EU0288: Memory and Textuality in Contemporary Spain

School null
Department Code null
Module Code EU0288
External Subject Code R430
Number of Credits 20
Level L5
Language of Delivery English
Module Leader Dr Montserrat Lunati
Semester Spring Semester
Academic Year 2013/4

Outline Description of Module

This module deals with issues of historical memory regarding twenty- and twenty-first century Spain, with especial attention to the years of the Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship and the effects that collective and individual traumas related to historical and political events have had in recent democratic times. The module analyses how the past is textualised through a number of key visual (films and documentaries) and literary texts. All texts have been produced in the last two decades, when the debates over historical memory have acquired an increasingly relevant cultural, political and even legal dimension in Spain (with a new Law of Historical Memory passed in 2007).This module will also include an introduction to a number of theoretical concepts (Freud, Nora, Hirsch, Halbwachs, Leys, etc.) related to the issues under discussion, as well as an introduction to narratology and questions of textuality. A glossary of theoretical terms will be provided.

On completion of the module a student should be able to

- Identify, analyse, contextualise and discuss the main textual and political issues which frame the texts under discussion;

- Show ability for reading and discussing literary and visual texts by presenting arguments in a structured and coherent manner;

- Offer close textual readings of the texts studied in class and establish relevant historical, political and intertextual connections;

- Contextualize each of the texts studied in class in historical and aesthetic terms;

- Show an awareness of basic concepts of narratology, genre and textuality.

How the module will be delivered

This module is organised around 20 lectures and all students will also attend at least 8 seminars. Two weekly classes normally take the form of a lecture and one weekly class that of a seminar (for 8 weeks of the semester). Preparation for and participation in seminars is essential: students have the opportunity to make presentations or participate in group discussions of topics related to the module content. Seminars provide the opportunity for detailed exploration of selected aspects and themes of the texts under study. Lectures provide the knowledge students are expected to acquire together with guidance for independent reading and advice on how to deliver the assessed work required to pass the module successfully.

Skills that will be practised and developed

1.    Intellectual Skills

 ·         Analyse verbal and visual texts independently, using a range of theoretical framework appropriate for undergraduate level
 
·         Engage critically with major intellectual debates within the field of historical, social, cultural, literary and visual studies and put them to productive use
 
·         Relate the texts under study to the historical and political context in which they have been produced
 
2.    Discipline-specific Skills
 
·         Understand literary and visual production regarding historical memory in contemporary Spain as it has emerged and appreciate the processes through which its manifestations have come into being with reference to social and cultural change
 
·         Analyse and discuss the core texts studied in depth in the module by establishing the theoretical and thematic connections necessary for an informed interdisciplinary and intertextual approach
 
3.    Transferable Skills
 
·         Learn to process information through lectures and seminars, note-taking and interactive discussion
 
·         Learn to apply lecture and reading material independently and present it in academically-sophisticated essay form
 
·         Demonstrate an appropriate level of communication skills in written and oral contexts

How the module will be assessed

Assessed Essay

30%

 

2,000 words

Examination

70%

 

2 hours

 

Assessment Breakdown

Type % Title Duration(hrs)
Exam - Spring Semester 70 Memory And Textuality In Contemporary Spain 2
Written Assessment 30 Memory And Textuality In Contemporary Spain N/A

Syllabus content

  • Historical introduction to the period in which the texts under study were produced
  • Survey of the twentieth-century cultural background from which the texts under study have emerged
  • Introduction to key concepts of narratology, as well as other related concepts necessary for the critical and analytical work required to pass the module. A Glossary of Theoretical Terms is provided and discussed.

Essential Reading and Resource List

Syllabus content

Historical introduction to the period in which the texts under study were produced
Survey of the twentieth-century cultural background from which the texts under study have emerged
Introduction to key concepts of narratology, as well as other related concepts necessary for the critical and analytical work required to pass the module. A Glossary of Theoretical Terms is provided and discussed.
 
CORE TEXTS FOR CLOSE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS;
 
Literary texts:
 
Manuel Rivas, A selection of short stories published between 1990 and 1995.
 
