FREN503A

FREN503A

Studies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature:

“La Curiosité Baroque : Asymétrie du Monde, Accumulation de la Matière”

Qu’est-ce « le baroque » ? Est-ce simplement un style excessif et exagéré—ou aussi une manière particulière de voir et de percevoir le monde durant l’une des périodes les plus fascinantes, mais aussi plus difficiles, de l’histoire mondiale qui comprend la Révolution Copernicienne en plein essor, la découverte du monde et de l’univers, les voyages transocéaniens, la colonisation, l’esclavage, les guerres de religion, l’émergence de nouvelles technologies (microscope, télescope) ainsi que l’élaboration de nouvelles conceptions de l’être humain. L’écrivain cubain José Lezama Lima a appelé l’accumulation du savoir et des styles hétéroclites qui caractérisent le XVIIe siècle—et qui unissent l’apprentissage fervent des langues (naturelles et artificielles), l’exploration scientifique et l’élaboration nouvelle des styles poétiques—« curiosité baroque ». Ainsi étudierons-nous le baroque comme un processus qui unit les différents domaines de la vie humaine, allant des émotions à la rationalité, du microcosme au macrocosme, de l’environnement au « je ne sais quoi ».

Ce cours se propose d’étudier le baroque comme un phénomène interdisciplinaire (littérature, musique, peinture, architecture) et global. Allant du baroque au néobaroque, ce cours étudie le baroque à travers les arts et les sciences (astronomie, mathématique, physique, chimie), de la France aux Amériques. Nous interrogerons, entre autres, le concept du « monstrueux » et de l’ineffable, la fascination avec le songe et le pli, le désir de l’ambiguïté entre être et paraître ainsi que les modes de dissimuler ou les stratégies d’exhiber l’excès. Nous lirons, entre autres, Nicolas Boileau, Dominique Bouhours, Pierre Corneille, René Descartes, Luís de Góngora, Marie de Gournay, Marie de l’Incarnation, Sor Juana, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Giambattista Marino, Molière, Jean Racine, Madeleine de Scudéry.

Instructor: Katharina Piechocki

Language of instruction: French

Grading Breakdown

Coming soon

Readings

Coming soon

Fricciones

Gabriel Saldías Rossel  — 

Fricciones is a collection of short stories published by Editorial Nadar in Chile, 2017. All the short stories present in the volume revolve, as its title suggests, around the idea of uncomfortable contact. Written with a caustic prose filled with black humor, irony and detachment, the nightmarish scenarios presented in these short stories joyfully play with the painful past and the disappointment for the future of Chile and Latin America, mocking and lamenting, at the same time, the unavoidable misery brought about by the human experience presented in its pages.

 

Gabriel Saldías Rossel, Fricciones, Nadar, 2017.

ITAL104

Italian for Singers course

The 104 Italian for Singers course integrates the study and practice of the Italian contemporary language with the study of Italian lyric diction and musical culture. It includes practice in translation, phonetic transcription and the performance of vocal music.

In particular, the purpose of this course is to help students sing accurately and expressively in Italian, enhance their comprehension of Italian language, develop basic translation skills in Italian, use basic speaking skills to communicate in structured, real-life situations, in contemporary Italian and recall and describe famous Italian opera or art songs.

To achieve these learning goals students will be introduced to principles of Italian lyric diction and asked to work on their knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as a means of presenting and reinforcing the “sonic vocabulary” of the language.

In-class and out-of-class activities will help students refine their awareness of vocal articulators and their effect on speech sounds and the singing tone: the proper pronounciation of vowels, consonants, double consonants, stress patterns and intonations will be explained and practiced. Mores specifically, the elements of Italian lyric diction will be presented in ways that stress their connection to the meaning, color, and expressive power of the words.  Accordingly, the course will review some the rudiments of grammar and vocabulary that singers need in order to translate Italian texts.

In this highly participatory course students are expected to engage in the many in-class activities, such as role-plays, discussions, group works as well as individual performances of the songs in the repertoire as a way to provide individual opportunity to perform and to listen to other students’ performances.

Evaluation Methods include regular attendance and active participation in all class activities, 2 performances of Italian songs or arias, short quizzes to measure students’ achievement in form acquisition, function and usage, vocabulary, listening and reading, readings and online practice exercises to test vocabulary and grammatical structures. A final exam and final performance are also part of overall evaluation methods.

