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Full Year

Catalan Culture and Society 1: From 1900 to 1975 (ELCH08023)

Subject

European Languages and Cultures - Hispanic Studies

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

1

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Course Summary

This course will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the culture, politics and society in the Catalan speaking world from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of Franco's dictatorship. Catalan Culture will be explored through the study of literary texts, architecture, art, documentaries, music and film in their socio-political and historical context. This course will be taught in English.

Course Description

This course will provide an interdisciplinary survey of the culture and politics of the Catalan speaking world from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of Franco's dictatorship in the 1970s. The course will start by analysing the architecture of Antoni Gaudí and the modernist confrontation between the individual and society through a marginalised female voice in Caterina Albert's novel Solitude. The Noucentisme movement promoted a classicist approach to literature and the arts and established the foundations of contemporary nationalism in Catalonia. We will also study the challenge to tradition in the surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí and the futurist poetry of Joan Salvat-Papasseit. The political resistance to the Francoist dictatorship and exile will be explored through the working-class female experience in Mercè Rodoreda's In Diamond Square, the dissident 'Nova cançó' songwriters and singers, poetry and drama. Pere Calders' short stories blur the line between the real and the fantastic and questions pre-established societal norms. We will also examine the experimentalist nature of the School of Barcelona cinema, heavily influenced by pop art, and the neorealist cinema of Josep Maria Forn. Students will actively contribute to seminars and groups discussions, develop team work ethics and oral and written analytical skills.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

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