This six-week seminar examines the often-overlooked contributions of women writers to the Bildungsroman—or novel of development—in the Hispanic world. Focusing on landmark works from Spain and Mexico, the course explores how female protagonists come of age amid the political upheavals of the Spanish Civil War and the Mexican Revolution, two defining crises that reshaped national identity, social life, and literary expression. We begin with Ana María Matute’s Primera memoria (The Island, 1959), which follows Matia, a young girl whose summer exile in Mallorca coincides with the outbreak of war. Matute reveals how conflict distorts the transition from adolescence to adulthood, forcing Matia to confront loyalty, loss, and the moral fractures of civil strife. Adelaida García Morales’ El Sur (The South, 1985) extends this exploration, showing how a father’s wartime past reverberates through family relationships and shapes his daughter’s sense of self. Turning to Mexico, the course contextualizes Ángeles Mastretta’s Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out, 1985) against Carlos Fuentes’s canonical La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962). While Fuentes exposes the Revolution’s lasting political legacy through a male-centered lens, Mastretta offers a corrective narrative—one that foregrounds women’s agency, challenges entrenched machismo, and reframes national history through a female coming-of-age story. Together, these texts illuminate how women writers reimagined the Bildungsroman to critique power, question inherited myths, and articulate new visions of justice and identity in the twentieth-century Hispanic world.
Summer Registration Opens
Monday, March 30, 2026 at 8 AM (AZ Time)
