DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

Spanish Courses

Spanish Language

Spanish 101-1,2,3 – Elementary Spanish

For students who have studied Spanish less than two years. Communicative method. Development of speaking, listening, conversation, and grammar skills, as well as knowledge of Hispanic culture, through context. Three class meetings a week. Outside online video program twice a week.

Spanish 101-1 – Elementary Spanish

For students who have studied Spanish less than two years. Communicative method. Development of speaking, listening, conversation, and grammar skills, as well as knowledge of Hispanic culture, through context.

Restrictions: No P/N; First class required
Prerequisites: N/A

Spanish 101-2 – Elementary Spanish

For students who have studied Spanish less than two years. Communicative method. Development of speaking, listening, conversation, and grammar skills, as well as knowledge of Hispanic culture, through context.

Restrictions: No P/N; First class required
Prerequisites: Span 101-1 or Spanish Language Placement Exam

Spanish 101-3 – Elementary Spanish

For students who have studied Spanish less than two years. Communicative method. Development of speaking, listening, conversation, and grammar skills, as well as knowledge of Hispanic culture, through context.

Restrictions: No P/N; First class required
Prerequisites: Span 101-2 or Spanish Language Placement Exam

Spanish 115-1,2 – Accelerated Elementary Spanish

For students with some previous experience in Spanish. Communicative method used for development of speaking, listening, conversation, and grammar skills in a cultural context. Three class meetings a week. Outside online video lab twice a week.

Spanish 121-1,2,3 – Intermediate Spanish

Communicative method. Further development of grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing skills through emphasis on cultural content and functional use of Spanish language. Three class meetings a week. Outside online video program twice a week.

Prerequisite: 101-3, 115-2, or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 121-1 – Intermediate Spanish

Communicative method. Further development of grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing skills through emphasis on cultural content and functional use of Spanish language.

Restrictions: No P/N; First class required
Prerequisites: 101-3, 115-2, or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam

Spanish 121-2 – Intermediate Spanish

Communicative method. Further development of grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing skills through emphasis on cultural content and functional use of Spanish language.

Restrictions: No P/N; First class required
Prerequisites: 101-3, 115-2, or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam

Spanish 121-3 – Intermediate Spanish

Communicative method. Further development of grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing skills through emphasis on cultural content and functional use of Spanish language.

Restrictions: No P/N; First class required
Prerequisites: 101-3, 115-2, or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam

Spanish 125-0 – Accelerated Intermediate Spanish

Communicative method. Further development of grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing skills through readings and short films. Three class meetings a week. Outside online video. Offered in fall only.

Prerequisite: AP score of 3 or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 127-0 – Accelerated Intermediate Spanish for heritage learners

Communicative method. Further development of grammar, vocabulary, speaking, and writing skills through readings and short films. Three class meetings a week. Outside online video. Offered in fall only.

Prerequisite: AP score of 3 or Spanish Language Placement Exam

Spanish 197-0 – Language in Context: Latinos, Language, and Culture

For heritage learners with prior formal training in Spanish. Introduction to socio-political and linguistic richness of contemporary Spanish speaking countries. Emphasis on writing, syntax, and formal modes of the language.

Prerequisite: Spanish heritage learners who have completed Spanish 121-3, Spanish 125-0, or Spanish 127-0. AP score of 4, or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 199-0 – Language in Context: Contemporary Spain

An introduction to the culture and politics of contemporary Spain in the basis for review and further development of some of the most problematic grammatical patterns in Spanish.

Prerequisite: 121-3, 125-0, AP score of 4, or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 201-0 – Conversation on Human Rights: Latin America

First course of a sequence designed to develop speaking strategies and structures through analysis of modern (20th- and 21st-century) Latin American culture. Emphasis on accurate informal conversation.

Prerequisite: 199 or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 202-0 – Conversation on Current Topics

Second course of sequence designed to develop speaking strategies and structures through examination of culturally related topics in the Spanish-speaking world. Emphasis on formal conversation and specialized vocabulary.

Prerequisite: 201, AP score of 5, or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 203-0 – Individual and Society through Written Expression

First course of a sequence that develops writing skills and structures through examination of the relationship between individual and society. Emphasizes textual analysis and development of descriptive, narrative and argumentative essays.

Prerequisiste: 201, AP score of 5, or Spanish Language Placement Exam.

Spanish 204-0 – Reading and Writing in the Art of Protest

Second course of a sequence designed to develop writing skills and structures through analysis of socially committed art. Emphasis on cultural analysis and development of longer essays.

Prerequisite: 203 or 207.

Spanish 205-0 – Spanish for Professions: Health Care

An advanced course for developing communication skills in Spanish for health care purposes. Emphasis on language skills for the medical field, specialized terminology and vocabulary, and cultural nuances in the Spanish-speaking world.

Prerequisite: AP score of 5 or Spanish 201-0.

Spanish 206-0 – Spanish for Professions: Business

Advanced course for developing communication skills in Spanish for business purposes. Emphasis on language skills for the global marketplace: specialized terminology; writing; comprehension of cultural nuances in the Spanish-speaking business world.

Prerequisite: AP score of 5 or 201-0.

