Madison Felman-Panagotacos

Intermediate Spanish II
A course for students seeking to perfect their academic writing skills in Spanish. The course is also an introduction to literary analysis and critical writing and will include reading and oral discussion of literary texts. The course will also include a thorough review of grammar at a fairly advanced level. This course may be used to fulfill the foreign languages distribution requirement. (SPAN 0201, SPAN 0210, or placement) 3 hrs. lect./disc.

Latin American Queer Culture
In this course we will study LGBTQ cultural productions from Hispanic Latin America, including fiction, poetry, film, visual art, and theory, covering works from the Southern Cone, the Andes, the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico. We will pay special attention to the uses of queerness in portrayals of ideological conflict: when and how does queerness become an element of dissent, an ethic of resistance, a critique of normativity, a marketable quality. Topics will include indigenous sexualities pre-Conquest, the impact of colonial rule, homonationalism, the criminalization of homosexuality, queer activism, and sexuality from transgender//travesti/ and nonbinary perspectives.

Reproduction, Maternity, and Abortion in Latin America
Motherhood is a topic that has long been dismissed as trivially feminine and therefore understudied as a literary theme. However, during the 21st Century, there has been a boom of Latin American literature with maternal themes. In this course, we will consider essays, novels, and poetry with themes such as pregnancy, miscarriage, fertility, abortion, family planning, birth, adoption, and communal motherhood practices. The goal is to give students the analytic tools to understand the conditions that gave rise to this trend and how these works invoke and/or resist essentialist and patriarchal notions of motherhood. Texts may include Margaret Gibson’s Queering Motherhood, Linda Kerber’s “The Republican Mother,” Lina Meruane’s Contra los hijos, Pilar Quintana’s La perra, and Isabela Zapata’s In vitro.

Rewriting National Fictions: Adapting Citizenship in Foundational Narratives
How do new nations consolidate their citizenry under a collective identity with shared traits, beliefs, and values? How do contemporary citizens grapple with the constraints on the ideal citizen? In this course we study the “foundational fictions” that united Latin American countries after their independence from Spain, using Argentina as our principal case study. We analyze the implications of these narratives, namely who is excluded? To answer this question, we perform comparative readings of foundational fictions and their reinterpretations that seek to identify and rectify these exclusions. Texts include Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities; Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions; José Hernandez’s Martín Fierro and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s Las aventuras de la China Iron; Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo and Ricardo Piglia’s Respiración artificial.

Independent Study
The department will consider requests by qualified juniors and senior majors to engage in independent work. (Approval only)