Miguel Muñoz Molina, A selection of short stories published in 2001.
 
Julio Llamazares, A selection of short stories published in 1994.
 
Visual texts:
 
Eva Koch Villar, Los hijos de Manuela (2001), documentary + video installation
 
Agustí Villaronga (2010) Pan negro (2010), film
 
[Core texts may vary from one year to the next, but the amount of texts to read / view will be similar.]
 
Key aspects of specific theorists are also part of the module to enable students to study the creative texts from a theoretical approach. Amongst others they include: Sigmund Freud on ‘Mourning’ and ‘Melancholia’; Maurice Hallbwachs on collective memory; Pierre Nora on lieux de mémoire; Marianne Hirsch on Postmemory; and Ruth Leys on Trauma..
 
Indicative Reading and Resource List:
 
Aguilar, Paloma (2002) Memory and Amnesia. The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
 
Caldicott, Edric and Anne Fuchs (eds) (2003) Cultural Memory. Essays on European Literature and History, Oxofrd and Bern: Peter Lang.
 
Connerton, Paul (1989) How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  
 
Derrida, Jacques (1994) Spectres of Marx, the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, New York and London: Routledge.
 
Ferran, Ofelia (2007) Working through Memory: Writing and Remembrance in Contemporary Spanish Narrative, LewisVathy Vburg: Bucknell University Press.
 
Freud, Sigmund (1984) [1917]‘Mourning and Melancholia’, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The Ego and the ID, and Other Works, The Penguin Freud Library, vol. 2, trad. i ed. general James Strachey, ed. vol. 2 Angela Richards, London: Penguin, pp. 251-268.
 
Gómez López-Quiñones, Antonio (2006) La guerra persistente. Memoria, violencia y utopía: Repesentationes contemporáneas de la Guerra Civil española. Madrid and Frankfurt: Vervuert/ Iberoamericana.
 
Halbwachs, Maurice (1992) [1952], On Collective Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 
Hirsch, Marianne (1997) Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
 
Hirsch, Marianne (ed.) (1999) The Familial Gaze, Hannover, N. H. and London: Dartmouth College.
 
Hutcheon, Linda (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, New York: Routledge.
 
Jérez-Ferrán, Carlos and Samuel Amago (eds) (2010) Unearthing Franco’s Legacy. Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
 
Kaplan, Temma (2002) ‘Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory’, Signs, 28, pp. 179-199.
 
Kansteiner, Wulf (2002) 'Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies', History and Theory, vol. 41/ May, pp. 179-197.
 
Labanyi, Jo (2000) ‘History and Hauntology: Or, What does One Do with the Ghosts of the Past? Reflections on Spanish Film and Fiction of the Post-Franco Period’, in Joan Resina (ed.) Disremembering the Dictatorship: The Politics of Memory in the Spanish Transition to Democracy, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 65-82.
 
____ (2007) 'Memory and modernity in democratic Spain: The difficulty of coming to terms with the Spanish Civil War', Poetics Today, vol. 28/ 1, pp. 89-116.
 
____ (2009) 'The languages of silence: Historical memory, generational transmission and witnessing in contemporary Spain', Journal of Romance Studies, vol. 9/3, pp. 23-35.
 
Leys, Ruth (2000). Trauma. A Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 
Nora, Pierre (1989) 'Between history and memory: Les lieux de mémoire', Representations, vol. 26, pp. 7-24
 
Preston, Paul (1995) ‘Resisting the State: The Urban and Rural Guerrilla of the 1940s’, in H. Graham and J. Labanyi (eds) Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 229-239.
 
Ricoeur, Paul (2004) Memory, History, Forgetting, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 
Silvan, Emmanuel and Jay Winter (1999) War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Tuleiman, Susan Rubin (ed.) (1998) Exile and Creativity. Signposts, Travellers, Outsiders, Backward Glances, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
 
Terdiman, Richard (1993) Present/ Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
 
Tremlett, Giles (2006) Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a Country's Hidden Past, London: Faber and Faber.
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