Gender, Race, and Colonialism At the End of Empire in 19th-Century Spain

3 units

This course will examine the ways in which gender, race, and colonialism informed discourses on nation and empire in the long 19th century in Spain. Drawing on recent developments in gender, postcolonial, and critical race theories, we will analyze literary and other forms of cultural representation that engaged with major social and political debates of the century around issues such as slavery, gender equality, prostitution and sex-trafficking, transoceanic migration, racial degeneration, improvement (eugenics), and mestizaje. Materials to be examined include plays of the early century, such as María Rosa Gálvez's Zinda and Duque de Rivas's Don Álvaro; the poetry and anti-slavery writings of Romanic authors Carolina Coronado and Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda; the narrative fiction of canonical realists such as Galdós, Clarín, and Pardo Bazán; and the works of popular novelists of the fin-de-siglo, such as López Bago, Eugenio Flores, and Felipe Trigo.