The Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain

While Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo inaugurate the midnight movie phenomenon, its success spawned The Holy Mountain. The film production was aided by the intervention of John Lennon and Allen Klein. However, after a scandalous release and a sixteen-month midnight career, The Holy Mountain was relegated to the underground world of fan bootlegs for over thirty years until its limited, restored release in 2007.  Anchored in post-1968 critiques, this short study reveals how this poetic, hilarious, and anarchist cult film by an international auteur is in fact a time capsule of the counterculture movement, a subversion of mystical tenets, and one of the most mysterious films in the history of world cinema.

Alessandra Santos. The Holy Mountain. Wallflower Press Cultographies Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
ISBN: 9780231182317

ITAL325

This course introduces you to various theoretical approaches and techniques that facilitate the transplantation of texts from one language to another as well as from one culture to another. Designed to enhance bilingual competence and cross-cultural communication skills, this course will expand your glossary of professional terminology and will help you gain practical skills for translation. Particular emphasis will be placed on issues of cultural adaptation. The course is student-centered and task-based. Students will contribute to choosing and/or writing texts to translate that are in line with both their personal interests and the objectives of the course. We will be working on translation techniques in various fields (arts & literature, business, food & tourism, fashion & design) and/or in conjunction with literary creativity (graphic novels, short stories, film scripts, plays, and haikus).

Learning objectives

  • To master the key concepts, theories and terminology proper to translation
  • To gain an overall understanding of the translation process and of different translating strategies and techniques
  • To develop self-assessing and self-correcting techniques in order to monitor one’s own progress
  • To work individually and/or collaboratively on a translation project
  • To improve knowledge of Italian language & culture and become familiar with grammatical and structural overlaps (or divergences) between Italian and English

Prerequisite: ITAL 202 or permission of the department

Note: Transfer students or students with experience in Italy should contact the undergraduate adviser for a language competence assessment.

Language of instruction: Italian and English

Course Registration

Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas

Kim Beauchesne and Alessandra Santos  — 

This book offers an innovative examination of the utopian impulse through performance as a proposition of practical engagement in the contemporary Americas. The volume compiles unique multidisciplinary and exploratory texts, applying diverse critical and artistic approaches. Its contributors reconceptualize utopia as a creative and theoretical method based on a commitment to sociopolitical transformation. Chapters are organized around notions of mapping utopias, indigenizing practices, political manifestations, and the construction of social identities.

Kim Beauchesne and Alessandra Santos: Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
ISBN 978-1-137-56873-1

 

SPAN505

Redes globales: las conexiones textuales entre Hispanoamérica, España y Asia, del pasado al presente

Namban byobu de Kanō Naizen, atribuida a la época Azuchi-Momoyama (siglos XVI y XVII)

Instructor: Kim Beauchesne
Language of instruction: Spanish

Este curso examinará los vínculos textuales que se han desarrollado desde la época colonial hasta nuestros días entre España, Hispanoamérica y Asia. De este modo, no sólo se prestará atención a un corpus que ha sido desatendido por la academia tradicional sino que también se ampliará el enfoque de los estudios transatlánticos para incluir los estudios transpacíficos. Se discutirán, entonces, las nociones de globalización, sincronía planetaria, colonialidad y orientalismo, entre otras, mediante el análisis de una selección de obras primarias y secundarias, tanto canónicas como menores. No cabe duda de que este curso será una contribución a la comprensión de la cultura colonial hispánica y su legado actual, ya que los contactos culturales que se produjeron durante siglos entre España, Hispanoamérica y Asia siguen siendo de gran importancia, como lo demuestran tanto la presencia española en las Filipinas y las Américas como las numerosas comunidades asiáticas de América Latina y España.

