DENISON UNIVERSITY
MODERN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT
SPANISH 430- SEMINARIO DE CULTURA DE ESPANA
"Sexualidad y cuestiones de género, etnicidades y globalización en la España de los 1990s en adelante."
ETHNICITY, SEXUALITY AND GLOBALIZATION: THE PERFORMANCE OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN SPAIN
¡Hola a todos! This is a space where you can find reflections, analysis and evaluations on the culture of Spain of the most recent years (spanning from 1990 until 2004) done by the class members of the Fall 2004 seminar.
The aim of the course was to provide a panorama of cultural forms and lifestyles that have defined Spain during the past fifteen years. Through the films we watched, the literary works and theoretical texts we read, the music we listened to, the speakers that visited us and reflecting on our own personal experiences, we asked questions such as: What is it that makes Spain "Spain"? What images and/or stereotypes make up our image of this country? How have the Spaniards changed their concept of the country and the country itself recently?
Students became familiar with important Spanish issues such as national stereotypes, European integration, violence, trauma, race, immigration, sexual mores, gender roles and different age-related behaviors. In particular, we analyzed how different regional ethnicities, challenges to traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity and, an increasing strong presence in global markets through fashion, design and telecommunication are considered to transform Spanish national identity.
Students worked primarily with Spanish films (half of them subtitled) and literature (in Spanish) and examined a variety of texts from different disciplines (literary criticism, political history, gender studies, cultural studies, visual arts). Additional sources included guest presentations, documentaries, websites, magazines and music. Special emphasis was placed on interdisciplinary work and on student engagement beyond the classroom.
This site shows the results of this learning process.
Here you will find the journal entries that students wrote twice a week. Each week we tackled a different topic, analyzing how it was represented in a specific film, in a literature work and what were the different approaches critics have given to these issues. The journal entries register each student’s understanding of these texts, how they recognize and explain various aspects of the themes, analyze, differenciate and, contrast the Spanish culture in relation to their native culture. Furthermore, in addition to following a common syllabus, each student chose a particular issue to research. Engaging their topic of interest parallely to the regular schedule, students did alternative readings, watched different documentaries, films, materials and arrived at varying and quite distinctive conclusions. In this sense, the website integrates the class common themes with the specific research topic.
The structure of each student’s space is built to reflect each person’s especial focus on the general topics, and offers an introduction and a conclusion with an evaluation on their issue of research, the class themes and, most importantly, an estimate, a judgement on their learning process and the intellectual and emotional impact the project had on their lives.
I hope you enjoy this space! As an instructor, I felt my passion growing for the topics as the students reacted to them, argued from different perspectives, brought previous knowledge to light, worked cooperatively and put their views to a test in our class meetings. I thoroughly enjoyed their comments, the challenges they presented to me, their company, and indeed, I learned a lot myself!! !Muchísimas gracias por unas clases tan fantásticas!
Finally, it is important to stress the fact that since the cultural works we analyzed have been produced in very recent times, the critical essays you are about to read bring up very fresh and particular approaches to the texts we worked with. Without previous references to serve as a model, the value of the following writings is sometimes, groundbreaking.
The wonderful members of the Fall 04 class are, in alphabetical order: John Brown, Navonna Bunn, Nikki Fadem, Elaine Martin, Eric Meyers, Laura Reuther and, María Vigliucci.
If you are interested in knowing the texts we studied, this is the master list:
PRIMARY TEXTS:
Cercas, Javier. Soldados de Salamina. Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2003.
Etxebarría, Lucía. Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas. Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2002.
Jordan, Barry and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas. Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies. New York: Arnold Publishers, 2000.
Hooper, John. The New Spaniards. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Labanyi, Jo. Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain. Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mañas, José Angel. Historias del Kronen. Barcelona: Editorial Destino, 1998
Rivas, Manuel. La mano del emigrante (A mão dos paíños) Madrid: Alfaguara, 2001.
