ROSA TAPIA
WINTER 2008 COURSES
A continuation of Spanish
101 with intensive practice in language skills, including readings about
cultural topics.
This course is a survey of Spanish literature
from the 18th century to the present. Students will have the opportunity to read
the works of universally acclaimed authors like Federico García Lorca, Miguel de
Unamuno, Benito Pérez Galdós, and Nobel Prize winners Vicente Aleixandre and
Camilo José Cela, among many others. Participants will become familiar with the
most important periods in Spanish literature (Romanticism, Realism, Modernism,
Postmodernism…), as well as with their historical circumstances. This class
provides the necessary foundation for a number of advanced literature seminars
that are offered at Lawrence and at off-campus study sites. It also offers an
introduction to relevant concepts of theory and criticism for the study of the
selected readings and the assigned research projects. All of the literary texts,
discussions, presentations and assignments will be in Spanish.
In this class we study an important group of
novels that appeared in Spain between 1978 and the beginning of the 21st
century. Our analysis focuses on issues of memory, gender and the evolution of
postmodern identities in contemporary fiction. We explore how each narrative
takes on different aspects of the conflicted Spanish psyche and its literary
representations. Students read a number of required articles and critical essays
about each novel, and these secondary sources provide the foundation for their
final research project.