Romance Languages Course Descriptions: 2009/2010
To view course descriptions simply click on a course number or scroll down.
For classes with a language focus (101-311), see the UO class schedule.
Only courses in bold or with active links will be offered during the 2009/2010 academic year
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RL 399
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RL 399
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RL 399
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RL 404
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RL 404
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RL 404
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RL 407/507
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RL 407/507
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RL 410/510
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RL 410/510
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RL 410/510
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RL 602
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RL 602
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RL 602
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RL 604
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RL 604
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RL 604
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RL 607
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RL 608
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RL 608
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RL 620
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RL 620
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RL 623
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RL 623
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* There may be more than one course with this course number offered during the same term*
FALL 2009
This course is an introduction to the basic principles of second language acquisition and their application in classroom settings. Topics covered include instructional techniques for developing the three language modes (presentational, interpretive, interpersonal), standards for foreign language learning, proficiency assessment, content-based instruction (CBI), techniques for addressing learner variables, and the role of culture in the L2 classroom. In addition to the theoretical readings and discussions, students will develop a portfolio of teaching materials ready for classroom use. (All lectures and readings are in English; individual projects are prepared in your target language.) return to course list
WINTER 2010
RL 407/507: The Black Revolutionary Imagination in 20th Century Caribbean Literature-- Triana
In this course we will explore writings from revolutionary political and aesthetic movements in the 20th century Caribbean. We will read from a variety of genres, from poetry to political manifestos to history. Possible authors include: Nicolás Guillén, Aimé Césaire, Luisa Capetillo, C.L.R. James, Nancy Morejón, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Maryse Condé.
***Students may take this class to fulfill major/minor requirements in Spanish and French if reading and writing requirements in the target language are met. Consult with the professor.*** return to course list
RL 407/507: The Storyteller in a Multicultural Perspective- Gazzoni
This course will explore the art and the representation of storytelling as enacted in some fundamental narrative texts from multicultural contexts in Romance literatures over the second half of the 20th century. We will start with an attentive reading of W. Benjamin’s landmark essay “The Storyteller”, and then we will try to confront its assertions with the active presence of storytelling in novels by the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, the Peruvian José Maria Arguedas, the Martinican Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, the Italo-Albanian (arbëreshe) Carmine Abate. We will discuss the way in which multicultural written narratives exalt the role of the storyteller in relation with his/her oral origins, as a weaver of collective memories of the past which are continually splitted, crossbred, and reinvented, in opposition to the linear and homogeneous models of memory and narration provided by the ruling discourses of Western culture. return to course list
RL 607: Travel Literature in the Age of Curiositas- Hester
For centuries travel and travel writing have been parallel endeavors. In the early modern period, prescriptions concerning the art of travel also addressed how to properly chronicle a journey. However, as curiosity became an acceptable motive for travel, European travelers took greater individual liberties not only in choosing an itinerary but also in narrating their travels. In this course we will read from English, French, Italian, and Spanish travel accounts in order to consider a broad range of issues and questions, including: travel writing as a (literary) genre, travel narrative as theoretical discourse, possible taxonomies of travel writing, and the construction of cultural (and imperial) identities through the representation of travel. Readings will comprise the travel writing of Petrarch, Montaigne, Columbus, Thomas Coryate, Pietro Della Valle, and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, among others. Theoretical discussions will draw from the works of Dean MacCannell, Tzvetan Todorov, Georges Van den Abeele, Theodore Cachey, and Stephen Greenblatt.
The course will be taught in English. Romance languages students will read the primary texts in their “target” language to receive credit in French, Italian, or Spanish. This course may count for period 1 or 2 of the M.A. program. return to course list
This course is an introduction to purposes, problems, and methods of graduate study in Romance languages. The course will discuss research strategies for diverse literary genres, different historical periods, and specific geographical locations in the RL speaking countries (for example: the study of a medieval text; what specific problems a 19th century nation-building novel poses in Latin America and/or Africa). It will also introduce students to the prevalent theories about literary and cultural production. Specialist in the diverse areas of research will participate in the course. return to course list
SPRING 2010
RL 607: Masterworks of Spanish Cinema—Gina Herrmann
return to course list
RL 623: Humanism: The Culture of the Book and the Post Human Age—Lollini/Middlebrook
Both the syllabus of readings for this course and a roster of invited speakers will help us explore the multiple meanings of humanism in the Early Modern, the modern, the post-modern and finally the so-called post-human age. From the period of the European Renaissance deep into the twentieth century, “humanism” was a notion that was intimately founded on an idea of writing and reading. The predominant received, rather oversimplified, view of European Renaissance Humanism is that it positioned man at the center of a nature which he mastered by means of his God-given powers of reason. In this course we will be taking up key Renaissance and Early Modern texts in order to show that intrinsically, this mastery was associated first with manuscript culture and then with the culture of the book. Consciously and unconsciously, the book-centered view has continued to shape assumptions about the meaning of the word “human” and its derivatives. However, in the current, globalized age, in which science and technology have made inroads into the territory of letters and the book, transforming relationships between the human and the non-human, the natural and the synthetic, the word, the image and the algorithm, we need to reconsider what humanism means. Thus the second part of this course will unfold under the rubric of Donna Haraway’s “ironic dream,” as
told in “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1991), the most relevant posthuman manifesto to date. return to course list