Spanish and Portuguese
82–90 Wall Street, 432.1150, 432.5439
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Roberto González Echevarría
Director of Graduate Studies
Rolena Adorno [F] (432.1154, rolena.adorno@yale.edu)
Fernando Rosenberg (Acting [Sp]) (432.1158, fernando.rosenberg@yale.edu)
Director of the Language Program
María Martino Crocetti
Professors
Rolena Adorno, Roberto González Echevarría, K. David Jackson, Josefina Ludmer, María Rosa Menocal, Noël Valis
Associate Professor
Lidia Santos
Assistant Professors
Iván Fernández Peláez, Óscar Martín, Fernando Rosenberg
Senior Lector
María Martino Crocetti
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 submit scores 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. 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 Graduate School 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 9.30–11.20
World cities and the narratives that best describe, belong to, or represent them, from the European/Iberian capitals that give rise to the urban novel to the fictional worlds of selected Asian, African, Brazilian, and Spanish American cities. In English. Texts available in original languages.
PORT 972b, Cosmopolitan Brazilian and Spanish American Writings: A Comparative Perspective. Lidia Santos.
Th 4–5.50
This course focuses on new trends in contemporary Brazilian and Spanish American narrative, taking cosmopolitanism as a theoretical axis. Comparative readings of Fernando Vallejo and Paulo Lins, Jorge Volpi and Silviano Santiago, César Aira and Ferrez, among others. Readings in the original languages. In Portuguese or Spanish. Also SPAN 946b.
PORT 991a, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
PORT 991b, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
SPAN 516bu, Literary Encounters of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain. María Rosa Menocal.
T 1.30–3.20
The literature of encounters (linguistic and literary, religious and intellectual) in the polycultural world of medieval Iberia. A wide variety of genres and perspectives are read: the bilingual poetry (Arabic/Romance, Hebrew/Romance) of the eleventh and twelfth centuries that made al-Andalus famous throughout the Arab world and helped create the Golden Age for Jews; the dialogues of the Catalan polymath Ramon Llull; mystical poems from all three faiths on ecumenical themes; the Alfonsine translations from Arabic that invented Castilian as a written language; and many other writings depicting interactions of the three faiths. In English, although all texts available in original languages as well.
SPAN 525a, Reading the Romancero. Oscar Martín.
T 1.30–3.20
This course focuses on the popular narrative ballad tradition, originating in medieval times but surviving into the present, known as the Hispanic Romancero. We study this poetry as it developed on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as how it was carried by the Sephardic community to new Mediterranean locations. We cover issues such as the medieval origins of the Romancero, the relation to other medieval poetic genres, formal structures, thematic cycles, oral transmission, printed transmutations, and social and ideological functions. In Spanish.
SPAN 711b, Clarín/Galdós: La Regenta and Fortunata y Jacinta. Noël Valis.
Th 1.30–3.20
An in-depth reading of two nineteenth-century Spanish narrative masterpieces. We analyze the texts as literary aesthetic achievements and explore their cultural-historical contexts. In Spanish.
SPAN 790b, Methodologies of Modern Foreign Language Teaching. María Martino Crocetti.
M 3.30–5.20
Preparation for a teaching career through readings, lectures, classroom discussions, and pres-entations on current issues in foreign/second language acquisition theory and teaching methodology. Classroom techniques at all levels. An additional ninety-minute practicum meets immediately afterward. In Spanish.
SPAN 812a, Chronicles of Conquest, Polemics of Possession. Rolena Adorno.
M 1.30–3.20
Five writers whose works have earned them a place in the Spanish American colonial literary canon: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Alonso de Ercilla, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and Bartolomé de las Casas. Their narrative art, their literary relationships, and their legacies today. In Spanish.
SPAN 938a, Latin American Poetics. Fernando Rosenberg.
W 4–5.50
In this class we look at Latin American poetry with special attention to modernismo and vanguardia, inasmuch as these two movements set the tone for any further discussion of poetic modernity in Latin America. Problems of literary techniques are considered with regard to the creative incorporation of traditions and the pressure to innovate them. We read the poetic production of the continent as a field of discussion, with constant reference to their aesthetic position as an intellectual intervention. In Spanish.
SPAN 942b, Fiestas cubanas. Roberto González Echevarría.
W 2.30–4.20
A study of the fiestas marking the Cuban calendar from the nineteenth century to the present, how they respond to cultural and political transformations, and how they are inscribed in literature, particularly the narrative. The feast as the representation of time and social and political change. The work of anthropologists and theorists of literature such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Arnold van Gennep, and Mikhail Bakhtin, along with that of Latin American and Cuban anthropologists and writers such as Fernando Ortiz, Lidia Cabrera, José Arrom, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Miguel Barnet, and Octavio Paz. Fiction by Cirilo Villaverde, Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo Arenas, Daína Chaviano, and others. In Spanish. Also CLPT 941b.
SPAN 946b, Cosmopolitan Brazilian and Spanish American Writings: A Comparative Perspective. Lidia Santos.
Th 4–5.50
This course focuses on new trends in contemporary Brazilian and Spanish American narrative, taking cosmopolitanism as a theoretical axis. Comparative readings of Fernando Vallejo and Paulo Lins, Jorge Volpi and Silviano Santiago, César Aira and Ferrez, among others. Readings in the original languages. In Portuguese or Spanish. Also PORT 972b.
SPAN 962a, The Bildungsroman in Latin American Literature. Josefina Ludmer.
Th 2.30–4.20
A close reading of narratives dealing with rites of passage to adult life, with particular attention to the ways these reflect upon the construction of identities in Latin America. In Spanish.
SPAN 991a, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
SPAN 991b, Tutorial.
By arrangement with faculty.
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