SPAN 6660 - [Gender/Genre:A Study of the Realist Novel]

Spring. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Student option grading.

This is the mandatory graduate seminar for first year Spanish graduate students.

J. Chang.

In this seminar, we will examine the relation between gender and genre. To this end, we will trace realism/s curious engagement with gendered identity - what Jo Labayni has described as the novelists’ “urgent need to construct its gallery of female protagonists.” Some of our guiding questions include: How might we think of the relationship between author, narrator, protagonist, and reader as one emblazoned with desire? What roles do gender and desire play in the formation of the modern subject? Throughout the semester we will consider how gender is imagined, regulated, performed, and transformed in relation to nation, class, race and sexuality. Students will critically engage with theories of the novel and realism, as well as theories of gender and sexuality.