Spanish Courses
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- Winter 2024
- Fall 2023
- Spring 2023
Winter 2024▲
See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.
Elementary Spanish II
SPAN 112 - Yoza Mitsuishi, Katia Mariela (Katia)
Emphasis on listening comprehension and speaking, with gradual introduction of reading and writing.
Intermediate Spanish II
SPAN 162 - Bailey, Matthew J.
Intensive, concentrated course in review grammar and reading, with practice in listening and speaking.
Intermediate Spanish II
SPAN 162 - Barnett, Jeffrey C. (Jeff)
Intensive, concentrated course in review grammar and reading, with practice in listening and speaking.
Intermediate Spanish II
SPAN 162 - Reino, Jayne E.
Intensive, concentrated course in review grammar and reading, with practice in listening and speaking.
Intermediate Spanish II
SPAN 162 - Kamara, Mohamed
Intensive, concentrated course in review grammar and reading, with practice in listening and speaking.
Advanced Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 164 - Nery Mora, Aroldo
Emphasis on reading and composition skills, with extensive practice in speaking and listening through class discussion. Some grammar review.
Advanced Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 164 - Konstantinova, Iana
Emphasis on reading and composition skills, with extensive practice in speaking and listening through class discussion. Some grammar review.
Conversational Skills
SPAN 204 - Reyes, Antonio
Development of speaking skills for communication in Spanish. Acquisition and use of practical vocabulary and development of pronunciation skills.
Spanish Civilization and Culture
SPAN 211 - Mayock, Ellen C.
A survey of significant developments in Spanish civilization. The course addresses Spanish heritage and the present-day cultural patterns formed by its legacies. Readings, discussions and papers, primarily in Spanish, for further development of communication skills.
Introducción a la literatura española
SPAN 220 - Mayock, Ellen C.
Spanish literary masterpieces from the Poema del Cid through the present. Readings and discussions are primarily in Spanish.
Introducción a la literatura hispanoamericana
SPAN 240 - Nery Mora, Aroldo
Spanish-American literary masterpieces from colonial times through the present. Readings and discussions are primarily in Spanish.
Introducción al análisis literario
SPAN 275 - Michelson, Seth R.
Preparation for analysis of Hispanic literature. Composition develops style and method for analyzing prose, poetry, and drama in Spanish. Conversation continues vocabulary building and concentrates on discussion of literary themes.
Power and Ideology: (Critical) Discourse Perspectives
SPAN 308 - Reyes, Antonio
This course explores different theoretical approaches to account for the relationship between language and power, and therefore the relationship between language use and social processes. In particular, it observes how meaning is constructed and reconstructed in the discourse manifested in different settings and platforms ranging from social media to institutional and official communication (political discourse, media discourse, academic discourse, etc.).
Spanish-American Seminar: Extractivism through Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Production
SPAN 398D - Nery Mora, Aroldo
This course understands extractivism as a noun that refers to nature extraction as a mode of inhabiting the planet. Considering that signings of Trade Agreements in the latter part of the 20th Century relocate Latin America in the dynamics of a revamped extractivism, recent cultural production from the Southern Cone to Mexico considers the effects of the transition from agriculture to agribusiness in daily life, reflects on the impacts of the mining industry on the environment and society, and examines how communities face climate change. The course thus aims to historicize extractivism through cultural production (literature, film, photography, digital archives, podcasts) foregrounding the role of the environment in various types of discourse. The first part of the course will give students access to canonical and official texts from which we will discuss, among other points, the relation between the environment and texts that aim at projecting a national/continental identity, reflecting on the implications of considering the environment not only as a resource for economic wealth, but also as a resource for articulating a collective discourse. The second part deals with contemporary cultural production, focusing on agribusiness, mining, water shortages, and ecofeminism. We will collectively question conventional premises about the dynamics between the human and the non-human amid environmental struggles and will engage critically with the narrative strategies summoned by cultural products to portray the tensions between extractive economies and extractive practices. In addition, we will inquire about the collective imaginary these objects contribute to, how they discuss extractive policies, and what they say about 21st Century environmental activism. Class will be conducted in Spanish.
Spanish-American Seminar: Amazonian and Andean Indigenous Knowledge Today: A Cultural and Environmental Approach
SPAN 398E - Yoza Mitsuishi, Katia Mariela (Katia)
How are indigenous peoples from the Andes and the Amazon passing their knowledge today? How are their narratives and cosmologies related to current environmental concerns? This course looks at Amazonian and Andean indigenous peoples’ presence and environmental concerns in the region’s cultural manifestations. Indigenous communities offer models for reimagining our relationship with nature in the present and future. However, indigenous peoples’ rights are menaced by the State, and the continuity of their territories and cultures has been impacted by modernity, globalization, and environmental changes. In this context, they are developing new ways to transmit their knowledge in innovative formats and, in many cases, through collaborations with non-indigenous agents. These alliances result in a synergy that reaches broader global audiences that facilitate the outreach of indigenous peoples’ ecological knowledge. While exploring environmental and gender issues, students will develop analytical skills and critical thinking engaged with social justice. We will study and discuss Amazonian and Andean indigenous poetry, narratives, films, visual arts, and digital archives that deal with environmental topics and question the current political order, such as oralituras (indigenous poetry) Mapuche in Spanish, Dina Ananco’s poems in Wampis/Spanish, Amazonian textual narratives, films such as “El abrazo de la serpiente” and “Hija de la laguna,” Amazonarte urban murals, and paintings of Paris, London and Miami by Bora-Huitoto artist Brus Rubio. Class will be conducted in Spanish.
