Tradition and Modernity in the Spanish Avant-Garde: the Generation of 27



Examines the Generation of ’27 and the broader landscape of avant-garde culture in Spain during the interwar period (1919–1939). Moving beyond a strictly canonical approach, the course situates literary production within a dynamic, interdisciplinary field that includes visual arts, film, music, photography, popular print culture, and intellectual journals.

Core authors studied will include García Lorca, Salinas, Aleixandre, Guillén, Alberti, Cernuda, and Gerardo Diego, alongside key figures from other artistic domains such as Dalí and Buñuel. Crucially, the course also integrates the work and cultural interventions of Las sinsombrero—women artists and intellectuals (e.g., Mallo, Zambrano, Méndez, Chacel, etc.) whose contributions have historically been marginalized but are essential to a fuller understanding of the period’s avant-garde networks.

Through close reading and critical analysis, students will engage with major aesthetic movements and examine the interplay between artistic experimentation and the political and ideological tensions of the time, including the crisis of liberal modernity, the rise of mass culture, and the lead-up to the Spanish Civil War. The course aims to rethink the Generation of ’27 as a heterogeneous, transdisciplinary, and contested cultural formation.