Required Text:
1. F. Italiano, I. Marchegiani, (2014), Percorsi, Vol. 2, Customized edition, Pearson. Available at UBC bookstore AND online;

2. A Handbook of Diction for Singers, D.Adams

Other instructional materials:

On-line modules on Canvas

Prerequisite: Italian 101 or equivalent proficiency in Italian.

Students who have some knowledge of Italian but do not have formal accreditation, are required to take a computerized assessment of their proficiency.

Please send an e-mail to Luisa Canuto at luisa.canuto@ ubc.ca for information on how to complete the assessment.

Language of instruction: Italian

Course registration

FREN409C

Mensonge(s), mariage et mobiles maléfiques

[cross-listed with FREN 503A]

Dans ce cours, nous étudierons cinq textes dans lesquels les thèmes du mensonge, du mariage et des mobiles maléfiques se manifestent. Ces textes seront examinés dans leurs contextes culturels et historiques et à la lumière des théories de Christian Biet sur le théâtre et en particulier sur la tragédie. Nous tiendrons compte également des idées de Biet sur le mythe de Dom Juan et de la lecture du Dom Juan que fait Antony McKenna.

Textes :

Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur (Folio Théâtre)

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, dit Molière, Dom Juan (Bordas-Univers des Lettres)

Molière, L’Ecole des femmes (Folio Théâtre)

Racine, Britannicus (Bordas-Univers des Lettres)

Textes théoriques :

Christian Biet, La tragédie

Christian Biet, Mille et une versions d’un mythe

Antony McKenna, Molière dramaturge libertin

 

Prerequisite: One of FREN 320, FREN 321, FREN 330.


Langue d’enseignement: français

Course Registration

The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Specular Reflections

cover_mirror-in-modern-cultureNancy Frelick (ed.)  — 
This volume examines the intersections between material and metaphorical mirrors in medieval and early modern culture.

Mirrors have always fascinated humankind. They collapse ordinary distinctions, making visible what is normally invisible, and promising access to hidden realities. Yet, these liminal objects also point to the limitations of human perception, knowledge, and wisdom. In this interdisciplinary volume, specialists in medieval and early modern science, cultural and political history, as well as art history, philosophy, and literature come together to explore the intersections between material and metaphysical mirrors in Europe and the Islamic world.

During the time periods studied here, various technologies were transforming the looking glass as an optical device, scientific instrument, and aesthetic object, making it clearer and more readily available, though it remained a rare and precious commodity. While technical innovations spawned new discoveries and ways of seeing, belief systems were slower to change, as expressed in the natural sciences, mystical writings, literature, and visual culture.

Mirror metaphors based on analogies established in the ancient world still retained significant power and authority, perhaps especially when related to Aristotelian science, the medieval speculum tradition, religious iconography, secular imagery, Renaissance Neoplatonism, or spectacular Baroque engineering, artistry, and self-fashioning. Mirror effects created through myths, metaphors, rhetorical strategies, or other devices could invite self-contemplation and evoke abstract or paradoxical concepts. Whether faithful or deforming, specular reflections often turn out to be ambivalent and contradictory: sometimes sources of illusion, sometimes reflections of divine truth, mirrors compel us to question the very nature of representation.

N. Frelick (ed.). The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Specular Reflections. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.
ISBN: 978-2-503-56454-8

 

SPAN550F

Tourism, Gender and the Environment in the Spanish Speaking World

This course focuses on tourism in the Hispanic Caribbean and in Spain, two areas of the Spanish-speaking world that have attracted a large number of tourists since the 1960s. We will engage with theoretical texts that draw from post-colonial, gender and feminist studies in order to examine images of tourists and locals in autobiographical works, novels, films, photographs, publicity posters as well as government and social initiatives in Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. We will examine how filmmakers, writers, tourist authorities and politicians have portrayed and debated the consequences of tourism—including such themes as sex tourism, environmental change, landscape transformation and the ethics of tourism—in several countries. The course explores how gender, national and racial stereotypes, economic and cultural differences are constructed and questioned in literature, photography and film and how tourism is central in reinforcing and challenging national and regional identities in numerous Spanish-speaking countries.