FILMS:
Almodovar, Pedro. Carne trémula
--. Todo sobre mi madre
Amenábar, Alejandro.Tesis
Armendáriz, Moncho.Salvajes
Bollaín, Iciar. Te doy mis ojos
de la Iglesia, Alex. La comunidad
Franco, Ricardo. La buena estrella
García Ruiz, Salvador. Mensaka
Guerín, José Luis. En construcción
Gutiérrez, Chus.Poniente
Joglars, Els. Buen viaje, excelencia
Locomotive Music. Videos musicales clásicos cvc #2
Médem, Julio.Vacas
Trueba, David. Soldados de Salamina
Zambrano, Benito. Solas
SECONDARY TEXTS:
Aguilar, Paloma and Carsten Humlebaek. "Collective Memory and National Identity in the Spanish Democracy: the Legacies of Francoism and the Civil War." History and Memory 14.1/2 (2002) 121-164.
Andrews, Margaret “Re-registering Spanish Feminisms” in Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies (233-24).
Bentley, Bernard P. E. "The Eroticism of Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto (Díaz Yanes, 1995). Spanish Cinema. The Auterist Tradition. Peter Williams Evans editor.325-346.
Bermeo, Nancy. "Sacrifice, Sequence, and Strength in Successful Dual Transitions: Lessons from Spain." The Journal of Politics, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Aug., 1994) 601- 627.
Bermudez, Silvia- "La Habana para un exiliado gallego: Manuel Curros Enriquez, La Tierra Gallega y la modernidad nacional transatlantica." MLN 117.2 (2002) 331-342.
Braham, Peter “Divisions of Labor” in Modernity. An Introduction to Modern Societies 308-34.
Crowley, Helen “Women and the Domestic Sphere”in Modernity. An Introduction to Modern Societies.
Deleyto, Celestino. " Motherland: Spance, Feminity, and Spanishness in Jamón, Jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992). Spanish Cinema. The Auterist Tradition. Peter Williams Evans ed.270-285.
Feldman Sharon G. Scenes from the Contemporary Barcelona Stage: La Fura dels Baus's Aspiration to the Authentic." Theatre Journal 50.4 (1998) 447- 472.
Giorgi, Gabriel. "Madrid en Transito. Travelers, Visibility, and Gay Identity." GLQ: A journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8.1 (2002) 57-79.
Manzano Moreno, Eduardo and Juan Sisinio Perez-Garzon. "A Difficult Nation? History and Nationalism in Contemporary Spain. History and Memory 12.1/2 (2002) 259-284.
Mira, Alberto “Laws of Silence: Homosexual Identity and Visibility in Contemporary Spanish Culture” (241-259) in Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies.
Murray, Michael and Brian Graham- "Exploring the dialectics of route-based tourism: the Camino de Santiago." Tourism Management, vol. 18. No. 8, pp. 513-524, 1997.
Narotzky, Susana and Gavin Smith. '"Being politico' in Spain. An Ethnographic Account of Memories, Silences and Public Politics." History and Memory, 14.1/1 (2002) 189-228.
Nogue, Joan and Joan Vicente. " Landscape and national identity in Catalonia." Political Geography 23 (2004) 113-132.
Nunez, Xose-Manoel. "History and Collective Memories of Migration in a Land of Migrants. The Case of Iberian Galicia." History and Memory 14.1/2 (2002) 229- 258.
O' Reilly, Karen "Britain in Europe/the British in Spain: exploring Britain's changing relationship to the other through the attitudes of its emigrants." Nations and Nationalism 8 (2), 2002, 179-193.
Richards, Michael. "From War Culture to Civil Society. Francoism, Social Change and Memories of the Spanish Civil War." History and Memory 14.1/2 (2002) 93-120.
Smith, Paul Julian. "Classic Fashion? The Adolfo Dominguez Sample Book" Contemporary Spanish Culture. TV, Fashion, Art and Film. 34-60.
---. "Catalan Independents? Ventura Pons's Niche Cinema" Contemporary Spanish Culture. TV, Fashion, Art and Film. 113-143.
---. "Resurrecting the Art Movie? Almodovar's Blue Period" Contemporary Spanish Culture. TV, Fashion, Art and Film. 144-168.
Strinati, Domenic. "Postmodernism and popular culture." An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. 222-245.
Walton, John K. Current trends in nineteenth and twentieth-century Spanish urban history" Urban History, 30, 2 (2003). Cambridge University Press.
Wiarda, Howard J. "Spain 2000: A Normal Country?" Mediterranean Quarterly 11.3 (2000) 30-61.