Introduction to spoken and written Spanish; stress on interactive approach. Extensive and varied activities, including oral presentations, cultural readings and recordings, and video program.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Arraiza Rivera, Staff
Typical Periods Offered: Summer; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Introduction to spoken and written Spanish; stress on interactive approach. Extensive and varied activities, including oral presentations, cultural readings and recordings, and video program.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: SPAN 101 or placement by the department.
Instructor: Arraiza Rivera, Staff
Typical Periods Offered: Summer; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
Intensive review of all language skills and introduction to the art, literature, and cultures of Spain and Latin America. Emphasis on oral and written expression and critical analysis.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 16
Prerequisites: SPAN 102, or placement by the department.
Instructor: Bassa Vanrell, Selimovic, Staff
Typical Periods Offered: Summer; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Intensive review of all language skills and introduction to the art, literature, and cultures of Spain and Latin America. Emphasis on oral and written expression and critical analysis.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 16
Prerequisites: SPAN 201 or placement by the department.
Instructor: Bassa Vanrell, Selimovic, Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Summer; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
Practice in oral and written Spanish at the advanced level. Designed to enhance communicative competence, this course will provide an intensive review of advanced grammatical structures within cultural contexts of the Spanish-speaking world. Each section will explore a specific theme through the examination of Hispanic literary texts and the arts, as well as other cultural phenomena. Varied oral interactions, technological applications, and critical writing will be stressed.
Topics for Fall 2024:
Culture, Politics, and Creativity; Instructor: Selimovic
This course studies cultural expressions as invigorating glimpses into socio-political realities of Latin America and Spain. We will explore how writers, film directors, poets, and artists respond to social demands, political changes, and cultural shifts in particular times, places, and communities. Selected works engage students with diverse cultural repertoires of the Hispanic world in interdisciplinary ways. We will spotlight the relationship between political violence and literature in Argentina and Chile; displacement and photography in Spain and Uruguay; domestic workers and film in Mexico and Peru; education and artistic activism in El Salvador and Nicaragua; and exile and poetry in Cuba and Paraguay.
Art with a Cause in Modern Spain; Instructor: Ramos
Artists in Spain have a long tradition of confronting violence and injustice as well as raising awareness, about pressing issues from the effect of wars on civilians to domestic abuse. This class will explore how modern Spanish artists have used their work to comment on and change minds about the thorniest matters of their time. Our analysis will range through many different forms of art, including painting, performance art, photography, graphic novels, film, and popular music.
Topics for Spring 2025:
The Marvelous in Latin American Literature and Culture; Instructor: Guzauskyte
This course explores the intersections between fantasy and reality in literary texts, art, film, cultural events, and digital content from various Spanish-speaking countries (Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, and Spain). Texts and materials to be studied range from pre-Hispanic indigenous myth and art, to works from colonial and contemporary periods. We will study how societies and individual authors have explored fantasy and imagination in their various forms including myth, fable, magic, superstition, miracle, hallucination, magic realism, and the fantastic. Course materials will include readings, works of art, film, and music. Focus on class discussions, public speaking, and student writing, both critical and creative. Ann E. Maurer '51 Speaking Intensive Course.
Biodiversity and the Arts; Instructor: Staff
This course explores the representation of biological diversity in literature written in Spanish, and in other forms of cultural expression. Through creative writing exercises, short essays, translations, and oral presentations, students will analyze both the conservation efforts to preserve the diversity of plants, animals and ecosystems by cultures of the Americas, and how biological diversity has been central to that region. Course materials will include readings, artwork, movies, and music.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: SPAN 201, SPAN 202 or placement by the Department.
