Researching Cultures: Iberian Feminisms

This course will examine the development and transformations of feminist thought in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Enlightenment to the present, considering a diverse array of literary and cultural production (narrative fiction, poetry, essay, press accounts, film and visual culture) by women. We will consider not only the challenges faced by women cultural producers, given their social, legal, and historical circumstances, but also the strategies they used to negotiate their participation in the public sphere as writers, intellectuals, social reformers and activists. We will explore, from an intersectional perspective, the unique perspectives these women brought to their work, as they address pressing social, political, and cultural issues pertaining to their place in society, such as citizenship, suffragism, equal rights, divorce, gender violence, personal and political freedom, racial justice, among others. We will consider works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Josefa Amar y Borbón, representing the beginnings of a modern feminist consciousness in Iberia; Romantic writers (Coronado, Gómez de Avellaneda), who, under the impact of liberalism, were key to shaping new models of subjectivity for women; nineteenth-century (proto)feminists and social reformers of the fin-de-siècle (Pardo Bazán, Gimeno de Flaquer, Arenal); early twentieth-century suffragists and freethinkers (Carmen de Burgos, Campoamor, Hildegart); and feminist writers and filmmakers of the post-Franco era (Montero, Riera, Bollaín, Taberna) and women representing the diverse diasporic communities of 21st-century Spain (El Hachmi, Bela-Lobedde, Mbomio Rubio, Quanzhou Wu). Course assignments will consist of short essays, a book report, and a final project. Prerequisites: Spanish 308D or 303 and two of the following (341, 342, 342, 370, 380, or Debating Cultures).
Course Attributes: AS HUM; AS LCD; AS WI I; AS SC

Researching Cultures: Iberian Feminisms

SPANISH 3614

Section 01