Disseminating Jewish Literatures

Abstract

This brief paper focuses on af ew methodological and practical challenges one faces when trying to introduce -or integrate -Jewishl iterature(s) into courses dedicated to modern, and especiallyearlym odern, Spanish literature.A saHispanist,r ather thanascholaro fJ ewish studies,m yphilological and pedagogic interests in Sephardic Jewry and its literary production are motivated first and foremost by the fact that they are yetanother manifestation of Hispanic culture, which, alongside morisco culture and colonial culture, reflect on our concept of "Spanishness",and, consequently, on what we consider to be part of the Spanish literaryc anon.Id eem introductory courses to be the most appropriate context to expose studentst othe existenceo fJ ewishworks and their complex relation to Spanish literature. These coursesare often students' first encounter with aliterary canon both as an abstract -debatable -concept and as ac orpus of texts, which they are expected to be familiar with by the end of the course. Thus, such courses are an opportunity to think with the studentsa bout the major questions and problems thatwould -hopefully -accompanythem through their studies, and sometimes even beyond. At the samet ime, however,the time constraint imposed by the need to cover ar elatively large amounto ft exts,a pproaches, and historical contexts, obliges us to modify our syllabi with caution.My argument is that in order to integrate Jewishliteratures into the narrative of courses introducing studentsw ith earlym odern Spanish literature, one does not need to radicallychangecourse syllabi nor dismantle the very canon of Golden Agel iterature. Rather,one needs to introduce minimal changes in the list of works studied -i. e., add one Jewish work, or selections thereof -and gesture, as one teaches other canonical works,t owards the story of Hebrew,J ewish, and converso literatures -threed ifferent concepts with which studentsm ust be acquainted. The same holds, of course,for the Muslim culturaland literaryheritage of the Iberian Peninsula and for the underrepresented morisco literatureo ft he sixteenth century.G iven, however,t he focus of the present volume on Jewish and modernl iteratures,Iwill limit myself to Jewish and converso literature.OpenAccess.