This module deals with literary (novels and short stories) and visual (films, graphic novels) texts produced by women in Spain in the last thirty years. The module has an historical, interdisciplinary and intertextual approach that facilitates interconnected readings of the texts selected for in-depth analysis. The core texts are representative of women writers and filmmakers from different parts of Spain in order to include a rich cultural variety. Questions central to the module may include: identity and representation; textual construction of gender; female development; authorship and authority; cultural agency; female ‘alterity’ as a space for change and transformation; mother-daughter relationships and mothers as (a)historical subjects; critical dialogues with literary and cinematic traditions; gender/domestic violence; gender and trauma; silence as a strategy to disrupt hegemonic discourses; representation of illness and the medicalisation of women’s bodies; irony as a catalyst in ’disobedient’ discourses; and the recuperation of the historical memory of Republican women.

Knowledge of a selection of key theoretical approaches to narratology, feminism, social and cultural history, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism and postmodernism are also part of the module in order to enable students to engage with the texts under study in an informed and scholarly manner.

• Show perception of women’s authorial production in the fields of cinema and literature produced in the different cultures of post-

totalitarian Spain and relate it to its historical, social and cultural context

• Demonstrate a high level of awareness, and the ability to argue and rebut a case, justifying their own viewpoint, as appropriate to the module
• Show ability to present arguments in a structured, logical and coherent manner, and the capacity for analysing complex verbal and visual texts
• Show ability to articulate close textual readings of significant passages/ sequences/ instances of the texts studied in class, both verbal and visual
• Demonstrate basic word-processing skills

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.

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

Discipline-specific Skills

• Understand women’s verbal and visual production 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 verbal and visual texts produced by women in contemporary Spain by establishing the theoretical and thematic connections necessary for an informed interdisciplinary and intertextual approach

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

A 2,000 word essay (30%) at the end of the semester approximately.  One 2-hour unseen written exam (70%) in the Spring-semester exam period.

Introduction

• 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

• Novels

Dulce Chacón, La voz dormida (2002)

Isabel Franc & Susanna Martín, Alicia en un mundo real (2010 [graphic novel]

• Short Stories

Lourdes Ortiz, ‘Penélope’ (1988)

Cristina Fernández Cubas, ‘Ausencia’ (1994)

Imma Monsó, ‘Mejor que no me lo expliques’ (2003)

• Films

Isabel Coixet, Mi vida sin mí (2003)

Belén Macías, El puzzle (2001)

Icíar Bollaín, Te doy mis ojos (2003)

All texts will be aesthetically, socially and historically contextualised. Secondary reading will be required from the students in order to achieve it successfully.

[Core texts may vary from one year to the next, but the amount of texts to read / view will always be similar.]

Key aspects of specific theorists are also part of the module to enable students to study the creative texts in depth. Amongst others they may include: Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan on Psychoanalysis; Michel Foucault on social and cultural history; Roland Barthes on Poststructuralism; Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous on Feminism; Maurice Hallbwachs on collective memory; Pierre Nora on lieux de mémoire; Linda Hutcheon on Irony, Parody and Postmodernism; Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz and Chris Weedon on poststructuralist feminism; and Marianne Hirsch on Postmemory.

Barthes, Roland (1977). Image-Music-Text. Trans. by S. Heath. London: Fontana.

Belsey, Catherine & Jane Moore (eds) (1989). The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan.

Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London & New York: Routledge.

Chacón, Dulce (2002). La voz dormida. Madrid: Alfaguara.

Foucault, Michel (1990) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. An Introduction. London: Penguin.

Franc, Isabel and Susanna Martín (2010) Alicia en un mundo real. Barcelona: Norma.

Freixas, Laura (2000). Literatura y mujeres. Barcelona: Destino.

Freud, Sigmund (1984 [1917]) “Mourning and Melancholia.” In The Penguin Freud Library, vol. II. London: Penguin, pp. 251-269.

Genette, Gérard (1980). Narrative Discourse. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Graham, Helen and Jo Labanyi (eds) (1995). Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction. The Struggle for Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Graham, helen (2004) “The Spanish Civil War, 1936-2003: the Return of Republican Memory.” Science & Society, vol. 68, pp. 313-328.

