Graduate Courses, Fall 2000

FOW 5025 Critical Theory and Its Application to Non-English Literatures
Graham-Jones, MWF 1:25-2:15

Description: Critical theory and its application to the reading of literature and, reciprocally, the refinement of theory from the reading of literature.  The course is intended not only to introduce the students to major critical theories, but also to guide them in the study of relationships between theory and the reading of literature in their respective language areas.  The course is furthermore intended to provide information on how to proceed in independent study of these relationships.  The course introduces graduate students to the major critical theories of the twentieth century, such as formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, reception and reader-response theories, deconstruction, theories of gender, cultural studies and new historicism, and postcolonial and postmodern theories.

Evaluation: Preparation for and participation in class discussions; one 10-15 page paper that applies a critical method to a text, or reading notes and critical bibliography on at least twenty items (articles, books, chapters from books) focusing on one theoretical or critical method (for each item, a one-page or more summary should be included, followed by a one-page or more critical analysis or critique of the work).

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SPN 5060 Graduate Reading Knowledge in Spanish
Rehder, MW 3:35-4:50

Description: Preparation for GRK exam (SPN 5069). Designed to present structures of the Spanish language and vocabulary to assist graduate students majoring in other disciplines to read journals, books, and monographs written in Spanish useful to the students' research.  May be repeated to a maximum of nine (9) hours.

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SPN 5795 Phonology of Spanish
Wyatt, TTh 12:30-1:45

Description: Introduces the student to articulatory phonetics and the theory of Spanish phonology as a set of phonological rules determining allophonic distribution.  Entails partial analysis of various dialects of Spanish during class and an assignment to make an analysis of the Spanish of some native speaker's dialect.

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SPN 5855 Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition
Cappuccio, TTh 3:35-4:50

Description: Upgrades the student's knowledge and application of Spanish grammar in the areas of speaking, writing, and teaching.

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SPW 5275 Twentieth-Century Spanish Prose (before Civil War) (Spanish Twentieth-Century Novel)
Rehder, MWF 9:05-9:55

Description: The course offered this semester will study significant literary and ideological trends from the turn of the century up through the mid-1930’s, including Modernismo, the Generation of 1898, the post-Noventaiochistas, and the Vanguardist tendencies of  the 1920’s.  The works include: Valle-Inclán’s neo-Gothic Jardín umbrío and his later cubistic novel of dictatorship, Tirano Banderas; Unamuno’s philosophical treatise, Del sentimiento trágico… and his tale of hombría, Nada menos que todo un hombre; Azorín’s chronicle of  youth vs. Spanish fatalism, Las confesiones de un pequeño filósofo; Baroja’s mordant tale of maturation, El árbol de la ciencia; Pérez de Ayala’s anticlerical A.M.D.G.; and Ortega y Gasset’s famous exposition of Occidental Modernism, La deshumanización del arte…..

Course assignments will include a presentation/paper that analyzes three critical articles on a work selected by student and instructor.

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SPW 5385 Early and Modern Spanish American Prose Fiction
Gomariz, T 5:15-7:45

Description: This course will provide both a graduate survey of the foundations and evolution of Modern Spanish American narrative and an in-depth examination of some of its major socio-historical, cultural and aesthetic issues. We will address especially questions concerning the literary construction of the Modern subject, national identity, colonialism, hegemony, subaltern resistance, race, gender and class. In addition, we will analyze the hegemonic dichotomy between "civilization and barbarism" and the formation of dominant and counter-cultural discourses in the context of Spanish American Modernity. The emphasis of the course will be upon the narration of the Nineteenth Century and the first three decades of the Twentieth Century.

Readings: Sab, Amalia, María, Clemencia, Lucía Jerez, Sin rumbo, De sobremesa, Aves sin nido, La vorágine, Doña Bárbara.

Evaluation: Class discussion; 12-15 page research paper; final exam.

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SPW 5386 Contemporary Latin American Fiction
Poey, MWF 11:15-12:05

Description: This course will cover twentieth-century Latin American fiction.  While the course is designed to expose students to a broad range of representative authors and texts, it also seeks to situate those texts in both specific histories and broader theoretical frameworks.  Roughly half of the semester will focus on "canonical" texts.  The other half of the semester will be dedicated to layering, critiquing and responding to
those texts through readings of less recognized voices.

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SPW 5405 Mediating Fictions (Medieval and Early Renaissance Spanish Literature)
Dangler, M 5:15-7:45

Description: This course examines the mediating value of medieval and early modern Iberian literature.  This literature is not merely entertaining or didactic, rather it negotiates all kinds of meaning for its readers, from how an individual should act in a particular circumstance to how medieval readers should evaluate the world around them.  Often at the center of these mediating fictions is a medianera such as the Virgin or a healer, a woman who mediates two realms of value for a reader, including sickness and health, or misery and fulfillment. We will explore the role that medianeras play in these works, and the extratextual consequences they have for the reader's identity, and for the construction of the reader's society. The course will demonstrate that the gamut of events in the fifteenth century, such as the invention of the printing press, professionalizing efforts in a number of fields such as medicine, colonizing expeditions around the globe, and the Jewish expulsion from the Iberian peninsula, combine to produce dramatic changes in the way that Iberian fictions mediate between readers and the world around them.

Readings: Lírica española de tipo popular; Sendebar; Alfonso X, Cantigas; Arcipreste de Hita, Libro de buen amor; Jaume Roig, Espejo; Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho; Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina; Francisco Delicado, La Lozana andaluza; Lope de Vega, El Caballero de Olmedo.
Critical and secondary readings include selections from: Glending Olson's Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages; Mary Wack's Lovesickness in the Middle Ages; Bernard of Gordon's Lilio de medicina; the anonymous Speculum al foderi; Taussig; Beverley; Jameson.

Evaluation:  In-class participation; weekly, one-page response papers; one 15-page final research paper.

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SPW 5606 Cervantes
Darst, MW 3:35-4:50

Description: An individual survey of Cervantes's literary works, especially Don Quijote.

Readings: Don Quijote; Novelas ejemplares: "El licenciado Vidriera," "Rinconete y Cortadillo," "La gitanilla."

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SPW 6806 Research, Methods and Professional Issues
Campus Web page: http://campus.fsu.edu/courses/SPW6806-01.fa00/

Description: This course will provide students with the necessary tools for professional development and research in the field of literary studies including: a) knowledge of and familiarity with the resources at Strozier Library; b) understanding of standard reference and (standard and virtual) research tools in the field; c) appropriate research techniques; d) understanding of diverse issues and approaches relevant to the study, interpretation and teaching of literary and cultural discourses. The main objective is to prepare students for the successful completion of graduate work in literature and to give students the skills necessary for preparation of professional presentations and submissions of literary research in scholarly form.

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