Iberian Political Cultures: Multilingual Approaches to 20th and 21st Century Spain (Level 5)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor: Professor Mari Paz Balibrea Enriquez
• Assessment: a 2000-word essay (40%) and two-hour in-class test (60%)

In this module we focus on the relation between culture and politics in Spain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 'Iberian' in the title recognises that, in the period under study, the country developed cultures in four languages: Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque, which we will study relationally, rather than separately. Within that framework, we will be looking at zones where political activity and cultural creation meet, exploring forms of relation between society, political power and artistic creation.

We will cover a wide range of works, including political discourses, essays, novels, poetry, film, music and TV programmes. All mandatory readings and texts will be available in English translation.

Indicative syllabus

• Modern Spain, a multilingual state
• Nationalism in the minoritarian nations of Spain: multiple imaginary communities
• The rural/urban divide in comparative perspective and from the twentieth to the twenty-first century
• Beyond centre and periphery: circuits of cultural exchange, transcontinental mobility and colonial entanglements in comparative perspective
• Art and political commitment: plurilingual cultural responses to the Spanish Civil War, anti-francoism and Basque and Catalan independence
• The politics of memory in comparative perspective: responses to remembering a past of conflict and violence in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Spanish contexts
• Redefining inside and outside: exile and migrant voices in comparative perspective across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

By the end of this module, you will:

• understand the relation of culture to politics in twentieth and twenty-first-century Spain, at a practical level
• have analysed specific political conditions and compared their different and similar effects across all the language cultures of the Spanish state
• have explored a number of case studies/cultural objects in depth
• be able to articulate comparisons, pointing to similarities and differences, between the different case studies/cultural objects studied, verbally and in writing.