2023 Fall SPANISH R1A 001 LEC 001

2023 Fall

SPANISH R1A 001 - LEC 001

Reading and Composition Through Readings from the Spanish-Speaking World

Intersectional Desire: Premodern, Early Modern and Modern

Jose L Patino Romero

Aug 23, 2023 - Dec 08, 2023
Mo, We, Fr
08:00 am - 08:59 am
Class #:23008
Units:4

Instruction Mode: In-Person Instruction

Offered through Spanish and Portuguese

Current Enrollment

Total Open Seats: 2
Enrolled: 15
Waitlisted: 0
Capacity: 17
Waitlist Max: 5
No Reserved Seats

Hours & Workload

3 hours of instructor presentation of course materials, and 9 hours of outside work hours.

Course Catalog Description

The course will offer students an introduction to the literature and culture of Spanish-speaking worlds, will help them develop their skills as readers and critical thinkers and make significant progress in their ability to write coherent, intellectually forceful expository prose. We will focus on analytical writing by developing control of argument and style. Essays will be produced through a process of workshop and revision, with in-class writing, homework, and peer commentary. Our guide will be Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Students meet together and also individually with the professor.

Class Description

Is what we want just about the thing we want? Why do we want stuff that we don’t really need? Can we just stop wanting what we want? Can we actually know what other people’s intentions are? Is “need” different from “desire”? This writing-intensive course focuses on literary representations of overpowering desire across the ages to defamiliarize how we think about the relationship between class, race and gender. We will analyze how social differences can be understood and problematized in terms of unequal access to the same objects of desire. Our primary texts help us with this task by representing authorial voices and characters' actions and motivations that resisted, manipulated or created alternative spaces to social imitations to self-realization. While “desire” is often equated with erotic desire, this course considers several ways of desiring different objects of desire, such as religious experience, knowledge, fame, wealth, and authenticity. The selection of texts has a non-exclusive emphasis on Spanish and Latin American literature in English translation. We will cover a range of periods and regions, from Greco-Roman antiquity through the middle ages, early modernity, and modernity. Some of the works we will read are Plato’s dialogues, the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes, a colonial chronicle by Bartolomé de las Casas, short fiction by Miguel de Cervantes, a letter and a play by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and short stories by Herman Melville, Emilia Pardo-Bazán, and José María Arguedas. Analyzing the interconnectedness of all desires as represented in literary narratives allows us to understand the changing functions of each period’s economy, sexuality and colonialism. At the same time, we will consider the historical changes in the relationship between religious and secular desire. We will read our texts through in-class discussions, weekly blog posts, short writing assignments and two essays (midterm and final), always in dialogue with the instructors’ personalized and group feedback. Each project is designed to guide you through the endless process of refining your original insights on the course topic in clear and precise analytical prose.

Rules & Requirements

Requisites

  • Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills

First half of the Reading and Composition Requirement

Reserved Seats

Current Enrollment

No Reserved Seats

Textbooks & Materials

See class syllabus or https://calstudentstore.berkeley.edu/textbooks for the most current information.

Textbook Lookup

Guide to Open, Free, & Affordable Course Materials

eTextbooks

Associated Sections

None