Instructor: Guzauskyte, Ramos, Selimovic, Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Notes:
This course is for Heritage Learners of Spanish. Heritage Speakers have learned Spanish primarily as an immersion experience at home. Participants will improve their written and oral Spanish through the examination of cultural assumptions and values. Content is based on a variety of topics such as legends, differing historical perspectives, traditions, and others. The review of language structures and grammar will emerge from students’ language levels. Participants will read novels, short stories, plays, and essays. Students will examine multimedia illustrating experiences of Latinos/Hispanics in the United States. By the end of the semester, students will gain an understanding of how their culture influences language learning and how language learning affects their perspective of Latino/Hispanic culture. The course is conducted entirely in Spanish.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: For students who have learned Spanish primarily through an immersion experience abroad or at home.
Instructor: Arraiza Rivera
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
The legacy of Spain in the US is a complicated one. On the one hand, Spanish conquest and colonization had devastating effects on indigenous peoples of North America. On the other, Spain has had an extensive and lasting influence on American and Hispanic cultures, especially in the areas of language, religion, art, and architecture. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this class will explore the space that Spain has occupied in shaping America, from the early 16th century to today. It will also look ahead, as we try to envision what impact Spain will have on the US in the years to come. In order to understand the past, assess the present, and imagine the future, we will read chronicles from early Spanish explorers of North America, investigate Mission/Spanish revival architecture and painting, examine the testimonies of American travelers to Spain, and learn about social justice interventions of contemporary indigenous activists, including attacks on statues linked to colonialism and slavery in the United States depicting prominent figures from Spain’s past.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: This course is also offered at the 300 level as SPAN 344 with additional assignments.
This class integrates the reading, studying and performing of some of the most important plays in Spanish Theatre. Students will learn about the Spanish theatrical tradition while developing their language and critical skills. Taught in Spanish.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: SPAN 241. Not open to students who have taken THST 246.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The course explores the mythological, literary, artistic, and cultural landscapes of the Andes spanning the ancient civilizations (including the Nazca, Moche, and Inca) and throughout the colonial period, prior to the proclamation of Independence of the countries in the region. Emphasis on Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, including their Afro-Andean and immigrant communities. Authors and texts will include pre-Hispanic oral traditions in Quechua, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Guamán Poma de Ayala, Catalina de Erauso, Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón, Ricardo Palma, Clorinda Matto de Turner, as well as select postcolonial writers and theorists.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Guzauskyte
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Few cities are as imbued with history, culture and myth as is Cordoba in the south of Spain. As of 2018 it can boast even more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other city in the world. As “City of Three Cultures” it witnessed the convergence over centuries of the three main monotheistic religions, a commingling that, while unique in medieval civilization, was rarely completely harmonious and may have oftentimes been overly idealized. Print materials (including philosophical and literary production), recent educational media (including digital architectural reconstructions) and samples of dance and music will offer students the opportunity to see how cultural cross pollination resulted in significant and lasting contributions to the world.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: MER 248
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Vega
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor.
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
This course explores the construction of the child and adolescent voices in Argentine contemporary fiction and film. We will consider how young protagonists’ curiosities, trepidations, and transgressions in adult-regimented worlds have critical implications for class, gender, sexual and racial politics. Our discussions will center on diverse portrayals of children and adolescents as navigators of their settings, which range from shantytowns to country clubs, rural provinces to urban centers, homeless shelters to sheltered existences. Short stories, films, novels, and flash fiction by Ariel Magnus, Lucrecia Martel, Mariana Enríquez, Daniela Seggiaro, Paula Markovitch, Andrés Neuman, and Agustina Bazterrica will be considered.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Selimovic
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
