Imagining Moorish Spain

(Spanish 540. History of the Ideas)

Javier Irigoyen-García
Monday, 4:30-6:50pm
FLB 1046
irigoyen@illinois.edu

This course explores how Islamic and Moorish Iberia has been imagined from the Middle Ages up to the present times, both in Spain and elsewhere. By covering different historical periods, from medieval Al-Andalus, the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609-1614, the Spanish colonial experience in North Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and contemporary debates about immigration, we will examine the evolution and historicity of representations of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula. The readings include literary texts by Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, José Cadalso, and Juan Goytisolo, among others, and will be supplemented with travel narratives, films, and touristic and journalistic documents. The discussions will be informed by theoretical works such as Edward Said’s Orientalism, Roberto Dainotto’s Europe (In Theory), and Anouar Majid’s We Are All Moors.

The course will be held in conjunction with the conference The Dialectics of Orientalism in Early Modern Europe, 1492-1700 (October 7-8, 2011), and with invited talks by William Childers and Susan Martin-Márquez in which students will have the opportunity to dialogue with scholars working on related topics.