Women Writers 1400-1700

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this course, we will study women writers of memoir, lyric and mystical poetry, theological treatises, fiction, and drama in the Spanish-speaking world from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In this course, students will engage with the creative work of women whose voices were left out of the literary and historical canon until all too recently and the ethical stakes of canon formation is an issue that will undergird our readings. This course is transatlantic in its scope and will include authors from the Iberian Peninsula as well as from Colonial Latin America. Students will write short weekly ungraded response papers (500 words), lead class discussions, and develop an original research project about one author or genre and their historical, cultural, and literary contexts. The class will culminate in a group project: a dramatic reading of a play (or plays, depending on the size of the class) by Juana Inés de la Cruz. The dramatic readings will be open to the public and be of particular interest to Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Global and Comparative Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies undergraduate majors, as well as to graduate students in the Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies doctoral program. (Taught in Spanish)