Graduate Studies

MPhil in European Literature & Culture | Course content | Modules | SP Voices - Iberian Voices

MPhil in European Literature & Culture

Spanish | SP Voices

Iberian Voices
(Convenor: Dr D Keown)

The partiality of conventional historical discourse, especially with regard to the unquestioned legitimacy of the nation state, has divided contemporary Iberia into two rigid hegemonic units. In this environment, transversal expressions of dissent, discomfort and difference have been sidelined by the dominance of an official rhetoric exercised habitually by the the immobility of autocracy and, indeed, the pious elitism of intellectual resistance. It is the intention of this module to critically examine the condition of these other submerged voices of the peninsula and assess the complex nature of their apparent subalternity in the areas of social marginalisation, imperial nostalgia and national plurality.

Each session will deal with a specific strand of this alternative polyphony with the final meeting devoted to a metacritical reflection on the ideological implications of the conventional approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Studies. The following topics have been selected for particular study:

• Competing, conflicting and alternative discourses: cultures and subcultures in Spain
• The coercive and subversive voices of Flamenco during the Franco dictatorship
• The private lives of Adamastor: representing Empire and Colonial War in twentieth
       century Portuguese literature and film
• Voices from Africa: the Mask and the Mirror in Spanish-African relations
• Peripheral visions: a cinematic view of Spain from the Catalan edge
• Ideologies of Hispanism: transversality and Iberian Studies

In simple terms, this module has as its aim the opening up of the discipline of Hispanic Studies which, with reference to the peninsula, has been noticebly vertical and exclusive in its approach the cultures of Portugal and Spain. This uncritical compliance with the centralist impermeability of statehood and the dominance of official discourse has tended to leave unexamined the subalternity and transversality of peripheral and marginalised cultures. This module offers the opportunity to study a key range of these issues, across the peninsula in the modern period, which are notable for their diversity but, at times, also for their commonality, with the ultimate objective of understanding the ideological implications central to manner in which the languages and cultures of Iberia have been — or may be — assimilated.

For some students, the module will provide a fascinating end in itself; for others, it will offer excellent training for a PhD in Hispanic Studies across the wide spectrum of issues that are habitually constrained and divided in this discipline by conventional academic disposition. This module can be taken whether or not you have already studied this period. If you wish to focus on this period, then the module combines very well with other elements in the portfolio of contemporary Europe.

The sessions will be taught by some of the following: Alison Sinclair, Stuart Davis, Brad Epps, Rosemary Clark, Samuel Llano, Ana Margarida Martins and Dominic Keown. This team includes leading scholars and provides a wealth of expertise upon which you can draw. Supervision of individual projects will be provided by these and by other experts.

The following titles offer an overview of the various issues dealt with in the module:

¡Ay Carmela! Directed by Carlos Saura, 1990.
Bienvenido Mr Marshall. Directed by Luis García, 1953.
Chabal, Patrick, A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa (2002)
Charnon-Deutsch, Lou, The Spanish Gypsy: the history of a European obsession (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004)
Davis, Stuart, ‘In Defence of an Institution: Approaches to the Peninsular Spanish Canon.’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, vol 7, 2001, pp. 129-142.
Jagoe, C. B., Alda; Enríquez de Salamanca, Cristina. La mujer en los discursos de género: textos y contextos en el siglo XIX. Barcelona: Icaria, pp 305-443 (1998).
Labanyi, Jo, "Musical Battles: Populism and Hegemony in the Early Francoist Folkloric Film Musical", in Labanyi, Jo, ed., Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 206—221.
Llano, Samuel, "Exile, Resistance and Heteroglossia in Robert Gerhard's Flamenco", in Buffery, Helena, ed., Stages of Exile: Spanish Repulican exile theatre and performance (Oxford; New York: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 107—124.
Natal 71. Directed by Margarida Cardoso, 1999.
Quem vai à guerra. Directed by Marta Pessoa, 2011.
Resina, Juan Ramón, Del hispanismo a los estudios ibéricos (2009)
Sinclair, A. ‘”Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…":  rhetorical practices in medical and religious discourse in 19th-century Spain', Nineteenth-Century Prose 32(1): 97-127 (2005).
Zugasti, J. El bandolerismo: Estudio social y memorias históricas VIII. Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet. UL 236.d.87.4 (1879)

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