Introduction to Literatures and Cultures of the Romance World I: Medieval to Early Modern
This interdisciplinary course engages with the manifold literary and cultural productions of the Romance world from the 13th to the 18th century. We will focus on literature and culture coming from the French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese traditions across the continents. We will explore various genres—including poems, travel narratives, essays, plays and performances—coming from or engaging with 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 imagined and 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 that move us today, including love, desire, indigeneity and what it means to be human. We will also acknowledge the tension, raised in our texts, between colonial languages and non-European and/or indigenous languages. Authors include Dante, Columbus, Luís de Camões, Olympe de Gouges, René Descartes, Sor Juana, Michel de Montaigne, Marguerite de Navarre, Aquiauhtzin of Ayapanco, Molière, Garcilaso de la Vega, Petrarch, Louise Labé.
Language of instruction: English
Instructor: Dr. Katharina Piechocki
Prerequisites: No prerequisites