Obras primarias (fragmentos disponibles en Canvas):

  • Borges, Jorge Luis. “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan” (complementado por los textos de Rubén Darío, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda y Ariel Magnus)
  • Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón. Diario (complementado por los textos de Date Masamune, Luis Sotelo y Escipión Amati)
  • Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la. Loas para los autos El Divino Narciso y El cetro de José
  • Díaz Lorenzo, Álvaro, dir. Los Japón
  • González de Mendoza, Juan. Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China
  • Japón, Juan Manuel. La katana perdida (complementada por los textos de Héctor Palacios y Endō Shūsaku)
  • López de Legazpi, Miguel. Cartas a Felipe II
  • Malaspina, Alejandro. Viaje político-científico alrededor del mundo
  • Moromisato, Doris. Diario de la mujer es ponja (complementado por los textos de José Watanabe y Siu Kam Wen)
  • Pigafetta, Antonio de. Primer viaje alrededor del globo
  • Rizal, José. Noli me tangere
  • Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de. Los infortunios de Alonso Ramírez
  • Vega, Lope de. El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón

Obras secundarias (fragmentos disponibles en Canvas):

Selección de textos de Rolena Adorno, Mike Featherstone, Juan Gil, Serge Gruzinski, Koichi Hagimoto, Héctor Hoyos, Fernando Iwasaki Cauti, Julia Kushigian, Debbie Lee-DiStefano, Ignacio López-Calvo, Walter Mignolo, José Koichi Oizumi, Julio Ortega, Beatriz Pastor, Catalina Quesada Gómez, etc.

FREN329

French Literature Survey

Ce cours propose un survol du roman français contemporain (après 1945), avec notamment un choix d’oeuvres représentant une évolution littéraire, à travers les voix masculine et féminine. Nous découvrirons aussi les transformations narratives de ce qui constitue le roman contemporain français. Les textes seront abordés à la lumière de leur contexte culturel (identité française ?), politique (engagement ?), et théorique (discours sur la littérature ?). Le travail en cours portera sur l’analyse critique, notamment en abordant les compétences de réflexion et de composition littéraires.

Required readings:

Camus, Albert. La chute (1956)

Modiano, Patrick. La place de l’étoile (1968)

Duras, Marguerite. Écrire (1993)

Papin, Line. Les os des filles (2020)

Prerequisite: One of FREN 220, FREN 221

Language of instruction: French

Course Registration

FREN334

Exploring French Society after 1945

Engaging with history, culture, politics and intellectual life in contemporary France, this course crafts visions to understand key aspects of French society. We seek out to examine radical transformations through three specific cultural clusters. The first one addresses the Algerian War and the massive political, institutional and cultural upheavals that it brought along. Then, we move to France’s integration into the European Union, and the many challenges, notably around identity, sovereignty, citizenship, and globalization. Lastly, the course focuses on the French brand of feminism, what defines and confronts it on political and cultural grounds. For example, rethinking gender, labor division, or laïcité. The course uses fiction works, films, and  essais to explore the vast area of ideas that shape France’s modernity. Students are expected to develop skills in cultural analysis as well as criticl reading and composition. In French.

Required readings:

Laurens, Camille. Celle que vous croyez (2016)

Mauvignier, Laurent. Des Hommes (2009)

File of documents and essays related to the three clusters

Recommended readings:

Materials will be provided in class

Prerequisite:
One of FREN 220, FREN 221, FREN 223 or permission of the instructor

Language of instruction: French

Course Registration

PORT405

Amazonia (in English)

Amazonia is a vast and complex region in South America—the most bio-diverse on Earth—stretching over nine countries and it is home to 400 indigenous groups. This course will explore pressing environmental and cultural issues of our time through the study of the Amazon rainforest as it is represented in literature, films and media.

The course offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the Amazon, taking into consideration its history, as well as social and political aspects related to the region and its major global impact. The course will be organized around themes such as: environment, ecosystems and sustainability; exploration; anthropology; indigeneity, shamanism; literary, cinema, popular culture and media representations. Fulfills the Faculty of Arts Literature Requirement.

