Gender Perspectives in the Contemporary European and Spanish 文学

The course invites the students to think, 以斯拉沃日·齐泽克命名, that 'another world is possible', and it is with this assumption that the course will critically examine the category of gender and its application to literary critique. The examples of literary production will be drawn from European literature, 包括英国作家, 德国, 波兰的, 罗马尼亚, 和乌克兰血统, with special emphasis placed on a new generation of Spanish artists (playwrights). Because of the short nature of the course, it is not meant to serve as a panorama of literature in Europe, 而是, as a representative sample of the literary production that displays an interest and concern with gendered perspective, in various parts of the continent. 在西班牙文本的情况下, where a translation into 英语 is not yet available (Blasco, 里德尔), students will be provided with translated fragments to allow them access to the meanings the texts might generate.
The first thematic axis is centered round Gender and the representations of the Body and Sexuality. The analysis offered focuses on Oksana Zabuzhko¿s Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex and Lola Blasco¿s Siglo Mio Bestia Mia. The discussion will include a revision of the importance of various narratorial points of view and the focalization, as well as the polyphonic aspect of the narrative and inclusion of different 的声音s. The students will be encour年龄d to consider such topics as the role of popular culture in creating the notions of beauty, 愿望, romance; gender and imperialism, 殖民主义, and racism; gender and langu年龄; Écriture feminine; mimesis, 化妆舞会, playfulness and disguise; gender and performativity, and various categories of identity.
The second thematic axis concerns Gender and Ageism, Disability Discrimination and Speciesism. The analysis offered focuses on Olga Tokarczuk¿s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead and Sarah Kane¿s 4.48个精神病. The students will be invited to discuss such topics as the aging and ailing body in the context of Disability Studies; representations of 年龄 and femininity in literature; gender and other markers of identification: class, 国籍, 性取向, 比赛, ethnicity; 年龄ism, speciesism and other ¿isms; gender and body, 年龄, and illness; compulsory heterosexuality, queer challenge to essentialism.
The third thematic axis revolves around Gender and the Personal / Political. The analysis of textual examples focuses on Angelica Liddell¿s La casa de la fuerza and Herta Müller¿s The Appointment. It focuses on challenging the distinctions between the political and the private, offering instead an understanding of these as interrelated categories. The students will be asked to consider such topics as the banality of evil; dystopian and utopian visions of gendered identity; marginality, terror and melancholy; gendered subject construction, 的声音, and desire in psychoanalytical terms; backlash and postfeminism and the sexist discourse; the cyborg, cyberfeminism and the postmodern digital revolution.
The distinctions between these thematic axes remain rather fluid, and the readings within one category should be treated as enhancing the critical approach to the other categories. Interconnections and dependencies between various theoretical angles will be explored, taking into consideration such perspectives as those offered by Postcolonial Studies, 生态批评, 女权主义, 和酷儿研究. 只要有可能, the discussion of the literary sources and critical materials will be complemented with the use of visual examples, reaching to such artists as Marina Abramovic, 路易丝, the 马德里 duo Cabello/Carceller, 特蕾西艾敏, 安德里亚·弗雷泽, 安娜·琼森(塞维利亚), 莎拉•卢卡斯.
The discussion of the literary examples of both novels and dramatic literature will be preceded by a theoretical introduction, whose aim is to provide the students with critical tools and langu年龄 to enter the current debate on gender in literature.