Making Time for Research

As the new semester begins I find myself reassessing my time management. I know many "teacher-scholars" from large state institutions do the lion's share of research during the summer, due to high teaching and service loads, but do any of you have any tricks for streamlining class prep in order to free up more time for research and writing?

Meerschaum

My corncob pipe has a sticker proclaiming it a Missouri Meerschaum. I don't know if my esteemed pipe-smoking colleagues have ever tried a real meerschaum, but I have not.

Your mention of The Purloined Letter reminded me of a bibliographic curiosity I came across last year. I thought I'd share it with you.

More depth vs. breadth

We do have a 300 level survey of Spanish lit., which I'm also teaching this fall, and in which we'll be reading snippets of Celestina, Lazarillo, Don Quixote, the complete Caballero de Olmedo, and a poem each (practically) by Garcilaso, Fray Luis, San Juan, Góngora, Quevedo, plus a novella by María de Zayas. Then we move on to the 19th century (don't wince, Dave), skipping the 18th entirely because of time considerations. The trade-off is that in that class I'm having the students read a complete Lorca play: Bodas de sangre.

The Golden Age class is one of three 400 level literature courses on our books, along with "Mexican Literature" and "Latin American Women Writers". I tend to follow a five-author-ten-weeks formula, shooting for a bit of both depth and breadth. I was considering branching out a bit with the Golden Age class in winter: it's the only class they'll take on Peninsular literature. Doesn't anyone know a good abridged version of DQ? (Blasphemy, blasphemy...)

No depth -- breadth

Did I spell that right? I'd go with complete readings of smaller works. Poems, a play or two, a short novel like Lazarillo, and short fiction.

My perception may be skewed, though. I've only ever taught the Quixote in a semester-length course, so my lesson plans are geared toward a more leisurely pace. And I suspect our program may be the only one in the universe that does not have a junior-level survey. All of our lit classes are 500 level. Don't ask me why. In five years I've never gotten a satisfying answer. Our intro to lit class is Spanish 500, a number that certainly sends the message that juniors should not take it, even though there's nothing preventing them from doing so. We're working to change that by, finally, adding a junior survey next semester.

Golden Age Course

I would assume that your 400 level students will have already read some of the texts mentioned in a 300 level survey. I would go with either a complete reading of DQ or complete readings of other works. Go for depth. This is 400, right?

Meerschaum pipe

How about this for a pipe? Three lines into The Purloined Letter I had to stop and look up the word meerschaum.

Golden Age, continued

I like the term Golden Age, though as a medievalist I'm supposed to object to it since it privileges the supposed intellectual and artistic superiority of the 16th/17th centuries while neglecting the accomplishments of, say, Alfonso X.

What to teach in a survey? I have taught surveys, but not exclusively of the Golden Age, and I have taught Golden Age, but never a comprehensive survey. Here are a few of my thoughts, though:

1. I can't imagine teaching Don Quijote in anything less than a semester. Perhaps it can be done, but I think it would overtax the students. Better to choose some representative Novelas ejemplares. La fuerza de la sangre is always a good one.
2. Definitely Garcilaso, San Juan, Fray Luis de Leon, Gongora, Quevedo.
3. Lazarillo. Read it in conjunction with the 1961 movie version.
4. Fuenteovejuna is a standard that must be in any G.A. survey. Other good theater: La vida es sueno, El burlador de Sevilla.
5. Balance out the ticket with some Santa Teresa, if you like, but you should definitely include Maria de Zayas. She has some really funky novelas.

Golden Age

What are the politics of the term "Golden Age" these days? Are we moving away from it for some reason? Honestly, I am not up on these questions, which is why I ask. Is "Early Modern" better? Or Renaissance/Baroque?

I will be teaching "Golden Age Literature" in Winter. My colleague, who has taught it for many a long year, finds it more congenial to teach on contract at our alma mater now that she's semi-retired--thanks perhaps to our good friend JD.