Required readings:

All texts for the course will be in English. Texts will be available on Canvas in PDF; films will be available streaming through the UBC Library.

Primary texts (selections from):

  • Davi Kopenawa Yanomami The Falling Sky (2013)
  • Daniel Munduruku Indigenous Tales from Brazil (2013)
  • Sônia Guajajara, Eliane Potiguara (interviews)
  • Euclides da Cunha The Amazon: Land without History (1909)
  • Candace Slater Entangled Edens (2003)
  • Wade Davis The Wayfinders (2009); One River (1997)
  • Milton Hatoum Orphans of Eldorado (2008)
  • Eduardo Kohn How Forests Think (2013)

Films:

  • Werner Herzog Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972); Fitzcarraldo (1982)
  • John Boorman The Emerald Forest (1985)
  • Takumã Kuikuro Itão Kuẽgü – The Hyperwomen (2012)
  • Ciro Guerra Embrace of the Serpent (2015)
  • James Gray The Lost City of Z (2016)

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Language of instruction: English

Note: This course fulfills the Faculty of Arts Literature Requirement.

ITAL409

The Strongman, the Latin Lover, and other Italian Masculinities

Cross-listed with RMST459

This course offers an overview of diverse Italian masculinities as they are represented in Italian literature and culture. What does it mean to be a man in Italy? How do diverse concepts of Italian manhood come into being? How are they constructed and circulated through literary and cinematic texts? What do these texts tell us about Italian society? And how are these male types challenged in the Italian cultural domain?

We will probe these questions by studying the depictions of Italian virilities in memoirs, novels, public speeches, news articles, films, and television programs from the 18th century to the present, with a focus on the 20th and 21st centuries. Male types and ideals that we will examine include the self-made man, the strongman, the fascist new man, nationalist soldiers, the inetto (schlemiel), the Latin Lover, libertines, and gay men. To delve further into these texts, we will also study a selective number of influential theories from Masculinity and Gender Studies.

Through this course, we will gain a historical and critical understanding of men and gender dynamics in Italian culture. This course is designed to develop your critical thinking, as well as speaking and writing skills in the context of Italian masculinities. No prior knowledge of the Italian language or Italian culture is required.

Language of instruction: English

Prerequisite: No prerequisites

Note: Credit will be granted for only one of ITAL 409 or ITST 419 or RMST 459. Students who plan to minor in Italian must take this course as ITAL and will be expected to do part of their reading and assignments in the Italian language. ITAL 409 may be taken twice, with different content, for a total of 6 credits.

Grading Breakdown

Critical essay 1: 25%
Critical essay 2: 25%
Final oral presentations: 20%
Two improvised oral presentations and written reports: 20%
Class participation, regular attendance, and professionalism: 10%

Readings

Coming soon

ITST413

[Cross-listed with Italian 403]

Dante and His World: The Divine Comedy in Translation

Undoubtedly the best-known among all poems written in the Italian language during the last seven hundred years, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy takes us on a most unusual journey. We begin our travels quivering with the wayfarer at the outskirts of a ghastly dark forest, and we end up basking in the blissful light of a cosmic embrace. What makes such a change of perspective possible? It is the journey itself, answers Dante, who in his visionary exploration of “the beyond” is taught by his teachers, Virgil and Beatrice, how fearlessly to plumb the abysses and expanse of the human psyche.

From exile to reintegration, from wretchedness to felicity, this is the story of a process of inner transmutation, whose liberating power has touched countless readers over the ages and across cultures. More than ever today Dante’s poem is apt to teach us, “on the wings of the night”, how progressively to uncover the vastness that lies hidden within every single atom of our own self, and of the universe that surrounds us.

This course offers a close reading of Dante’s masterpiece through a large selection of excerpts from all of the canticas (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), along with a reading of Dante’s earlier work Vita Nuova (The New Life) in its entirety.