Hirsch, Marianne (1997. Family frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Hutcheon, Linda (19940. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and the Politics of Irony. London & New York: Routledge.

Lacan, Jacques (1977 [1966]). Écrits: A Selection. London: Tavistock Publications.

Lunati, Montserrat (ed.) (1997). Rainy Days/ Días de lluvia. Short Stories by Contemporary Spanish Women Writers. Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd.

Lunati, Montserrat and Jean Andrews (eds) (1998) Viajeros perdidos: Contemporary Spanish Short Stories. London: Bristol Classical Press.

Lunati, Montserrat (2007). Imma Monsó: La narrativa de la ironia i la diferència. Vic: Eumo.

Nora, Pierre (1989) “Between History and Memory: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, vol. 26, pp. 7-24

Abbot, H. Porter (2002). The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ballesteros, Isolina (2001). Cine (ins)urgente: Textos fílmicos y contextos culturales de la España posfranquista. Madrid: Fundamentos.

Brooksbank-Jones, Anny (1997). Women in Contemporary Spain. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

Brown, Joan L. (ed.) (1991). Women Writers of Contemporary Spain: Exiles in Homeland. Newark: University of Delaware & London: and Toronto: Associated University Presses.

Ciplijauskaité, Biruté (1994). La novela femenina contemporánea (1970-1985): Hacia una tipología de la narración en primera persona. Barcelona: Anthropos.

Davies, Catherine (1991) “Feminist Writers in Spain since 1900: From Political Strategy to Personal Inquiry”, in Textual Liberation: European Feminist Writing in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Helena Forsas-Scott. London and New York: Routledge, pp.192-226.

Davies, Catherine (1998) Spanish Women’s Writing 1849-1996. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: The Atholone Press.

Derrida, Jacques (1994). Spectres of Marx, the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International.

De Ros, Xon and Geraldine Hazbun (eds) (2011). A Companion to Spanish Women’s Studies. London: Tamesis.

Erens, Patricia (ed.) (1990). Issues in Feminist Film criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Glbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar (1979). The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer in the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Herzberger, David K. (1988). Narrating the Past: Fiction and Historiography in Postwar Spain. Durham, USA and London: Duke University Press.

Humm, Magie (1989). The Dictionary of Feminist Theory. New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Himm, Maggie (ed. (1992). Feminisms: A Reader. New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Hutcheon, Linda (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, and Fiction. New York: Routledge.

Jordan, Barry & Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas (eds) (2000). Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies. London: Arnold.

Kenyon, Olga (1995) “Women under Franco and PSOE: the Discrepancy between Discourse and Reality”. In Inequality and Difference in Hispanic and Latin American Cultures, ed. by B. McGuirck and M. Millington, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 51-61.

Kinder, Marsha (1993). Blood Cinema. The Construction of National Identity in Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kinder, Marsha (ed.) (1997). Refiguring Spain: Cinema, Media, Representation. Durham, USA: Duke University Press.

Landsberg, Alison (2013) The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Levine, Linda Gould et al. (eds) (1993). Spanish Women Writers: A Biobibliographical Source Book. Westport, USA: Greenwood Press.

Lozano Mijares, M. P. (2007). La novela española posmoderna. Madrid: Arco.

Marks, Elaine and Isabel de Courtivron (eds.) (1980). New French Feminisms: An Anthology. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press.

Martin-Márquez, Susan (1999). Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moi, Toril (1985) Sexual / Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen.

Offen, Karen (2000). European Feminisms: A Political History. Stanford: California University Press.

Perriam, Chris et al. (2000). A New History of Spanish Writing 1939 to the 1990s. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rodgers, Eamonn (ed,) (1999). Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Spanish Culture. London: Routledge.

Scarlett, Elizabeth (1994). Under Construction: The Body in Spanish Novels. Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia.

Spires, Robert (1996). Post-Totalitarian Spanish Fiction. Minnesota: University of Missouri Press.

Suleiman, Susan R. (ed.) (1986). The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.

Triana-Toribio, Núria (2003). Spanish National Cinema. London & New York: Routledge.

Woodward, Kathryn (ed.) (1997). Identity and Difference. London, Thousand Oaks & Delhi: Sage Publications.