Primary sources:
Bustamante, Lissette. Jineteras. Barcelona: Altera, 2003.
Chaviano, Daína. El hombre, la hembra y el hambre. Barcelona: Planeta, 1998.
Consuegra, Olga. La noche parió una jinetera. Valencia: Aduana Vieja Editorial, 2010.
Díaz, Jesús. Dime algo sobre Cuba. Madrid: Espasa, 1998.
Fraga Iribarne, Fraga. Memoria breve de una vida política. Barcelona: Planeta, 1980.
Franco, Francisco. Discursos y mensajes del jefe del estado. Madrid: Dirección General de Información Publicaciones Españolas, 1955.
Goytisolo, Juan. Reivindicación del conde don Julián. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1976.
Umbral, Francisco. Las europeas. Barcelona: Ediciones G.P., 1974.
Valdés, Zoé. “Retrato de una infancia habanaviejera.” In Nuevos narradores cubanos. Ed. Mechi Strausfeld. Huertas: Siruela, 2000. 17-24.

Films and Photography:
Balletbò-Coll, Marta. Costa Brava  (1995, Film)
Bigas Luna. Huevos de oro  (1993, Film)
Cárdenas, Israel, and Laura Amelia Guzmán. Dólares de arena (2014, Film)
Chibás Fernández, Eduardo. Bye, bye Barcelona (2014, Film)
García Berlanga, Luis. El verdugo  (1963, Film)
Javierre-Kohan, Mark, and Jesús Martinez. Lloret Paradise. Barcelona: Carena, 2014.

Critial Sources:
Berger, Dina, and Andrew G. Wood. Holiday in Mexico: Critical Reflections on Tourism and Tourist Encounters. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Cabezas, Amalia L. Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009.
Cave, Jenny  and Lee Jolliffe and Tom Baum. Tourism and Souvenirs: Glocal Perspectives from the Margins. New York: Channel View Publications, 2013.
Crumbaugh, Justin. Destination Dictatorship: The Spectacle of Spainʼs Tourist Boom and the Reinvention of Difference. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009.
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies. Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Robinson, Mike, and David Picard. The Framed World: Tourism, Tourists and Photography. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.
Talpade Mohanty, Chandra. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Williams, Brackette. Women Out of Place: The Gender of Agency and the Role of Nationality. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Language of instruction: Spanish

Course Registration

 

Buñuel en Toledo. Arte público, acción cultural y vanguardia

María Soledad Fernández Utrera — bunuel en toledo

In 1923, Luis Buñuel established the Order of Toledo, a parody order of knights whose members included Salvador Dalí, García Lorca, and Rafael Alberti. Together, they often visited the ancient Spanish capital to stroll through its labyrinthine streets. But these excursions on the part of Buñuel and the Brotherhood were more than simple episodes of cultural sightseeing; they were happenings, public interventions in space.
This book explores the anti-artistic aspect of these activities and urban perambulations. Are these practices similar to the flânerie of the Dadaists and French Surrealists? Taking into account their liberal, Spanish context, what was new about them, and what did they mean? Does their aesthetic experimentation make for ideological radicalism? And what impact do these first steps have on Buñuel’s subsequent work and his later ideological trajectory?

Fernández Utrera, María Soledad. Buñuel en Toledo. Arte público, acción cultural y vanguardia. Woodbridge: Tamesis Books & Boydell & Brewer, 2016.
ISBN-10: 1855663031
ISBN-13: 978-1855663039

ITST231

Love, Sex, and Magic in Premodern Italy

[Cross-listed with Italian 303]

Make the fears, concerns, and desires of premodern Italy yours through the study of a selection of literary, philosophical, and theological texts that shaped the Italian peninsula, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

In this course we will read and discuss excerpts from some of the most important texts of the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance, we will learn about the culture that originated it, and we will make meaningful connections with today’s world. During our fictional journey into the world of medieval and early modern love magic, we will look at such stories as evidence of erotic, religious, ethnic, and cultural questions vital to understanding premodern Europe, the Mediterranean, and us.

You will gain a deeper understanding of premodern Italy’s:

  • Historical and literary medieval context
  • Religious and philosophical background
  • Visual arts
  • Worldviews (from Medieval to Modern)

Required readings: TBC

Prerequisite: No prerequisites

Language of Instruction: English

Note: Fulfills the literature requirement for the BA, BIE, and BMus.