So here's my question: is there a list of essential works that 400-level students should have read in a class called "Golden Age Literature"? Here's my list of what I want to teach:

Garcilaso
Fray Luis
Lazarillo de Tormes
Don Quixote

Should such a class necessarily try to be representative? I also love to read Santa Teresa's autobiography for perverse reasons, as too Quevedo's satirical poems. Also, I really like Lope's "Arte nuevo...," though I find comedias, especially baroque ones like "La vida es sueño," boring.

For your reading pleasure

In my research on humor I stumbled across the following article by one Horace Miner: “Body Ritual among the Nacirema." Go to American Anthropologist, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Jun., 1956), pp. 503-507. To get the gist, you must read "Nacirema" backwards. It’s well worth the read. I found it on J-Store through my library. A small sample:

“The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.

“In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year.”

Regarding Peninsularistas

This blog has as a subtitle "A place for professors of Spanish Literature to complain about or defend the field." I haven't heard much concerning either of these topics. Surely one of you has a gripe about the profession you'd like to share with us.

Carlos V

The article Mike posted traced the racist derivations of some advertising images of black people such as Uncle Ben and El Negrito. Racist images or, if you're Mexican or Spanish, possibly just cariñosas. (That's the word the basketball team used to defend the slant eye gesture.) Not to trivialize the writer's argument, but her article did bring up for me the question of whether and how Carlos V of candy bar fame has changed over the years. I don't know about y'all, but for me the Holy Roman Emporer is looking remarkably like Richard Harris in Camelot, but with a brighter smile.

Memín Pinguín redux (redux): El negrito

Interesting that just when we are having this discussion, this article should appear at Slate's sister site, The Root. The author ends by asking "Am I not allowed to be offended by Memin Penguin, or by Bimbo's "negrito" packaging, simply because I am not Mexican?"

A sporting side note (Memín Pinguín) Redux

Kent (via Monsivais) brings up an important point. That is, how can Monsivais (a mestizo[?] urban intellectual) possibly speak on behalf of the Afro-Mexicans caricatured on the stamps, which he does not to defend them, mind you, but to effectively pass over the question of their racial stereotyping, favoring to spar with the Cultural Imperialists to the north? Did anybody bother asking Afro-Mexicans if Jesse Jackson and company were reasonable in their criticisms? (Not that I am a fan of JJ...) Monsivais' downplaying this act of cultural insensitivity is itself a thinly veiled act of cultural imperialism against his fellow black mexicans, tamping down as it does the entire possibility of a marginalized population having a point of view in all of this. I would say that by downplaying this question, Monsivais reveals a mindset akin to that of the fair skinned, blond haired Mexican businessmen who say things like, "When WE were conquered by the Spanish..."

A sporting side note (Memín Pinguín)

For me what's interesting to watch is the reaction in the press, as Mike suggested. In El País I noticed a couple of headlines such as "No es un gesto de racismo"--carefully couched as a quotation--where the corresponsal definitely seems on the side of the players. I'd like to read reactions by Spanish intellectuals if anyone finds any.

The "ojos chinos" polemic, if we can call it that, reminds me of the Memín Pinguín debacle. A couple of years ago the Mexican postal system published commemorative stamps of the beloved comic book hero from the 50s, sparking protests from Jesse Jackson and very quickly a diplomatic complaint from the Bush White House to Fox's government. Mexican intellectuals cried cultural imperialism, adducing Speedy González as an analogous case--and no Mexican could be bothered to be offended by him, it was suggested. Carlos Monsiváis described the situation with a certain cynical ressentiment in El universal: "Ver para descreer. El gobierno estadounidense, en su infatigable tarea de policía moral del planeta, desembarca en las playas de la minucia y descubre el Ku-Klux-Klan filatélico." And he's about as far left as you can get and still be in the mainstream. He defends the Mexican postal service against charges of racism: "La razón de ser de la historieta son las peripecias de un grupo de niños, y el tema/problema central no es la epidermis 'tatemada' sino la clase social. A Memín se le chotea pero no se le excluye, y los chistes son los inevitables. ¿De dónde vienen, entonces, las acusaciones de 'racista'?" Memín has been in the news recently (July 10) because apparently Wallmart has decided to carry the entire, re-released series.

