Asian Lit and Cultures in Span

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

What map of the Spanish-speaking world do you have in your mind? Whatever it is, it probably does not include Asia. The widely held premise that cultures of the Spanish-speaking world exist only in Europe and the Americas will be revealed to be entirely wrong in this course, which will focus at length instead on artistic traditions in Spanish from the Philippines and Taiwan. Key theoretical issues of colonialism, national identity, and translation will be discussed along the way. Students will also have the opportunity to research cultural production in Portuguese from Goa (in India), East Timor, Macau, and Japan. Texts in Chabacano (a Filipino language partly derived from Spanish) will be studied as well. The course will then expand its geographic reach beyond Asia to include cultural production in Spanish and Portuguese by people of Asian ancestry in Spain and the Americas, including Taiwanese-Argentine films, Chinese-Peruvian food, and Japanese-Brazilian poetry. Finally, the course will turn to a selection of Latin American literature inspired by Asian traditions but by authors not of Asian ancestry. The overall timeframe of the course will mostly be from the late 19 th century through today, though the earliest texts will date from the 16 th century and include narratives from the failed Spanish attempt to conquer Taiwan in the 17 th century. The general goal of the course, in short, is to provoke an ongoing discussion of why any map of the Spanish-speaking world that leaves out Asia is not in fact much of a map at all. The course will be taught in Spanish; a reading knowledge of Portuguese is not required. For graduate students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, this course satisfies the distribution requirement for both the Transatlantic and Modern Latin America fields.