SPAN40330 Identity, Sex & Sexuality in Post-Revolutionary Cuban Culture.

Academic Year 2022/2023

This module explores issues of identity, gender, sex and sexuality in post- revolutionary Cuba, through the analysis of different cultural objects: novels, films and poetry. These cultural artefacts will be read in the context of contemporary Cuban history and culture, drawing connection with national and international political events. Thus, positing sex and sexuality as the focal point, the module will engage with key concepts such as national identity, race and cultural hegemony. The module encourages students to compare different cultural objects, through a variety of genre and media, in order to establish conceptual links and recognise the main features of contemporary Cuban cultural production.

The course will be taught in Spanish. Students could decide if they want to write the assignments either in Spanish or in English.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss issues of gender, subjectivity and marginality and contextualise them in the contemporary Cuban scenario.
• Demonstrate a good general knowledge of post-revolutionary Cuban culture
• Recognise the main trends, topics and themes of contemporary Cuban cultural production (particularly in relation to issues of sex, sexuality, gender and identity definition).
• Demonstrate confidence in applying pertinent historical and socio-political information to their analysis of cultural products and understand how literature and cinema respond to social change in Cuba.
• Demonstrate understanding of and ability to compare and judge critically a given selection of literary texts and films, applying pertinent tools and techniques for the analysis of literature and cinema.
• Demonstrate familiarity with the main critical theories and concepts related to gender issues and demostrate confidence in applying these critical theories and concepts to the analysis of cultural objects.
• Demonstrate the ability to use pertinently appropriate secondary sources and bibliography in the analysis of the selected cultural objects.
• Demonstrate knowledge and good use of referencing ad quoting conventions for literary and film criticism
• Demonstrate a good degree of critical thinking, originality and analytical skills applied to the analysis of cultural objects.

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24
Specified Learning Activities

34
Autonomous Student Learning

52
Total

110
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Students are required to participate actively in class, and to work autonomously outside the classroom. Full engagement with material and tasks made accessible in Brightspace is expected every week. The course involves a substantial amount of preparation, reading and analysis of texts that the students need to do autonomously at home in order to come to class prepared for the discussion. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment: Close reading and commentary on an extract from the primary texts allocated for the first weeks Week 8 n/a Graded No

50
Essay: A comparative essay on two or more texts/films. (2,500 words) Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded No

50

Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Not yet recorded.

Primary texts
• Conducta impropia (dir.Néstor Almendros y Orlando Jiménez-Leal, 1984) (film/documentary)
• Senel Paz, El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo, (México City: Era, 1991) (short story).
• Fresa y chocolate (dir.Tomás Gutiérrez AleayJuan Carlos Tabío, 1993)
• Zoé Valdés, La nada cotidiana.(Barcelona: Emecé, 1995)
• Cosas que dejé en la Habana (dir. GutieŕrezAragoń, Manuel; Herrero, Gerardo; Paz, Senel, 2001)
• Nancy Morejón, Poemas.


List of suggested text/films for the comparative essay

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Trilogía sucia de La Habana, (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1998)
Leonardo Padura , Máscaras, (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1997).
Wendy Guerra, Todos se van, (Barcelona: Anagrama,2014).
Ena Lucía Portela, Cien botellas en una pared(Barcelona: RandomHouseMondadori. 2002).
Before Night Falls(dir.Julian Schnabel, 2000)
La película de Ana (dir. Daniel Díaz Torres, 2012)
Mirta Yáñez, El Bufalo Ciego y Otros Cuentos (La Habana: Unión. 2008). (shortstories)
7 Dias en La Habana(dir. Laurent Cantet, Benicio Del Toro, Julio Medem, Gaspar Noé, Elia Suleiman, Juan Carlos Tabío, Pablo Trapero, 2012)
Lista de Espera (dir.Juan Carlos Tabío, 2000)
Viva (dir.Paddy Breathnach, 2015)
Memorias del subdesarrollo (dir.Tomás Gutiérrez Alea,1968)
Gutiérrez, Pedro Juan, El Rey de La Habana (Barcelona: Anagarama, 1999)
Juan de los Muertos (dir.AlejandroBrugués, 2011)
Havana Blues ( dir.Benito Zambrano, 2005)
Una Noche (dir. Lucy Mulloy, 2012)