A sporting side note

Not to go off-topic here, but the Spanish men's basketball team has apparently gotten itself into hot water over a photo they posed for prior to the Olympics. The Spaniards don't understand all the fuss, which leads to the question: are "slant eyes" a nothing issue that has been blown out of proportion by a hyper-sensitive, politically-correct press, or is Spain hopelessly out of it regarding racial issues?

American NBA stars are suggesting that if Americans had been involved in this photo, there would have been consequences.

UPDATE: Eric’s comment in the comments section about the casual racial caracaturism (as opposed to outright racism) of Spain struck me as to the point. I have several Asterix books (which, admittedly, are originally French, but the Castilian translations are phenomenal) in which minorities are treated in a way that can only be described as Sambo-esque. For example, one of the pirates that figures in several of the books is an African, complete with big lips and Buckwheat enunciation (if you can imagine that in Spanish). I was once on the verge of loaning Asterix en Hispania to a student who wanted some reading material to practice on, when I remembered, just in time, that this African-American student would no doubt get offended, and rightfully so, at what she found inside.

So the reaction by the Spanish press is telling, but also thought-provoking.

It would never occur to an internationally sensitive American to be photographed that way for publication. Often, though, those inclined toward outrage choose to get outraged on behalf of those who are not outraged. El Pais takes this tack, when it implies that the scandal, if there is one, exists solely in the minds of the Anglo Saxon world (U.S., England, with a smattering of Germany). On the contrary, says the head of the Spanish Olympic Federation, "El gesto de posado es de cariño. Las mentes retorcidas que busquen polémica, los ingleses y los estadounidenses, más vale que se preocupen de los antecedentes de racismo en sus países." (In a separate article, El Pais quotes L.A. Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke, as follows: "Es un Laker que trabaja para una de las compañías más progresistas en una de las ciudades más globales del mundo . . . . Que los españoles actúen de forma racista en la privacidad de su pequeño país."

El Pais implies that China hasn’t complained, but takes care to note that the New York Post dug up a representative of the Chinese-American community, “según el cual el mensaje no es de deportividad y no es respetuoso con los asiáticos.”

A curious situation.

JJyA's mustacheod women, Foucault, and CBJ

She certainly is positioned at the center of the canvass and her face draws our eyes. And is it my imagination or does she have a shadow of a mustache? There is another woman in the picture, standing to the far right half out of the frame, arms crossed, who is sporting a distinct 'stache. Did Jiménez y Aranda like his women masculine, or is that just how they do it in Sevilla?

The gaze issue (a fellow graduate student of ours, whose name I won't mention, went so far as to refer to 'gaze theory' on one occasion) puts me in mind of Foucault's analysis of Las Meninas at the beginning of The Order of Things, which seems not entirely off-topic here. It includes such predictably Foucauldian passages as the following:

"we are looking at a picture in which the painter in turn is looking at us. A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another's glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross. And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by the gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself. But, inversely, the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvass, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles to infinity" (4-5).

Very Borgesian. Did anyone ever read this passage with CBJ? I'd be interested to have heard his take on it. I remember him riffing on the gaze and power in a reading of a passage from Montemayor's Diana in which a jealous shepherdess, hidden behind a bush, watched a shepherd compose a love song to another shepherdess further away, whom he in turn was watching. Talk about a 'loco ameno,' CBJ certainly was one.

Holy Week in Sevilla, continued

Kent raises some good questions about "Holy Week in Sevilla, 1879." I suppose the leaning lends a dynamism to the scene that would be lost if everyone were standing around all stoic-like.

I send my culture students to the Palace of the Legion of Honor for one of their class projects. The one element that my students have tended to comment on, but which Kent has neglected, is the young woman who is looking directly at the viewer. Is she distracted by the galán? Is she flirting with the viewer? She directs her gaze outward when all around her, including the viewer, have their gazes directed inward, toward the preacher, or toward the scene in general. Does she transgress by so boldly ignoring the preacher and flirting with the viewer? Do we transgress for flirting back?