A study of selected works, creators and historical events that shaped Spain's multiethnic and linguistically diverse identity from the 10th to the 17th centuries. Authors and topics explored in this class include El Cantar de Mío Cid, Alfonso X el Sabio and the Spain of the "three cultures", the poetry of Hebrew and Arabic Spain, the Reconquista, and the writing of American Chronicles, as well as some examples of the work of Garcilaso de la Vega, Fray Luis de León, Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Vega
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
A survey of the genre with in-depth analysis of works in Spanish by foundational writers Ricardo Palma, Rubén Darío, and Horacio Quiroga, as well as twentieth-century masters Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez, among others. Special attention to voices that have emerged since 2000, such as Mayra Santos (Puerto Rico), Rita Indiana Hernández (Dominican Republic), Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia), and Roberto Bolaño (Chile/Mexico). Contemporary texts published in indigenous languages will be read in Spanish translation. We will explore themes of identity, memory, class, freedom, creative expression, myth-making, violence, mass media, race, education, women, children, and urban and rural life.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
A study of the struggle for self-expression in Franco's Spain and the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Special attention will be devoted to the literature and the cinema of the Civil War and exile, and to contemporary renegotiations of the memory of the war. The materials will include recent explorations of the effects of war trauma in literature, cinema and politics. Authors include Mercè Rodoreda, Carmen Laforet, Manuel Rivas, Alberto Méndez, Adelaida García Morales, and Víctor Erice.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 16
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
A study of the major twentieth-century poets of Latin America, focusing on literary movements and aesthetic representation. Poets to be examined include Vicente Huidobro, Gabriela Mistral, Octavio Paz, and César Vallejo.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Since the early 1970s, women in Latin America have been at the forefront of social justice initiatives and have held important leadership positions. Artistic expression has both informed and driven much of this activist engagement. Literature, film, textile arts, and painting are only a few dimensions of this dual agenda of artistic expression and ensuring human rights. The course will examine key movements in Latin America-from the rejection of dictatorial regimes to a call for greater indigenous rights-paying particular attention to the role of women, both as individuals and as a group, in these movements.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will explore the history of Latin American cinema, from the early 1960s to the present. Different forms of cinematic expression will be explored: narrative film, the documentary, the cinema of exile, and others. Issues of national culture and identity, as well as cultural exchanges of films between Latin America and abroad, will be addressed. In addition to the films themselves, students will be required to read selected works on film criticism and several literary texts that have been made into films. Films to be examined may include Angelitos negros, México:Agua para chocolate, Rojo amanecer, Novia que te vea, Roma; Argentina: Camila, Kamchatka, La historia oficial; Chile: El último traje, Machuca, Una mujer fantástica: El Salvador: Voces inocentes: Colombia: María llena de gracia, Cuba: Memorias del subdesarrollo, Azúcar amarga, Miel para Oshún. Documentary films may include Reportero, Cartas del otro lado, 911, Pedro Pan: Del otro lado del cristal, 90 Millas; La República Dominicana: Trópico de la sangre.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
How did authors find new ways to think about the self in the Iberian Peninsula? How do their lives and works relate to the transformation of Spanish and Portuguese into global languages? This course constitutes an introduction to the literary and cultural production of Spain and Portugal from 1492 to 1681. We will discuss why the works of this period are considered "classics" and have an enduring impact in the Hispanic world. Analysis of key texts will be accompanied by samples of painting and music. Topics include: the importance of concepts such as love and honor in the private and public spheres, the role of ethnic identities and political processes in the representation of the Iberian modern subject, women writers, and self-representation through writing.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: PORT 266
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Arraiza-Rivera
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
The role of the Latin American writer as witness and voice for the persecuted. Through key works of poetry and prose from the 1970s to the present, we will explore the ways in which literature depicts issues such as censorship and self-censorship; the writer as journalist; disappearances; exile; testimonial writing; gender and human rights; and testimonial narratives. The works of Benedetti, Timmerman, Alegría, and others will be studied.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; REP - Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Not open to students who have taken SPAN 261.
