SPAN 597 A World of Their Own: The Poetics and Material Culture of Imperial Spain

This seminar will examine the construction of texts as products of cross-cultural encounters, texts that dialogue with the intellectual and aesthetic practices of the ancients and contemporary Italian humanists, with an emphasis on their visual and material productions. We also will explore libraries and museums as archives of knowledge for the creation of cultural memory. Space will be privileged as a stage for the construction and performance of the textual subject: a sacred space (a convent, a monastery, a chapel), an urban space, a pastoral space, and the space of the court. Space will also be studied as a repository, an archive of objects and artifacts—books, relics, ceiling paintings, urns, sculptures, tombs—some originating in Italy and the Low Countries, which were influenced by the political and ideological agendas of the Habsburgs. The course will be conducted in English. Readings will be in Spanish and English. Presentations, response papers, and the final essay may be written either in Spanish or English.