Elon joined colleges and universities across the country in the Marathon Reading of “Los empeños de una casa” as a part of the third annual “I am Quixote” Festival.
By Sarah Collins ’18
Advanced Spanish students came together April 17 to participate in a Marathon Reading of the famous Spanish text “Los empeños de una casa” by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.
Associate Professor of Spanish Mina García Soormally has served as Elon’s faculty director of the Marathon Reading for the past three years. She values this event as a way to take learning into a new environment.
“As a way to make my class material more attractive, I try to involve my students as much as possible with Spanish activities happening outside the classroom, both to show them the uses of Spanish out there, and to emphasize the connection of the language and literature with a culture and a way of life,” says García Soormally. “Some of these activities involve participating in marathon readings and attending SURF presentations that have to do with Hispanic issues. All of these events manage to draw students into the class material, increasing their cultural competency exponentially and giving them opportunities beyond the classroom to use their Spanish.”
This year’s Marathon Reading marks the first year the featured text was written by a female author. “This year we are choosing to celebrate a the life and works of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a remarkable woman that fought the limitations of her time and prevailed, as an author but also as a woman in 17th century Mexico,” says García Sormally. “Sor Juana’s enduring importance and literary success are partly attributable to her mastery of the full range of poetic forms and themes of the Spanish Golden Age, and her writings display inventiveness, wit and a wide range of knowledge.”
“Los empeños de una casa,” or “Pawns of a House,” is a drama about the perils of romantic love. Students in García Soormally’s class enjoyed the theatrics of the piece, employing a range of dramatic voices as they read the script aloud. “Juana employed all of the poetic models of her day, including sonnets and romances, and she drew on wide-ranging—secular and nonsecular—sources,” says García Soormally. “Unlimited by genre, she also wrote dramatic, comedic and scholarly works, especially unusual for a nun and even more unusual for a woman in that era.”
Those interested in learning more about the marathon reading can visit https://iamquixote.com/.