Kilts in the News...

Will the US Postal Service be the impetus for bringing kilts into the mainstream? I sure hope so. Read on:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080807/ap_on_fe_st/odd_postal_kilt;_ylt=AnNUPibBgHEWLQeIalBMpKIDW7oF

What's with the leaning?

A couple of observations about "Holy Week in Sevilla, 1879. Bear with me, I got carried away:

A) More than a few of the figures seem to be leaning uncomfortably. The elderly sharp-faced gentleman in the red cloak caught my attention first, but then I noticed that not only was the friar also leaning forward towards the crowd (excusable in his case, since he's preaching), but the man in green near the center of the crowd is also leaning unnecessarily forward. That's an uncomfortable position for someone who wants to keep his eyes raised preacher-ward. The man in the violet coat is also leaning forward, a posture emphasized by the erect and comfortable appearance of the young man in black with the impressive cane. The don Juan figure at the center of the action (obvious seducing the girl while disregarding her midget-like dueña) has his foot out in the pose of what C.B.Johnson once called a "teapot actor," and is leaning slightly from the waist. So what's with the leaning? A simple ruse of the painter to lend dynamism to the scene, or a sudden onset of backaches?

B) Going back to the dandy in the middle, I'd just observe that the guy is putting the event to a different use than it is perhaps intended for. I've been perusing Michel de Certeau Practice of Everyday Life, a book that examines how the uses to which 'users' (i.e. consumers) put 'products' (Certeau, who was a Jesuit, even invokes Spanish Catholicism in the 'new' world as a product used by the Indians) often varies from what the 'producers' envisioned. Users, in Certeau's scheme, become producers of sorts: "users make innumerable and infinitesimal transformations of and within the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules" (xiv); he discerns "in these practices of appropriation indexes of the creativity that flourishes at the very point where practice ceases to have its own language"--in other words, when we stop talking about producing and start talking about using or consuming (xvii). Certeau sees a small kind of resistance in those deviations from the proper use of products. Might this be an example? While undoubtedly a 'user' of the religious spectacle, the dandy's putting it to his own use, and is thus a producer whose product is 'the practice of everyday life'--in this case, a seduction, something going back at least to the Arcipreste de Hita.

C) I think we might go so far as to consider the flirtatious socializing in a religious context a quotation in as much as it appears in practically every Comedia ever written (though I have to admit, I haven't read them all). In the costumbrista context, that quotation says something abut Spanishness, but what does it say?

D) Does anyone know anything about the procession? What's up with the lamps? I'd be curious to know more...

E) The indumentaria and hairstyles are fascinating. One doesn't often see depictions of the Spanish 19th century--at least I don't, not as often as I see photos from the English and US 19th century. I guess I haven't watched enough cinematic recreations of Galdos novels. While the women are pretty much what I'd expect, the men are dressed all different ways. The colors are remarkable, first of all. Was that usual? The more stylish gentlemen are holding toppers and canes, but they wear their hair in a small ponytail. Was this the style? (I just went hunting for a comparable picture from England, and though I didn't find anything exact, I found a painting by William Powell Frith that shows a middle-class crowd scene: Ramsgate Sands: 'Life at the Seaside', 1852-4. It is zoomable like Damian's picture. These are the kind of 19th-century people I'm more used to seeing.)

F) What's with the absence of rogues and urchins? One would expect at least one Lazarillo among the crowd, but all seem comparatively well-dressed and prosperous.

Fishing Philosophy

This scanned large, so you have to click on the image to see the whole thing. Imagine the kid with all the fish is me, and the kid with the flyrod is Kent. The cartoonist was H.T. Webster, who was popular in the early 20th century. Apparently the word "milquetoast" came from his character Caspar Milquetoast, who starred in a series of cartoons called "The Timid Soul."