WMST 228 - Modern Spain

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as HISP 228) Studies in Spanish literary and cultural production from the beginning of the Bourbon monarchy to the present.

Topic for 2015/16a: Virgins, Vamps and Terrorists: Women, Gender and Modern Spain. In this course we familiarize ourselves with the various ways of seeing the Spanish Woman from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty first century by those who have sought to define her: intellectuals, politicians, scientists, historians, doctors, priests, and nuns. By analyzing feminist responses to these prescriptions, we question how images of women have been produced and interpreted through the dichotomy of the virgin/whore. By studying literary (novel, poetry, drama) and (audio) visual texts (film, television shows, magazines, posters, comics), we trace the ways in which this dualism has been promoted or undermined in order to uphold or attack the interests of nationalisms, class hierarchies, division of labor, gender-sex construction, religion, understandings of space, and terrorism. Ms. Woods.

Two 75-minute periods.