Humanities Graduate Courses

HMN 502 Intensive Brazilian Portuguese and Culture for Spanish Speakers

This course represents a hybridization of a language-acquisition course and a critical/cultural seminar. Part of the course will be devoted to intensive Portuguese instruction for Spanish-speakers. Since the two primary Iberian languages are so close to one another in grammar and vocabulary, specialized linguistic techniques will be employed for students with a high level of proficiency in Castilian Spanish. Instruction will also rely heavily on Brazilian music as a means of introducing Brazilian culture, history, speech, and communications.

Given this reliance on music, therefore, the other part of the course will consist of a graduate-level seminar on Brazilian culture through its musical history. We will mobilize the variety of musical styles and genres from Brazilian (samba, forro, bossa vova, MPB, etc.) as a means of understanding regional, historical and social divisions in the country. In a nation of high rates of illeteracy and the absence of print culture, music (and its dissemination through radio, recordings, and TV) has served as a prime mover for national integration in Brazil. As such, Brazillian music may pose a significant challenge to the notion of the "imagined community" (B. Anderson), on of the cornerstones of contemporary cultural studies. In other words, this course offers training in the Portuguese language so that participants may immediately utilize their newly-acquired skills for theoretical considerations of Brazilian culture.

Graduate-level proficiency (native or near-native) in Spanish is required. Familiarity with Latin American literature and culture, and with contemporary critical perspectives, is desirable.

HMN 503 European Women Film Directors

Women's cinematic eye. For over a century with their intelligence and creativity women have been contributing to the moving image. In 1896 the French, Alice Guy, directed the first film made by a woman, La Fee aux choux. In this seminar we will critically explore the cinematic production of some of the major European women filmmakers of all times. We will engage Agnes Varda's Nouvelle Vague innovations, Liliana Cavani's crucial output, the exquisite contemporary comedies of Fina Torres and Josiane Balasko, and many others. Indeed, though the reading and discussion of filmic and theoretical texts we shall engage some fundamental questions concerning subjectivity and language, body and culture. We will examine constructions of sexual difference and (re) presentations of female/male gender in these three social, political and historical contexts. The theoretical framework will be provided by the philosophical writings of film theorist and filmmakers such as Gilles Deleuze, Andre Bazin, Marguerite Duras, Kaja Silverman, Stephen Heath, Teresa de Lauretis and Judith Butler, among others.

N.B. The course and the readings will be in English. The films will be in Italian and French with English subtitles.

Required films:

We will select 11 or 12 films from the following selection:

• Coline Serreau Trois homes et un couffin (Three Man and a cradle), Romuald et Juliette (Mama, there's a man in your bed)
• Agnes Varda Cleo de 5 a 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7), Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond)
• Liliana Cavani Il Portiere di Notte (The Night Porter), Francesco, and the Berlin Affair
• Lina Wertmuller Sotto sotto, Love and Anarchy or Swept Away
• Nicole Garcia Place Vendome
• Josiane Balasko Gazon Maudit (French Twist)
• Fina Torres Mecaniques Celestes (Celestial clockwork)
• Marguerite Duras India Song
• Roberta Torre Tano da morire
• Claire Devers Noir et blanc (Black and White)
• Aline Isserman L'ombre du doute (A Shadow of Doubt) or Claire Denis's I Can't Sleep
• Sandrine Veysset Y'aura t'-il de la neige a Noel? (Will It Snow For Xmas?)