An introduction to the major literary, historical, artistic and cultural traditions of the Caribbean. Attention will focus on the Spanish-speaking island countries: Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. We will discuss such topics as slavery, independence, nation-building, race, gender, dictatorship, and immigration. We will use a variety of texts, films and artworks. Authors may include Juan Francisco Manzano, José Martí, Julia de Burgos, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén, Nancy Morejón, Luis Palés Matos, Mayra Santos Febres and Junot Díaz.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course provides a sociolinguistic overview of Spanish in the US by examining concepts such as language ideologies, language identity, language attitudes, language maintenance and shift, the politics of language, language contact, bilingualism, the relationship of language to Latinx identities, and how language ideologies and policies reflect and shape societal views of Spanish and its speakers, race, identity, and education. This course will provide a descriptive, historical and linguistic overview of the different Spanish-English bilingual communities in the US. For instance, we will examine the use and representation of Spanish and misconceptions about Spanish varieties and Latinx communities in a wide array of contexts, including everyday speech, contemporary culture, media and the portrayal in the media, education, and policy. Reading selections will be in Spanish (for the most part) and English. Homework, projects, exams and class discussions will be strictly in Spanish.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: LING 270
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or SPAN 242 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
A multidisciplinary introduction to contemporary Spain’s life and culture. Literary, historical, artistic, and anthropological readings will inform our understanding of recurrent themes in the construction and questioning of Spanish national identity and culture: Spain as a nexus of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thought; centripetal vs. centrifugal forces; religion and class; long-term economic and cultural consequences of global empire; dictatorship and democracy. Attention will be paid to Portugal and to the diversity of languages and cultures of the Iberian Peninsula.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
An introduction to the multiple elements constituting Latin American culture. An examination of the principal characteristics of Spanish colonialism and Creole nationalism will inform our general understanding of Latin American culture today. Readings and class discussions will cover such topics as military and spiritual conquest, the Indian and African contributions, the emergence of criollo and mestizo discourses, and gender and race relations. Readings will include the works of Latin American writers, filmmakers, and historians.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: LAST 273
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or SPAN 242 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Guzauskyte
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
An examination of the principal characteristics of the search for identity and independence of the emerging Latin American nations as expressed in literary, historical, and anthropological writing. We will examine the experience of each of four distinct regions: Mexico and Central America, the Caribbean, the Andean countries, and the Southern Cone. Readings will include the works of contemporary Latin American writers, filmmakers, and historians. Special attention will be given to the relationship between social issues and the evolution of literary form.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: LAST 275
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or SPAN 242 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Hagimoto, Selimovic
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will explore the vibrant literary culture of Jewish women writers of Latin America from the 1920s to the present. We will examine selected works by these authors, daughters of immigrants, whose various literary genres reveal the struggle with issues of identity, acculturation, and diasporic imagination. Writers include Alicia Steimberg of Argentina, Clarice Lispector of Brazil, and Margo Glantz of Mexico, as well as a new generation of writers who explore issues of multiculturalism and ethnicity.
This course is taught in Spanish.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: JWST 277
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or SPAN 242 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken JWST 377/SPAN 377.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: This course is also offered at the 300-level as JWST 377/SPAN 377.
This course offers an introduction to the works of Spanish women authors ranging from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth. Topics include: the links between gender constructs and literary genres, representations of women's voices in early poetry, novels, letters and autobiography, rhetorical and artistic self-fashioning, and the analysis of women's access to writing, education, and socio-political institutions in early modern Spain. Texts by, among others, Teresa de Cartagena, Florencia Pinar, Teresa of Ávila, María de Zayas, Ana Caro, Hipólita de Narváez, Sor María de Ágreda and Sor Marcela de san Félix along artworks by Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana will be read and discussed.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5); or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Arraiza-Rivera
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
In this interdisciplinary course, students will acquire a deep understanding of the colonial Latin American period, while learning to identify and interpret textiles, clothing items, and fashion movements. Focus on female garb in the 17th and 18th centuries Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico. Topics will include dress as a form of language, representation, and performance; morality, and sexuality; dress and politics. Materials will include primary and secondary sources; illustrations of clothing in printed and manuscript texts; textiles and clothing in museums, Special Collections, and digital collections; films and webcasts; and representations of clothing in various art forms and digital sources. Students will undertake a digital humanities project. Museum and Wellesley College Special Collections.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241, or placement by the department.
