BARBARA
ZECCHI
These are the CLASSES that I teach regularly:
SPAN 597HA - Gendered Discourses and the Canon in Modern Spain
During the 19th century, liberalism and romanticism provided the grounds for the flourishing of “feminine writing” to the point that, between 1840 and 1860, women clearly were the protagonists of the literary landscape. Such predominance started to dissipate as the century advanced, and the feminine presence in the canon became more and more sporadic. This course will focus on the struggle of Spanish women throughout the 19th century to maintain a literary space from where to undermine the patriarchal construction of a female identity and launch her own subjectivity, express her own desires, denounce the violence women must undergo, and ultimately search for the terms of her own identity
This course examines the cultural production during a concrete historical period in which Spain experienced not only the revolutionary momentum that was sweeping Europe (in politics as well as in science, economics, or social habits) but also an artistic revival of such intensity that some critics have labeled it the “Silver Age.” The fields of cinema, painting, music and, of course, literature offered names of unquestionable international transcendence, such as Buñuel, Picasso, Dali, Falla, Unamuno, Alberti, Lorca, and so forth. We will focus on the artistic production of the period paying particular attention to the formal characteristics of the works as well as to the their socio-historical implications—including gender issues.
SPAN 797BA - La Belle Époque: Spanish Culture from 1898 to the Civil War
SPAN 797GR - Spanish Realisms
Costumbrismo, naturalism, verismo, social realism and neo-realism are different versions of what Aristoteles had defined as “mimesis.” After a theoretical introduction with readings on the “imitation of nature” by Aristoteles, Auerbach and Lukacs, among others, this class will address the so-called “cuestión palpitante” through texts written by a broad selection of nineteenth-century writers (such as Zola, Valera, Pereda, Clarín, Pérez Galdós and Pardo Bazán,). It will then address the resurfacing of this trend in the twentieth-century literature with the “realismo social” of authors such as Miguel Delibes and Carmen Martín Gaite and in cinema, with the Italian neorealist movement and his Spanish version by Bardem, Berlanga and Ana Mariscal.
SPAN 697SP – From Paper to Celluloid: Spanish Film (Crosslisted with Film Studies)
This class will study Spanish literary works and their cinematic adaptations. It will address the fundamental differences between written words and visual image, measure the fidelity of the recreation and reflect upon the implications of ideology and gender for reinterpretation. Movies include the two versions of María Lejárraja's Canción de cuna, Juan de Orduña's and Josefina Molina's recreations of Machado's La Lola se va a los puertos, and Garci's adaptation of Galdós's El abuelo, among others.
SPAN 597HA - Gendered Discourses and the Canon in Modern Spain
Spanish 415 - Culture and Civilization of Spain through Cinema: From Dictatorship to Democracy (Crosslisted with Film Studies)
In this class we will examine the historical, political, social and cultural development of Spain from the Second Republic to the present. Through the study of several films we will tackle topics such as the role of women, censorship, immigration and terrorism, among others. The course is taught in Spanish
SPAN 797BB - Women and Film (Crosslisted with Film Studies)
A close examination of the evolution of Spanish cinema by women directors through the viewpoint of gender and feminist film theories. This class will highlight women’s mainly gynocentric cinematic scope and engage several of the most recurrent topics that shape women’s films (such as violence against women, the depiction of the female body, and the rejection of traditional female roles, among others) in comparison with how these same themes surface in hegemonic cinema (i.e. both Hollywood and Spanish male-authored production). Furthermore this class will outline the historical evolution of female cinema: 1) Film-makers who worked before the Civil War and were silenced by Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, 2) Those who had to negotiate their production within the regime’s censorship, and 3) A third group that, in democracy, contributes to a “boom” of women behind the camera. By tackling the so-called gender-genre debate, this class will analyze how each group uses (or subverts) different male-dominated cinematic forms (such as neo-realism, the road movie, the film noir, etc.), thus shaping a female discursive “difference” in each period. Taught in Spanish.
Spanish 397K - Women of Southern Europe through Literature and Film (Crosslisted with Film Studies)
The strong influence of the Catholic Church, the peculiar political and economic development of the Italian and Spanish bourgeoisies, the superimposition of a political unity on culturally and linguistically diverse regions, and the decades of dictatorship under Mussolini, Primo de Rivera and Franco, are just a few of the common experiences that Spain and Italy share. In both these Mediterranean lands, the history of the feminist movements --and of women—share many characteristics, at the same time they also have their own specificity. By concentrating on key works by women writers and film directors, this course will study the peculiarity and the specificity of Italian and Spanish feminisms and their relation to the literary and cinematographic realms. Taught in English/Spanish/Italian Crosslisted ITAL 398