e-reserves. The course will also include screenings of fictional and documentary films that explore Jewish-Latin American identity such as Novia que te vea; Un beso a esta tierra; Havana Nagila, among others.

Evaluation: The final grade will be based on active class participation; short written assignments; a Web project; midterm exam; a 10-pp. paper.

Particulars: Most readings will be in Spanish, with occasional readings in English and Ladino (the Judeo-Spanish language used in the Sephardic diaspora).