Fall 2023▲
See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.
Elementary Spanish I
SPAN 111 - Yoza Mitsuishi, Katia Mariela (Katia)
Emphasis on listening comprehension and speaking, with gradual introduction of reading and writing.
Intermediate Spanish I
SPAN 161 - Reyes, Antonio
Intensive, concentrated course in review grammar and reading, with practice in listening and speaking.
Intermediate Spanish I
SPAN 161 - Bailey, Matthew J.
Intensive, concentrated course in review grammar and reading, with practice in listening and speaking.
Advanced Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 164 - Konstantinova, Iana
Emphasis on reading and composition skills, with extensive practice in speaking and listening through class discussion. Some grammar review.
Advanced Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 164 - Nery Mora, Aroldo
Emphasis on reading and composition skills, with extensive practice in speaking and listening through class discussion. Some grammar review.
Advanced Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 164 - Mayock, Ellen C.
Emphasis on reading and composition skills, with extensive practice in speaking and listening through class discussion. Some grammar review.
Conversational Skills
SPAN 204 - Michelson, Seth R.
Development of speaking skills for communication in Spanish. Acquisition and use of practical vocabulary and development of pronunciation skills.
Spanish-American Civilization and Culture
SPAN 212 - Reino, Jayne E.
A survey of significant developments in Spanish-American civilizations. The course addresses Spanish-American heritage and the present-day cultural patterns formed by its legacies. Readings, discussions and papers primarily in Spanish for further development of communication skills.
Introducción a la literatura española
SPAN 220 - Mayock, Ellen C.
Spanish literary masterpieces from the Poema del Cid through the present. Readings and discussions are primarily in Spanish.
Introducción a la literatura hispanoamericana
SPAN 240 - Yoza Mitsuishi, Katia Mariela (Katia)
Spanish-American literary masterpieces from colonial times through the present. Readings and discussions are primarily in Spanish.
Introducción al análisis literario
SPAN 275 - Botta, Monica B.
Preparation for analysis of Hispanic literature. Composition develops style and method for analyzing prose, poetry, and drama in Spanish. Conversation continues vocabulary building and concentrates on discussion of literary themes.
Ornament of the World: Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Early Iberia
SPAN 312 - Bailey, Matthew J.
Muslims, Jews, and Christians co-existed for eight hundred years on the Iberian Peninsula. This course examines these diverse cultures through texts (literary, historical, religious, and philosophical) from the eleventh century to the expulsion of Jews in 1492. The objective of the course is to glean from the remnants of the experience of their co-existence insights into the distinctive characteristics of each culture and how they understood and influenced each other.
Poetry and Power
SPAN 347 - Michelson, Seth R.
This is a course about reading. With tremendous care, and taking nothing for granted, we will read Spanish-American poetry on power and violence as a way of engaging and investigating the multifaceted and layered historiographies of the region. To intensify our reading, we also will “read” a diversity of pertinent cultural production, including paintings, murals, and music. Through these self-conscious acts of reading—that is, acts of identifying, evaluating, and critiquing form as much as content—we will enhance our ability to analyze and debate many different ways of defining power in the Americas from within, without, and in liminal zones. In this manner we will trace through poetry the complexities and tensions of transcultural, transnational, and transhistorical legacies of violence, all the while cultivating our abilities to read, write, speak, and listen rigorously in Spanish. This is also to say that our process will be thoroughly collaborative and interactive as we endeavor to discover the potentiality and even the hope in our difficult and sometimes even despairing project. Recurring motifs throughout the term will include sexism, racism, classism, and fascism, and each will be framed and examined by critical theory from leading scholars from the Americas and beyond. Students will leave the course feeling more confident and articulate in addressing through poetry many of our most urgent ideas about literatures, cultures, and historiographies of power and violence.
Spanish-American Theater: 20th Century to the Present
SPAN 354 - Botta, Monica B.
This course provides a panoramic view of the theatrical traditions that have emerged in Spanish-American theater, beginning with the independent theater movement of the 1930s and concluding with the most recent trends in theatrical practices. In particular, the plays are studied as vehicles that reveal how theater practitioners engaged with their historical and cultural contexts in aesthetic terms. Therefore, the focus is also on the plays as performative texts. In order to develop this objective, students are expected to read, discuss, and analyze the dramatic texts, as well as perform scenes from the plays. This course includes works from playwrights such us Arlt, Triana, Diaz, Gambaro, Carballido, Castellanos, and Berman, among others. In addition, we study the political and aesthetic theories of theater developed by Enrique Buenaventura and Augusto Boal.
Spring 2023▲
See complete information about these courses in the course offerings database. For more information about a specific course, including course type, schedule and location, click on its title.
Seville and the Foundations of Spanish Civilization
SPAN 213 - Barnett, Jeffrey C. (Jeff)
This course takes place in Seville, Spain, and uses this privileged location to study the cultures of Foundational Spain. Primary focus is on the medieval and Renaissance periods, from the troubled co-existence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians to the Christian reconquest and subsequent Empire. Significant cultural currents are examined through texts (literary, historical, and religious), direct contact with art and architecture through site visits, and with hands-on exposure to early and contemporary cuisine. Students live in homestays, attend daily classes, participate in site visits, and engage with the local culture independently and through planned activities.