Instructor: Guzauskyte
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Beginning with Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin-American Nobel Laureate for Literature, this course focuses on the leading women poets in both Spain and the Americas. Central to this production are themes of human rights and social justice, gender, and the expression of love and desire. While the class will examine connections between women poets on both sides of the Atlantic, differences in terms of negotiating a male-dominated publication infrastructure will be examined. Other than Mistral, poets will include Concha Méndez, Rosa Chacel, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Clara Janés, Cristina Peri Rossi, Gloria Fuertes, and from the Americas, Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, Idea Villarino, Violeta Parra and others.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: LAST 287
Prerequisites: Students who have completed Spanish 241 and Spanish 242, or AP 5, or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The course focuses on women’s literary expression and the roles women played in the societies of pre-Hispanic and colonial Latin America, ranging from serving as concubines and slaves to being recognized as key figures of leadership and prominent literary voices. The course will integrate writing by women with the ways in which women are depicted in visual and material culture, historical sources, and film. Authors to be studied may include Anacaona, la Malinche, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, among others. In Spanish.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Guzauskyte
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
An examination of the interweaving relationship between race and gender in the framework of nation building during Latin America's era of independence. Through literary, cultural, and historical studies, we will explore how the ideological trends that defined the fundamental characteristics of the nineteenth century continue to shape Latin American identities today. A wide range of literary genres will be discussed (essays, novels, poems, and chronicles), as well as other cultural products, such as art, music, and film. Topics covered include wars of independence, art and nationalism, anti-imperialism, the role of gender and sexuality in the national imagination, slavery and violence, and popular culture (e.g. folkloric music, dance, visual arts). Readings may cover texts by Simón Bolívar, Andrés Bello, Domingo F. Sarmiento, José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Clorinda Matto de Turner, and José de Alencar.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Open to students who have completed SPAN 241 or equivalent (AP 5) or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Hagimoto
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course focuses on the tensions between affect and emotions in contemporary Latin American films and literary texts as terrains of sociopolitical and cultural critique. Focus on the works of Quiroga, Borges, Cortázar, Enríquez, Zambra, Bizzio, Valenzuela, Eltit, Valdés, Jodorowsky, Puenzo, Martel, Llosa, and Markovitch.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: SPAN 241 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Selimovic
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course focuses on a burst of creative expression across different cinematic genres in Argentina from 1995 to the present. Renowned as the New Argentine Cinema (NAC), which continues to regenerate imaginatively, this aesthetic tendency has evolved and propagated its founders’ inimitable artistic and thematic explorations in unexpected ways. We will illuminate distinctive contributions to the formation and evolution of NAC, including those of Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Albertina Carri, Adrián Caetano, Martín Rejtman, and Pablo Trapero.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to junior and senior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Selimovic
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Ann E. Maurer '51 Speaking Intensive Course.
A close reading of the Quixote with particular emphasis on Cervantes' invention of the novel form: creation of character, comic genius, hero versus anti-hero, levels of reality and fantasy, and history versus fiction.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Arraiza-Rivera
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course focuses on fundamental films by prominent contemporary Argentine women filmmakers. We examine these directors’ influence on the New Argentine Cinema (NAC) and explore their diverse aesthetic contributions to the country’s film industry. Interdisciplinary readings about the country’s socio-political and cultural changes from 1995 onwards guide our discussions, explorations, and analyses. Films by Albertina Carri, Lucrecia Martel, Julia Solomonoff, Paula Markovitch, María Victoria Menis, Gabriela David, and Lucía Puenzo.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to junior and senior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Selimovic
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
A study of U.S. Hispanic writers of the Southwest and East Coast from the Spanish colonial period to the present. Political, social, racial, and intellectual contexts of their times and shared inheritance will be explored. Consideration of the literary origins and methods of their craft. Authors may include: Cabeza de Vaca, Gaspar de Villagrá, José Villarreal, Lorna Dee Cervantes, José Martí, Uva Clavijo, Pedro Juan Soto, Miguel Algarín, and Edward Rivera.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
A study of the cultural notions of clothing and nakedness in colonial Latin America, and their uses in construing ideas of superiority, social and economic status, gender, race, and power during the conquest and the colonial period. The role of clothing in indigenous cultures pre- and post- conquest will also be studied throughout the semester. We will examine a broad range of representations of clothing, costume, veiling, textiles, as well as perceived nakedness, uses of body paint and body mutilation, jewelry and adornments, among other expressions of the culture of clothing in both literary and historical written accounts (chronicles, letters, historias, poetry, treatises, and novels), oral traditions (such as myth and song in Aztec, Maya, Inca, and other indigenous cultures), and visual culture (codices, sculpture, religious paintings, portraiture).
