3 - Implementing Iberian Studies: Some Paradigmatic and Curricular Challenges

Summary

There is no question that one of the most promising developments in American Hispanism in the last decade has been the aspiration to transform the discipline of Hispanism – or at least that part of the discipline devoted to the so-called peninsular literature, traditionally and almost exclusively centered on Spain's cultural production in the Spanish language – into a wider field of Iberian studies, where the interliterary relations and internal complexity of multilingual culture in the Iberian peninsula become major objects of analysis and research. It is not my intention here to formulate a critique of Hispanism or a vindication of Iberian studies. I believe these two arguments have been by now sufficiently and eloquently articulated by others – most recently, by Joan Ramon Resina in Del hispanismo a los estudios ibéricos, which should be required reading for anybody interested in these issues. My aim here is rather – and more modestly – to offer a few thoughts on how to address the challenges presented by the shift from one paradigm to the other, and, more precisely, on how we – not only as scholars but also as teachers of future generations of scholars – can proceed to the kind of programmatic implementation that may realize the promise of Iberian studies.

The observations that follow are grounded on the basic assumption that Iberian studies cannot – and certainly should not – be understood merely as an expansion of Hispanism, but rather as an alternative paradigm that puts into question some of the foundational principles of Hispanism as a discipline. From this it follows that to transform a program of Spanish studies into one of Iberian studies is not simply a matter of adding new components (faculty, courses, languages, reading lists…) to the spectrum of elements we already have in our programs, but requires a thorough reconfiguration of the field of study – both the archive and the methodology. (I should also mention that, coming from the tradition of Hispanism, I am afraid most of my comment will be articulated in relation to the conditions of Spanish, not Portuguese, programs.)