2012-2013 Service Learning Courses Hispanic Literature in
Translation—"Defiant Acts: Spanish and Latin American Theatre"
Isabel de Sena This course will explore the full spectrum of
theatre from the early modern period in Spain and colonial
Spanish America to contemporary theatre on both sides of the
Atlantic, including U.S. Latino playwrights. We will read across
periods to identify preoccupations and generic characteristics
as theatre evolves and moves between the street and the salon,
the college yard and the court, enclosed theatres and theatre
for the enclosed. In the process we will address a wide swath of
ideas, on gender, class, freedom and totalitarianism, the
boundaries of identity. Students will be introduced to some
basic concepts and figures ranging from Lope de Vega’s brilliant
articulation of “comedia” to Augusto Boal’s concept of an
engaged theatre, and investigate the work of FOMMA (Fortaleza de
la Mujer Maya) and similar contemporary collectives. And we will
read plays as plays, as literatur