RMST201

Introduction to Literatures and Cultures of the Romance World I: Medieval to Early Modern

This interdisciplinary course engages with the manifold literary productions of the Romance world from the 13th to the 18th century. We will explore various genres—including poems, travel narratives, essays, plays and performances—coming from or engaging with five continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America. As we will delve into these texts against the backdrop of visual and audio material produced during that period (maps, music, paintings, art and architecture), we will investigate topics such as global travel, colonization, the human body, selfhood, women’s rights, and the environment. While historicizing the fluid and yet complex categories of place, space, territory, border, race, class and gender, we will address an array of topics, themes and affects that move us today, including love, desire, indigeneity, cosmopolitanism and the manifold articulations of nature. We will also acknowledge the tension, raised in our texts, between colonial languages and non-European and/or indigenous languages. Authors include Luís de Camões, Dante, Olympe de Gouges, Sor Juana, Michel de Montaigne, Marguerite de Navarre, Petrarch, Marco Polo, and Gaspara Stampa.

Language of instruction: English

Instructor: Dr. Katharina Piechocki

Prerequisites: No prerequisites