Reading list
Baron, Guy. 2011. Gender in Cuban cinema: from the modern to the postmodern. Oxford; New York: Peter Lang.
Behar, Ruth and Lucía M. Suâarez . 2008. The portable island : Cubans at home in the world.
PalgraveMacmillan.
Behar, Sonia. 2009. La caída del hombre nuevo: narrativa cubana del período especial, New York: Peter Lang.
Bejel, Emilio. “Antes que anochezca: autobiografía de un disidente cubano homosexual” Hispamérica, 25, N. 74 (Aug., 1996), pp. 29-45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20539913.pdf
Bejel, Emilio. 2001. Gay Cuban Nation.Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.
Braham, Persephone.2004. “Masking, Unmasking, and the Return to Signification”. Crimes Against the State, Crimes Against Persons: Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp.39-64.
Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, N. 4, pp. 519-531.
Candía Cáceres, Alexis. 2007. “Trilogía sucia de La Habana: Descarnado viaje por el anteparaíso” Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXXIII, Núm. 218, enero-marzo 2007, 51-67
Castro, Fidel. 1961. Palabras a los intelectuales, www.min.cult.cu/historia/palabras.doc.
Castro, Fidel. 1971. Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Primer Congreso Nacionalde Educación y Cultura.http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1962/esp/f180862e.html.
Davies, Catherine. 1997. A Place in the Sun? Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba, London: Zed Books Ltd.
De Ferrari, Guillermina. 2003. “AestheticsunderSiege: DirtyRealism and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's 'Trilogía sucia de La Habana'”. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, p. 23-43.
De Ferrari, Guillermina. 2007. “Embargoed Masculinities: Loyalty, Friendship and the Role of the Intellectual in the PostSoviet Cuban Novel”. Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 35, No. 69 (Jan. - Jun., 2007), pp. 82-103. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119989
Epps, Brad. 1995. “Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro, and the Politics of Homosexuality”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 6, N. 2, pp. 231-28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3704123.pdf
Fernández, Manuel. 2002. "La figura del mimo en Máscaras de Leonardo Padura Fuentes". https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo;jsessionid=F6AA4F4562FA0B260D15A694C960CF45.dialnet01?codigo=267235
http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v07/ fernandez.html
Fornet, Jorge, 2003. “La Narrativa Cubana entre la Utopía y el Desencanto”. Hispamérica: Revista de literatura, N. 95, pp. 3-20.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20540476?&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Foster, David William. 2003. Queer Issues in Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 50-60 Conductaimpropria and pp. 147-163 Fresa y Chocolate.
González, Eduardo. 2006. Cuba and the Tempest: Literature and Cinema in the Time of Diaspora. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Guevara,Ernesto. 1965. “Man and Socialism”(El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba). In The Cuban Reader. Durham & London: Duke University Press, pp.370-374.
Hall, Stuart. 1990. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. In Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence &Wishart, pp. 223-237.
Hall, Stuart, “Who needs identity?” in Hall, Stuart and Paul Du Gay (Eds.). 1996.Questions of Cultural Identity.London: Sage.
Hamilton, Carrie. 2012. Sexual revolutions in Cuba: passion, politics, and memory. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Kapcia, Antoni. 2000. Cuba: Island of Dreams. Oxford: Berg.
Kirk, John M. and Leonardo Padura Fuentes. 2001. Culture and the Cuban Revolution, Conversations in Havana. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Kroll, Juli. 2014. “The kiss of the the marble statue: Existentialism and Cuba’s ‘Special Period’ in La nada cotidiana by Zoé Valdés’. Hispanofilía ,172, pp. 187-205.
Lahr-Vivaz, Elena. 2010. “TimelessRhetoric, SpecialCircumstances: Sex and Symbol in "La nada cotidiana"”. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Invierno 2010), pp. 303-321
Lievesley, Geraldine. 2004. The Cuban Revolution: past, present, and future perspectives / Palgrave Macmillan.
Martínez Fernández, Luis. 2014.Revolutionary Cuba: a history. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.
McMahon, Wendy-Jayne. 2012, Dislocated identities: exile and the self as (m)other in the writing of Reinaldo Arenas.Peter Lang.
Montoya, Óscar E. 2012 “Leonardo Padura Fuentes: las máscaras estéticas Y sexuales de la Revolución”. HispanicReview, Vol. 80, No. 1 (WINTER 2012), pp. 107-125. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41472648?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Oakley, Helen. 2012. “Challenging the Cuban Revolutionary Crime Novel: Leonardo Padura Fuentes” in From Revolution to Migration: A Study of Contemporary Cuban and Cuban-American Crime Fiction. Oxford; New York: Peter Lang, pp. 31-74.
Ocasio Rafael, 2002. “Gays and the Cuban Revolution: The Case of Reinaldo Arenas”. Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 29, No. 2, Gender, Sexuality, and Same-Sex Desire in Latin America (Mar., 2002), pp. 78-98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185128?&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Ortiz, Fernando. 28/11/1939. “Los factores humanos de la cubanidad”, paperpresented at a conference at HavanaUniversity. Published in RevistaBimestre. Cubana. Vol. XLV, N.2, (March-April 1940), pp. 161-186. http://www.habanaelegante.com/Panoptico/Panoptico_Ortiz.html
Paz, Senel. 1995. Strawberry & chocolate; introduction, translations & interview by Peter Bush. Bloomsbury.
Pérez-Firmat,Gustavo. 1997. "A Willingness of the Heart: Cubanidad, Cubaneo, Cubanía”. Keynote Speech at Second Annual South Florida Symposium on Cuba, Cuban Studies Association; also in Cuban Studies Association Occasional Papers, paper 8, Vol. 2, N. 7. http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=csa
Pérez-Firmat, Gustavo. 1989. The Cuban Condition: Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilkinson, Stephen, 1999. “Homosexuality and the Repression of Intellectuals in Fresa y chocolate andMáscaras”. Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 18, N. 1, pp. 17-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3339472.pdf
Wilkinson, Stephen, 2006. Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture. Bern: Peter Lang AG.
Williams, Claudette. 2011. “Nancy Morejón y la historia de la mujer cubana: la otra cara de la moneda”. Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXXVII, Núm. 235, Abril-Junio 2011, 425-439