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Guzauskyte
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Analysis of how masculinity is constructed in key Spanish canonical texts of the period. Together with the “Don Juan” and the “rogue/trickster” (“el pícaro”)—two literary archetypes bequeathed by Spain to the world, models for defining aspects of manhood will include the battling hero, the saint, the villain, the “average guy,” and the philosopher. Emphasis will be placed on how these figures interact with and defined by interaction with women and how the un-enunciated queer is ever present. Together with examining how masculinity reflects notions of honor, virility, social order, religion, and misogyny, the course will consider medical and biological models of manhood and how those framed gender.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: SPAN 241 or higher, or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Vega
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This seminar examines Cuban literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present. As a tropical island in the Caribbean ruled by numerous imperial powers and domestic tyrants, Cuba has often been perceived as a paradise and/or a prison. We will study both the literal and metaphorical meanings of these two symbols through various modes of cultural expression, including prose, poetry, art, music, and film. We will discuss such topics as colonialism, slavery, the independence movement, the Cuban Revolution, socialism, race and gender, immigration, and the changing relationship between Cuba and the United States. Readings may include texts by Juan Franciscano Manzano, José Martí, Cristina García, Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, José Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas, Yoani Sanchéz, and Sonia Rivera-Valdés.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Hagimoto
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This course explores how early modern Spanish literature and other forms of cultural production (such as music, paintings and engravings), depict peoples and places perceived as foreign or other in relation to Spain's political dimension as a world power in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. Places like Italy and England or social groups such as Spain's moriscos appear in Golden Age literature in complex, often surprising ways. We will analyze the historical and cultural processes that inform such representations and also read how is Spain, and its dwellers, represented in contrast to people viewed as culturally and ethnically different in major works. Novels by Cervantes and María Zayas, plays by Calderón de la Barca, and poetry by Garcilaso and Camões will be discussed.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Crosslisted Courses: PORT 310
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Arraiza-Rivera
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
An in-depth inquiry into the writings, life, and legacy of the salient Mexican woman poet, dramatist, scholar, and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651?-1695), known for her precocious literary talent, mastery of the poetic forms of the Hispanic Baroque, thirst for knowledge, early defense of women’s learning, and dramatic life. Students will be introduced to interdisciplinary Sor Juana studies through approaches from literary criticism, women’s and gender studies, sexuality studies, and the studies of colonial and postcolonial discourses. Readings will include sonnets, romances, and villancicos written in Spanish and Nahuatl, plays, the long poem entitled First Dream, and prose texts including Letter Worthy of Athena, Allegorical Neptune, and the autobiographical essay, The Answer. The course will also explore Sor Juana’s reception in contemporary literary criticism, essays, visual art, and film.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to Senior and Junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Guzauskyte, Arraiza Rivera
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This course centers on connections between recent Latin American films and other media, especially music, literature, and television. We will explore how such connections critique certain sociopolitical and cultural milieus that the selected films spring from, seek to represent, or both. Interdisciplinary readings will anchor our discussions as we focus on illuminating the films’ nuanced commentaries on local particularities—but also foreign influences—through the intersections of politics, agency, gender, and race. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Juan José Campanella, Fabián Bielinsky, Martín Rejtman, Paula Markovitch, Paz Encina, Jayro Bustamente, and Lucrecia Martel will be at the heart of the course, for their films have reconfigured contemporary Latin American cinema in unexpected ways.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Crosslisted Courses: LAST 317
Prerequisites: Open to Senior and Junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Selimovic
