Spanish and Portuguese
82–90 Wall Street, 432.1150, 432.5439
www.yale.edu/span-port/
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Rolena Adorno [F]
Roberto González Echevarría (Acting [Sp])
Director of Graduate Studies
Aníbal González
Professors
Rolena Adorno (on leave [Sp]), Aníbal González, Roberto González Echevarría, K. David Jackson (on leave [Sp]), María Rosa Menocal (on leave [F]), Noël Valis
Assistant Professors
Jason Cortés, Ernesto Estrella, Óscar Martín, Paulo Moreira
Senior Lecturer
Priscilla Meléndez
Senior Lector
Sonia Valle
Fields of Study
Fields include Spanish Peninsular literature, Latin American literature, Portuguese and Brazilian literatures.
The doctoral program offers: (1) a Spanish major concentrating in a single field of study (medieval, Renaissance/Golden Age, modern Spanish Peninsular, colonial Spanish American, contemporary Spanish American); (2) a combined major in Spanish and Portuguese offering the student the opportunity to work in both the Luso Brazilian and Spanish/Spanish American fields. In addition, the department participates in (1) a combined Ph.D. program in Spanish and Portuguese and African American Studies offered in conjunction with the African American Studies program and (2) a combined Ph.D. program in Spanish and Portuguese and Renaissance Studies offered in conjunction with the Renaissance Studies program.
Special Admissions Requirements
Thorough command of the language in which the student plans to specialize and a background in its literature, as well as command of at least one of the three additional languages in which the student will need to fulfill requirements.
Application must include GRE scores, a personal statement, and an academic writing sample in the language of the proposed specialization, not to exceed twenty-five pages in length. Students whose native language is not English must submitscores of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
The department requires two years of course work, sixteen term courses with a grade of Honors in at least two courses, and a minimum grade average of High Pass. Course work includes two required courses, SPAN 500, History of the Spanish Language, and SPAN 790, Methodologies of Modern Foreign Language Teaching, and two courses taken outside the department. Also required are a reading knowledge of Latin and a second language, as well as a third language-literature minor. In the third year, the student is expected to pass the qualifying examination (oral and written components) and submit and receive approval of the dissertation prospectus. Upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus, students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. The entire program, including the dissertation, can be completed in five years.
Participation in the department’s teaching and pedagogy program is a degree requirement. It consists of taking the required course SPAN 790 in the second year and teaching one section per term of a course in the beginning language sequence during the third and fourth years of study. Viewed as an integral part of the course of study for the doctorate, this program includes supervision by the director of the language program and course directors.
Combined Ph.D. Programs
Spanish and Portuguese and African American Studies
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese also offers, in conjunction with the African American Studies program, a combined Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese and African American Studies. For further details, see African American Studies.
Spanish and Portuguese and Renaissance Studies
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese also offers, in conjunction with the Renaissance Studies program, a combined Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese and Renaissance Studies. For further details, see Renaissance Studies.
Master’s Degrees
M.Phil. See Degree Requirements. Additionally, students in Spanish and Portuguese are eligible to pursue a supplemental M.Phil. degree in Medieval Studies. For further details, see Medieval Studies.
M.A. (en route to the PH.D.). The M.A. en route is awarded upon the satisfactory completion of eight term courses and two of the three language requirements (Latin and one other language).
Courses
PORT 960au,World Cities and Narratives. K. David Jackson.
Th 9.25–11.15
World cities and narratives that best describe, belong to, or represent them, from the European/Iberian capitals that gave rise to the urban novel to the fictional worlds of major Asian, African, and South American cities. In English.
PORT 964bu,João Guimarães Rosa. Paulo Moreira.
T 1.30–3.20
A study of literary craft in the works of João Guimarães Rosa (1908–1967), his sources, linguistic innovation, philosophical currents, and themes in the short stories and his major novel, Grande Sertão: Veredas. In Portuguese.
PORT 991a, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
PORT 991b, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
SPAN 500a, History of the Spanish Language. Óscar Martín.
Th 4–6
This course explores the origin and development of philology as the foundational discipline of literary studies, the history of the Spanish language in the context of intellectual developments in the twentieth century, the rise of linguistics as a positivist field, the separation of linguistic from literary studies, and the fracturing of Romance studies into separate language and culture fields. In Spanish.
