Spanish Culture Ii

Course title: 'I is another'. Identity and Otherness in Spain from the Middle Ages to the present day

Starting from the centuries preceding the Conquest and the long imperialist hegemony exercised by Spain until the end of the 19th century, the aim is to overturn the gaze normally directed at otherness in order to identify the keys to redefining current European citizenship. We will therefore study the main dynamics of the relationship between the presumed Spanish "identity" and otherness from a diachronic perspective that goes up to the contemporary age.

The privileged object of this perspective will be the groups of people against whom the dynamics of subalternity exerted by the hegemonies that, from time to time, have alternated over the centuries of medieval and modern Spain has always been evident: members of religious confessions other than Christianity, victims of inquisitorial processes and the Spanish Inquisition itself, people and/or groups that have suffered gender inequalities, up to the situation of heterogeneity resulting from the current migration processes.

To this end, a number of important cultural productions from various disciplines will be analysed (especially literature and the visual arts, without neglecting musical and theatre expressions and those belonging to the broader cultural heritage, such as the Camino de Santiago or bullfight). They will be contextualized not only within a necessary historical profile, but also extending to the field of cultural studies and providing insights into the theoretical foundations of mediation that outline old and new areas for future mediators, emphasising the openness to other cultures and the potential for disciplinary hybridisation that mediation can offer.