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Medieval Spain, at the nexus of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic cultures, witnessed a flowering of literature dealing with the nature and depiction of love. This course will examine works from all three traditions, stressing the uses of symbolic language in the linguistic representation of physical desire. Texts will include Ibn Hazm, The Dove's Neck-Ring; the poetry of Yehuda Ha-Levi and Ben Sahl of Seville; the Mozarabic kharjas; the Galician cantigas de amigo; Juan Ruiz, The Book of Good Love; Diego de San Pedro, Cárcel de Amor; and Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Vega
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will explore the craft of writing poetry and short stories in Spanish. Attention will be given to the study of the aesthetics as well as craft in lyrical works and short narratives. Emphasis will be placed on discussion of student work, focusing on basic skills and grammatical knowledge involved in creative writing in a foreign language. Readings from Latin America's most distinguished authors will the assigned.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This seminar will explore how contemporary writers, artists, and activists from Spain, Latin America and the US use various nonfiction forms to document personal experiences of love, loss, and identity, as well as important political, cultural, and social issues. We will investigate their creative uses of the personal essay, biography, memoir, autofiction, profiles, blogs, and longform journalism. In addition, we will examine visual, audio, and multimedia forms such as documentaries, podcasts, photography, and graphic novels. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which these examples of Creative Nonfiction use the tools and techniques of fiction to develop material based on real personal experiences, public events, and cultural phenomena. Students will have the opportunity to produce analytical responses to the texts and topics covered in the course, as well as their own creative pieces .
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to seniors and juniors with advanced level of Spanish or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
A study of post-Revolutionary Mexico through works by novelists, poets, essayists, artists, filmmakers, political leaders and public intellectuals who explore what it means to be modern. Topics include the history of one-party rule, the student movement of 1968, the 1985 earthquake, Zapatismo, women’s voices, the era of Insecurity, and migration. Special attention to issues around poverty and economic growth, the criminal justice system and public safety, climate change and sustainable development, the fight against racism and exclusion, political innovation, and US bilateral relations.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to junior and senior majors or by permission of the instructor. Not open to students who completed SPAN 281.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Using a gender-aware perspective and a wide variety of literary texts,, documents, films, and architectural and artistic examples, this course will explore various forms of Modernity and Modernization in Spain. The analysis will go beyond aesthetic modernity to consider social change and cultural transformation. Main figures will include Federico García Lorca, Maruja Mallo, Vicente Huidobro, Antonio Gaudí, Luis Buñuel, Concha Méndez and “las sinsombrero”, José Ortega y Gasset, Clara Campoamor, Victoria Kent, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. The connections between modernity and postmodernity will also be explored, as well as a comparison of the attitudes towards change and innovation at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
An in-depth study of food in Latin American literature and culture, with a particular focus on its functions and symbolism in indigenous cultures and in the context of the transatlantic exchanges of food products, plants, animals, and recipes among the Americas, Europe, and Africa after 1492. We will also study the role of food and cuisine in the search for new literary forms of expression during the Latin American independence era and contemporary times. The course will study depictions of food, cooking, recipe books, private and public spaces, hunger, deprivation, and body image to explore power relations, gender, race, sexuality, and identity as rooted in long-standing, multicultural traditions involving preparation and consumption of food, global exchanges of foodstuffs, plant, and animal species, as well as the emergence of new hybrid cultures. Readings may include Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz' Respuesta, Francisco de Paula García Peláez' Libro del Chocolate, Fernando Ortiz' Contrapunteo cubano, and Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Guzauskyte
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
An examination of twentieth-century women writers from Latin America. Perspectives for analyses will include questions of identity (national, ethnic/racial, religious, sexual, gender), the extent to which Afro-Hispanic, Indigenous, and non-Christian writers constitute distinct, marginalized groups in Latin American literature, and a comparison of issues regarding identity in selected canonical and noncanonical works by Gabriela Mistral, Remedios Varo, Elena Poniatowska, Nancy Morejón, Rosario Aguilar, Gioconda Belli, and Victoria Ocampo.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes: Ann E. Maurer '51 Speaking Intensive Course.