SPAN 536b, Medieval Literature Old and New. Óscar Martín.
Th 4–6
This course studies a group of canonical medieval works encompassing the most distinctive literary genres: epics, saints’ lives, love pseudo-autobiography, short stories, ballads, and short fiction. While paying attention to traditional critical problems, the course also evaluates recent theoretical approaches to medievalism like nationalism, feminism, new historicism, cultural studies, multiculturalism, and gender studies, among others. Works include Jarchas, el Cantar de mío Cid, Libro de Apolonio, Vida de Santa María Egipciaca, Libro de Buen Amor, Cárcel de Amor, romances. In Spanish.
SPAN 660a, Cervantes: Don Quijote. Roberto González Echevarría.
W 4–6
Closely reads Don Quijote in the context of theories of the novel in the Renaissance and later, with particular attention directed to the history of ideas and developments in science. In Spanish.
SPAN 748a, Representing the Spanish Civil War. Noël Valis.
M 1.30–3.20
This course examines the continuing fascination and complexities of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) through the ways Spaniards and non-Spaniards represented it ideologically and artistically in words and images. The war had to do not only with battles and politics, but with perception and propaganda. Texts include Sender’s Réquiem por un campesino español, Rodoreda’s La plaza del Diamante, Cercas’ Los soldados de Salamina, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, poems by Antonio and Manuel Machado, Miguel Hernández, Auden, and Roy Campbell, and films (La caza, The Spanish Earth, Land and Freedom). In Spanish.
SPAN 790b, Methodologies of Modern Language Teaching. Sonia Valle.
M 3.30–5, practicum 5–6.30
Preparation for a teaching career through readings, lectures, classroom discussions, and presentations on current issues in foreign/second language acquisition theory and teaching methodology. Classroom techniques at all levels. In Spanish.
SPAN 813a, Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Exceptionalism in Spanish American Literature and Thought. Rolena Adorno.
T 1.30–3.20
This seminar examines the enduring works of the writers and thinkers of the transitional, Independence, and post-Independence period (1810s–1840s) in Spanish America: José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, José María de Heredia, Simón Bolívar, José Joaquín de Olmedo, Andrés Bello, Esteban Echeverría, and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Their Spanish colonial-era literary heritage, their relationships to contemporary European literary and intellectual trends, and recent arguments about Latin American exceptionalism are considered. In Spanish.
SPAN 912b, The Borges Effect. Roberto González Echevarría.
W 4–6
Since the publication of Ficciones in 1944 and especially since achieving worldwide acclaim after receiving ex-aequo with Samuel Beckett the Formentor Prize in 1961, Jorge Luis Borges has become one of the most influential modern writers. His is a recognizable and often acknowledged presence in the work of novelists and short-story writers, as well as in that of philosophers and literary theorists. There is a Borges “effect,” which can be perceived in John Barth, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco; and in Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Gérard Genette, and Jacques Derrida, among others. That effect is also projected retrospectively in Borges’s particular way of reading classics like Homer, Dante, and Cervantes. An elegant, playfully ironic skepticism, together with a fondness for aporias, enigmas, puzzles, labyrinths as well as for minor genres such as the detectiv!
e story are the most recognizable components of Borges’s style and thought. Taken together these components suggest theories about writing and reading. We read closely Borges’s most influential stories, such as “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote,” and “The Garden of Forking Paths,” as well as his essays on Homer, Dante, and Cervantes. We then follow his track in the writers mentioned. Class discussions in English and readings in English or the French, Spanish, or Italian originals. Also CPLT 942b.
SPAN 970b, The New Sentimental Novel in Spanish America. Aníbal González.
T 1.30–3.20
An analysis of the turn to amorous and sentimental themes by Spanish American novelists after the 1980s. Topics to be explored include politics and the affects, eros vs. agape, courtly love, mass media, and popular culture. Readings from Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel, Luis Sepúlveda, Marcela Serrano, Antonio Skármeta, and Luis Rafael Sánchez. In Spanish.
SPAN 991a, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
SPAN 991b, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
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