Write a Cultural Analysis of a Spanish Building, Painting or Other Cultural Product You may choose any Spanish building or painting that we have discussed in class or that has been mentioned in course readings. If you would prefer to analyze another cultural product (a literary text, a piece of music, a sculpture, etc.), check with Dr. Nowak to get approval (you will certainly get approval for Cervantes’s Don Quixote of La Mancha). Do not choose a topic that was created in Mexico (we will approach Mexican culture in Composition 3), and try to keep your focus on Spain prior to 1700 (the periods we have studied in class, not modern times). Your task is to explain how the chosen cultural expression exemplifies or modifies or rejects (etc.) one of the key cultural phenomena that we have discussed in course readings or discussions. To find an appropriate building or painting to explore through your chosen cultural expression, review the unit vocabulary lists from the period in which your cultural expression was created. Find a general cultural phenomenon that we focused on for that period. For example, if you choose to talk about the 16th-17th century Counter-Reformation and its importance in Hispanic cultural history, you might choose a typical painting that exemplifies tenebrism and a ‘disillusioned’ moral message. If you would prefer to talk about the importance of Europeanization in shaping the later Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula, you could talk about a Gothic cathedral on the Way of Santiago de Compostela, and point out how such a style came to the Medieval Spains along that pilgrimage route as part of that long-standing cultural phenomenon. You can also find a topic by working the other way: choose a building or a painting that you liked a lot and understood well, and then figure out which of the cultural phenomena we have studied you could relate best to that building’s or that painting’s style and message. Other possible cultural phenomena you can use to analyze would include things like cultural syncretism (be specific about what is being blended!), Romanization, Arabization/ Europeanization (Convivencia vs. a Crusading spirit), Christian Triumphalism and anti-Semitism, Renaissance idealism (Neoplatonism) or Renaissance Humanism, seigneurial values, Hapsburg Imperialism, Baroque mass culture, etc. Format: In addition to the requirements mentioned above about font and margins, be sure to include the following standard practices in good academic writing: • Introduction with thesis statement in the first paragraph (eg.: “In the funerary sculpture known today as the Dama de Elche one finds clear evidence of a key process that shaped the cultures of ancient Iberia: syncretism.” The rest of the paper will explain this term and give specific details about the sculpture that exemplify its importance in the evolution of ancient Iberian cultures. You should include a clear definition of the cultural phenomenon that you are using to analyze the work in the first or second paragraph of the paper. By identifying its basic traits, you can organize the rest of your paper by showing how those traits appear in the work you are analyzing. Cultural Syncretism in pre-Roman Iberia: the case of the Dama de Elche”; “Convivencia and Christian Triumphalism in Santa Maria la Blanca”, etc. Some other items for your analysis (bolded items must be included): • Location and name of the work and its creator (if known) • Historical period when built, written or painted or otherwise created (use exact dates where possible, approximate dates if necessary and describe that period using terminology from readings or class discussions, i.e., During the Roman Conquest/ Roman Imperial period, the Visigothic kingdom of the 7th century, etc.)