From 1971 to 2003, Chile, one of South America's longest democracies, has experienced traumatic cultural, political, and social change. From the election of Salvador Allende (1971—1973) through the Pinochet dictatorship, during these turbulent times an unprecedented cultural life was manifested in literature, theatre, and the visual arts. In this seminar, we will explore the cultural changes experienced in Chile during three decades, the ways in which writers understood the complex web of creativity, as well as the specter of censorship. We will analyze how historical figures were revived through writers such as Gabriela Mistral, Rosamel del Valle, Pablo Neruda, and Salvador Allende. Narratives, journalistic essays, and theatrical and visual productions will be examined vis-à-vis the social and political history in which the topics were created.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Connections between two geographically remote areas (Asia and Latin America) that would seem to have little in common will be studied. By analyzing prose, poetry, art, and music, we will examine diverse Asian influences in Latin American literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present. We will explore how various images of the “exotic” Orient are represented in Latin America during the periods of “modernismo” and “vanguardia.” We will also examine contemporary Asian-Latin American writers and artists with an emphasis on the multicultural experience of immigration and assimilation. Authors may include Edward Said, José Martí, José Rizal, Rubén Darío, José Juan Tablada, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, Cristina García, Anna Kazumi Stahl, José Watanabe, Siu Kam Wen, and Seiichi Higashide.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to senior and junior majors or by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Hagimoto
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
The legacy of Spain in the US is a complicated one. On the one hand, Spanish conquest and colonization had devastating effects on indigenous peoples of North America. On the other, Spain has had an extensive and lasting influence on American and Hispanic cultures, especially in the areas of language, religion, art, and architecture. Through a multidisciplinary approach, this class will explore the space that Spain has occupied in shaping America, from the early 16th century to today. It will also look ahead, as we try to envision what impact Spain will have on the US in the years to come. In order to understand the past, assess the present, and imagine the future, we will read chronicles from early Spanish explorers of North America, investigate Mission/Spanish revival architecture and painting, examine the testimonies of American travelers to Spain, and learn about social justice interventions of contemporary indigenous activists, including attacks on statues linked to colonialism and slavery in the United States depicting prominent figures from Spain’s past.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Open to junior and senior majors or by permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken SPAN 244.
Instructor: Ramos
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: This course is also offered at the 200 level as SPAN 244.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the department.
Instructor:
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: SPAN 360 and permission of the department.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.
This course will explore the vibrant literary culture of Jewish women writers of Latin America from the 1920s to the present. We will examine selected works by these authors, daughters of immigrants, whose various literary genres reveal the struggle with issues of identity, acculturation, and diasporic imagination. Writers include Alicia Steimberg of Argentina, Clarice Lispector of Brazil, and Margo Glantz of Mexico, as well as a new generation of writers who explore issues of multiculturalism and ethnicity.
Students in JWST 227/SPAN 277 and JWST 377/SPAN 377 will all get the same material, but students taking the 300-level version of the course will have additional assignments, including formal presentations and longer writing and independent work.
This course is taught in Spanish.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Crosslisted Courses: JWST 377
Prerequisites: Open to Junior and Senior majors or by permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken JWST 277/SPAN 277.
Instructor: Agosin
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: This course is also offered at the 200-level as JWST 277/SPAN 277.