ITST421H

[Cross-listed with Italian 420H]

Cultural Crossings Between Italy and China

Over the centuries, crossings between Italy and China have produced the most sustained, and arguably the most influential, strand of cultural texts on East-West borrowings. France and Britain also contributed significantly to European understandings and imagination of modern China. This course examines the evolution of Italian perspectives on China through significant literary, cinematic, and media texts of Italians’ real and fantastical travels in China and of Chinese immigration to Italy. French and British sources will also be studied mainly for comparative purposes.

The aim of the course is to analyze the contexts, ways, and reasons for which specific knowledge about China was produced, interpreted, and negotiated in Italy. Central themes we consider include the notions of the other and the self, the center and the border, boundary space, hybrid cultural identities, ethnic essentialism, and intercultural communication. To this end, we journey through four thematic clusters, including “Marco Polo and His Legacy in Italy,” “The Cultural Revolution in Italian and French Representations,” “Chinese, Italian, British, and American Cinematic Exchanges,” and “Chinese Immigration to Italy.” Theories about mobility (e.g., James Clifford, Michel De Certeau, and Edward Said) accompany specific primary texts.

This course will appeal to students who are interested in the fields of Italian, transnationalism, globalization, and intercultural studies. Ultimately, they will learn to put Italian and European interpretations of contemporary China as a rising superpower in perspective.

Primary texts include excerpts from the following list:
Marco Polo, Il Milione (1298-99)
Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili (1972)
Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Adami, and Renato Simoni, Turandot (1924)
Bernardo Bertolucci, L’ultimo imperatore (1987)
Michelangelo Antonioni, Chung Kuo Cina (1972)
Alberto Moravia, La rivoluzione culturale in Cina (1967)
Julia Kristeva, Des Chinoises (1977)
Vittorio De Sica, Ladri di biciclette (1948)
Wang Xiaoshuai, Shi Qi Sui de Danche/Beijing Bicycle (2001)
Charles Brabin, The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
Mario Caiano, Il mio nome è Shangai Joe (1972)
Roberto Saviano, Gomorra (2006)
Matteo Garrone, Gomorra (2008)
Sergio Basso, Giallo a Milano: Made in Chinatown (2008)
Andrea Segre, Io sono Li (2011)
Edoardo Nesi, Storia della mia gente (2010)
Yang Xiaping, Come due farfalle in volo sulla Grande Muraglia (2011)

Prerequisite:
At least 30 credits of lower division courses or permission of the instructor. Precludes credit for ITAL 420H 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.
ITST 421 may be taken twice, with different content, for a total of 6 credits.

Language of instruction: English

Course Registration

ITST419

From Covid-19 to the Black Death: Pandemics and Epidemics in Italian Literature and Culture

This course is mainly concerned with four key pandemics or epidemics impacting Italy, which have inspired literary and cultural outputs of exceptional quality: the Black Death of 1346-1353, the 1629-1631 Italian Plague, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the first unit, we consider the current pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The bestselling author Paolo Giordano muses on what contagion means for humanity in How Contagion Works (2020). Famed Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben put forward his rationales for opposing government mandates on vaccination from a biopolitical perspective.

Unit 2 studies various previous epidemics impacting Italians in order to understand what lessons they hold for us today. The Italian American communities and spokesmen vigorously argued against any potential medicalized prejudice that the 1918 Spanish Flu might bring. Considered the first Italian novel, Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed (1827/1840) frames the main plot through the early modern bubonic plague centered in Milan, which moves the narrative forward particularly beginning in chapter 31. We also examine the ramifications of the infamous medieval plague through the frame story of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (circa 1350s).

Unit 3 covers two novels from other European cultures as a comparison with the Italian perspectives, including Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947) set in North Africa and Sjón’s Moonstone (2013) set in Iceland. The final unit examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which lurks behind the story told in Separate Rooms (1989) by Pier Vittorio Tondelli, an influential gay Italian writer who eventually died of the disease.

Through analyzing these literary texts, we study topics ranging from fear of diseases and xenophobia to biopolitics and wellbeing during isolation. The course is equally a journey through horror and injustice and one through survival and resilience.

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Precludes credit for ITAL 409.

Language of instruction: English