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This brief paper focuses on a few methodological and practical challenges one faces when trying to introduce – or integrate – Jewish literature(s) into courses dedicated to modern, and especially early modern, Spanish literature. As a Hispanist, rather than a scholar of Jewish studies, my philological and pedagogic interests in Sephardic Jewry and its literary production are motivated first and foremost by the fact that they are yet another 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 literary canon. I deem introductory courses to be the most appropriate context to expose students to the existence of Jewish works and their complex relation to Spanish literature. These courses are often students’ first encounter with a literary canon both as an abstract – debatable – concept and as a corpus 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 students about the major questions and problems that would – hopefully – accompany them through their studies, and sometimes even beyond. At the same time, however, the time constraint imposed by the need to cover a relatively large amount of texts, approaches, and historical contexts, obliges us to modify our syllabi with caution. My argument is that in order to integrate Jewish literatures into the narrative of courses introducing students with early modern Spanish literature, one does not need to radically change course syllabi nor dismantle the very canon of Golden Age literature. 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, towards the story of Hebrew, Jewish, and converso literatures – three different concepts with which students must be acquainted. The same holds, of course, for the Muslim cultural and literary heritage of the Iberian Peninsula and for the underrepresented morisco literature of the sixteenth century. Given, however, the focus of the present volume on Jewish and modern literatures, I will limit myself to Jewish and converso literature.

On Integrating Jewish Literature(s) into the Teaching of Early Modern Spanish Literature: Preliminary Thoughts