Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and/or Iberian Cultures (395-0-2)

Topic

The Witch's Craft: from Medieval Iberia to the Bla

Instructors

Alexandra Cook

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-430: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

The Witch's Craft: from Medieval Iberia to the Black Atlantic

The Iberian Peninsula occupies a curious position in the history of witchcraft. On the one hand, Iberian judges and theologians expressed a certain skepticism towards the witch-hunting that rocked other parts of Europe. On the other, witch characters dominated the literary and theatrical scene, from Fernando de Rojas' Celestina to Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos' Filtra and even Cervantes' bruja Cañizares, all mega bestsellers and household names. To make things more complicated, as Iberian kingdoms expanded into overseas empires, it was witchcraft that was mobilized as one of the dominant lenses for understanding African and Native American spiritual and material realms. What unites Iberian witches and their colonial counterparts - as they appear on the page, onstage, and before the law - is a belief in the power of craft. Iberian witches were matchmakers, fortunetellers, and folk healers. Their services were in high demand even if their methods put them at odds with the law. In this course, we will read poems, novels, plays, and inquisition cases from the Iberian Peninsula and its overseas colonies. We will explore how certain ideas of personhood, embodiment, and desire (tied to social rank, poverty, age, gender, sexuality, race) were mobilized in the construction of the witch, always asking the question: what exactly is being criminalized in the name of witchcraft? Prerequisite: 1 course from SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

Registration Requirements

Prerequisite: 1 course from SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

Learning Objectives

-To learn how to read and interpret primary sources in Spanish (w/ optional Portuguese) from the medieval and early modern periods and acquire a basic understanding of textual transmission.
-Acquire a vocabulary in Spanish for talking about the law and its relationship to literature, theater and art.
-To acquire a basic understanding of early modern imperial and judicial institutions, and of the particular crime of witchcraft as an instrument of repression, social demarcation, and exclusion.
-To become comfortable with a vocabulary for thinking about questions of gender, sexuality, race, and religious differences in historical terms.
-Acquire a basic understanding of Iberian imperial, commercial, and missionary histories on the African continent, of precolonial African societies and how they shaped and were shaped by Iberian expansion, of Afro-diasporic histories on the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America.
-Improve speaking, listening, reading and writing abilities in Spanish, improve conversational fluidity and rhetorical skills.

Class Materials (Required)

Course materials will be available on Canvas.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Prerequisite: 1 course from SPANISH 250-0, SPANISH 251-0, SPANISH 260-0, or SPANISH 261-0