Professor Alejandro Mejías-López
email: amejiasl@indiana.edu


S668	Topics in 19th and early 20th Centuries Spanish American
Literature

Postcolonial Moves:  Spanish American Literature and the Hispanic
Atlantic

T 4:00pm – 6:30pm/section# 27247/3cr/Location TBA


Proposing a revision of postcolonial theory and many of its central
assumptions based on the British imperial model, this course will
center on 19th- and early 20th- century Spanish American literature
and its relationship to the former metropolis, Spain (and to a
lesser extent, to other metropolitan [French, British] and
postcolonial [U.S.] literatures).  Starting with Bolívar’s texts
calling for international help against the tyranny of Spaniards and
ending with political commitment of Spanish American intellectuals
to the Spanish Republic in 1936, the course will explore the complex
relationship of attraction and rejection between both sides of the
Hispanic Atlantic.  We will study travel narratives by Spanish
Americans such as Sarmiento, Mansilla, and Matto de Turner; the
production of Spanish American writers who lived and wrote in Spain,
such as Gómez de Avellaneda and Hernández Catá; the reception of
Rubén Darío and "modernismo" in Spain; and the prominent role of
Spanish American writers in the defense of the Spanish Republic
during the Civil War.  Although the focus of the class will be on
Spanish American letters, we will also pay close attention to
Peninsular writers and intellectuals, especially those like
Zorrilla, Serrano, Valera, Valle-Inclán, Unamuno, and Guillermo de
Torres who either traveled through Spanish America or wrote
profusely about Spanish American literature.