Spain in Our Hearts: The Spanish Civil War in English and American Literature

Catalog description

This course will consider the unique place of the Spanish Civil War in English and American Literature. It was a conflict that many Brits and Americans saw as democracy's last stand against the spread of fascism, and the war attracted some of the 20th century's most vital poets, writers, and journalists - like Langston Hughes, George Orwell, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Capa, and Gerda Taro. Our location will allow us to not only read their work about the war, but also visit key sites: from the bunkers and pillboxes of Parque del Oeste, to the bullet-pocked buildings of Ciudad Universitaria, to the Museo Reina Sofía, which houses Picasso's monumental anti-war painting Guernica. We will spend most of our time out in the city and on the move, looking for the visible and invisible scars of the Guerra Civil that ravaged Spain from 1936-1939. Films, photographs, historical accounts, and influential translations of authors like Miguel Hernández, Gabriel García Lorca, and César Vallejo will supplement, and hopefully enrich, our main text: the city of Madrid.