Required Texts
— D. Alighieri, Vita nuova, tr. S. Applebaum. Dover, 2001.
— D. Alighieri, Inferno, tr. R. Kirkpatrick. Penguin Classics 2006.
— D. Alighieri, Purgatorio, tr. R. Kirkpatrick. Penguin Classics 2007.
— D. Alighieri, Paradiso, tr. R. Kirkpatrick. Penguin Classics 2006.

Recommended Texts (also available at UBC Library Reserve Room)
— S. Bemrose, A New Life of Dante, revised and updated. U Exeter Press, 2010.
— R. Kirkpatrick, Dante, the Divine Comedy. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
— G. Raffa, The Complete Danteworlds. A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy. The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Prerequisite
At least 30 credits of lower division courses or permission of the instructor. Precludes credit for ITAL 403 and vice versa.

Note
Students who plan to minor in Italian must take this course as ITAL and will be expected to do part of their reading and assignments in the Italian language.

Language of instruction: English

Course Registration

ITAL403

Within the Universe/The Universe Within — Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: A Visionary Journey into Medieval Eco-Cosmology

Cross-listed with RMST453

Dante con in mano la Divina Commedia by Domenico di Michelino (1465)

Undoubtedly the best-known of all poems written in the Italian language during the last seven hundred years, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy takes us on a most unusual journey. We begin our travels quivering with the wayfarer at the outskirts of a ghastly dark forest, and we end them basking in the blissful light of a cosmic embrace. What makes such a change of perspective possible? The journey itself, Dante maintains, having been taught by his teachers, Virgil and Beatrice, how fearlessly to approach the abysses of the human psyche during his visionary explorations of the “beyond.”

From exile to ecstasy, from wretchedness to reintegration, this is the story of a process of inner transmutation, whose liberating power has touched countless readers over the ages and across cultures. More than ever today Dante’s poem shows us how progressively to uncover the vastness that lies hidden within every single atom of our own self, and of the universe that surrounds us.

In the words of Pope Francis (2014), Dante is «a prophet of hope, herald of the possibility of redemption, liberation and the profound transformation of every man and woman, of all humanity». As such, he «still has much to say and to offer through his immortal works to those who wish to follow the route of true knowledge and authentic discovery of the self, the world and the profound and transcendent meaning of existence». In order to do this, Dante walks a very thin line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the path taken by visionaries of all times and spiritual traditions.

Dante’s cosmic perspective is powerfully inspiring to this day, witness the exemplary role his journey played in shaping the worldview of C. G. Jung, the father of analytical psychology, at the beginning of the 20th century, and at the other end of that same century, the “wild sacred” ecological visions of Thomas Berry, the father of ecophilosophy. It is indeed as a “wounded healer,” as a “modern shaman,” and even more compellingly perhaps as an ante litteram ecologist and activist of the world-soul that Dante asks to be understood today — beyond the boundaries of society’s self-serving needs for canonicity and legitimization.

This course offers a close reading of Dante’s masterpiece through a large selection of excerpts from all of the canticas (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), along with a reading of Dante’s earlier work Vita Nuova (The New Life) in its entirety.

Language of instruction: English

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Note: Credit will be granted for only one of RMST 453, ITST 413 or ITAL 403

Grading Breakdown

35% 5 reading responses
25% Midterm
30% Final
10% Attendance and participation
100% Total

Readings

Required readings

Dante Alighieri, Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova, tr. Virginia Jewiss. Penguin, 2022. (ISBN 978-0143106203) Please buy this book.

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, tr. R. Kirkpatrick. Penguin Classics 2006-07, 3 vols. (ISBN Inferno: 978-01404489; Purgatorio: 978-0140448962; Paradiso: 978-0140448979

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, tr. Steve Ellis. Vintage Classics 2019. (ISBN 978-1784871987) Please buy this book.

Recommended readings

Guy P. Raffa, The Complete Dante Worlds. A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy. Chicago UP, 2009. (ISBN 978-0226702704)