Spanish 207-0 – Spanish for Heritage Speakers

For heritage speakers without prior formal training in Spanish. Emphasis on writing, syntax, and formal modes of the language.

Prerequisite: consent of department.

Spanish 208-0 – Spanish and the Community

Development of advanced Spanish communication skills, as well as a thorough and personal cultural knowledge of the Chicagoland Hispanic community through readings, discussions, writing and required volunteer commitment.

Prerequisite: 203-0 or equivalent.

Spanish 280-0 – Intro to Spanish Linguistics

An introductory course designed to present students with an overview of the phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax and sociolinguistic and pragmatic elements specific to the Spanish language.

Prerequisite: Span 204 or equivalent

Spanish 281-0 – Spanish Phonetics and Phonology

Theory and practice of Spanish sounds and phonology. Articulation and production, classification and description, combination and syllabification, sonority sequencing, prosodic features, and prevalent dialectal variations.

Prerequisite: Span 204 or equivalent

Spanish 301-0 – Topics in Language

Special topics in historical, grammatical, or other linguistic aspects of Spanish.

Prerequisites: 204.

Spanish 302-0 – Advanced Grammar

An advanced course designed to polish and improve language usage through in-depth study and development of grammar knowledge and skills, focusing on items most problematic for non-native speakers of Spanish.

Prerequisite: 204-0 or equivalent.

Spanish Literature

Course Number – Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and/or Iberian Cultures: The Crisis of Marriage in Brazilian, Portuguese and Lusophone African Fiction

In this course, we will look at representations of marriage, adultery and polygamy in literary works, movies, and photographs from Lusophone countries from the 19th to the 21st century. Starting with a discussion of Gustave Flaubert's classic novel of adultery Madame Bovary (1856), we will raise several questions: how did writers associate reading and cheating? How did letters become an important agent in the keeping and revealing of secrets and forbidden affairs? How did the institution of marriage change in response to the growing demands for women's rights? Finally, how does literature create and criticize fantasies of love, desire and consumption? To answer these questions, we will read novels by Eca de Queiroz, Machado de Assis, and Paulina Chiziane. Other writers may include Clarice Lispector, Mia Couto, Jorge Amado, Sophia de Mello, and Rubem Fonseca. The course will move from a specific focus on the impact of Madame Bovary in different cultures, particularly on how writers from countries such as Portugal and Brazil responded to the classic novel, to larger questions about representations of women, marriage, and sexuality in literature. Students will practice close reading and interdisciplinary methodologies, exercising comparative approaches between texts or different media. All the assigned readings will be in English, but students with familiarity with other languages, such as French and Portuguese, are encouraged to read the texts in their original languages.

Spanish 105-6 – First-Year Seminar: Women At The Border: The Marginalization Of Latinas In The U.S.

Latina immigrants to the U.S. often leave intolerable circumstances and brave life-threatening border crossings in pursuit of the American dream. Yet, those who succeed in crossing the geographic border almost inevitably find that the marginalized existence they hoped to leave behind takes on an equally powerful form in their new world as they confront economic, political, racial, linguistic, and cultural barriers 'north' of the border. This course considers these issues through analysis of literature and film and has three thematic divisions: GLOBAL BORDERS includes a brief history of U.S. immigration policy and politics and analyzes its impact on global transmigration in the post- 9/11 world. CROSSING BORDERS explores the reasons for and dangers involved in border crossings by Latinas into the United States. NEW BORDERS reflects on the challenges and triumphs for Latinas once they have reached their new homeland and what it means to cross 'borders'.

Spanish 210-0 – Icons, Legends, and Myths in Spain

Diverse representations of historical, literary, and popular figures in Spain, such as the caudillo, the obispo, El Cid, and Don Juan.

Prerequisites: 204 or AP 5 in Spanish Language AND Literature.

Spanish 211-0 – Icons, Legends, and Myths in Latin America

Diverse representations of historical, literary, and popular figures in Latin America, such as the conquistador, the dictator, the gaucho, Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara, Evita, La Malinche, and Carlos Gardel. Focus on forms of representation such as films, documentaries, musical theater, biography, narrative fiction, poetry, and commercial art.

Prerequisites: 204 or AP 5 in Spanish Language AND Literature.

Spanish 220-0 – Introduction to Literary Analysis

Introduction to textual analysis and to topics such as genre, narratology, prosody, and figurative language, aiming to prepare the student to read, discuss, and write analytically in Spanish about literature and culture.

Prerequisites:204 or AP 5 in Spanish Language AND Literature.

Spanish 223-0 – Cervantes

Taught in English

Introduction to Don Quixote and other selected works with attention to their impact on literature, the arts, film, and music.

Spanish 225-0 – Nationalism, Borders, and Immigration in Spain

Taught in English

Interdisciplinary approach to national identity and nationalism in Spain with attention to political and cultural struggles for regional autonomy and to social conflicts arising from immigration.

Spanish 230-0 – Margins and Centers in Latin American Literature and Culture

Taught in English

Interdisciplinary analyses of the complex dynamic between social, political, and cultural peripheries and centers as represented in literary and cultural production. Topics include city and country, cosmopolitanism and localism, graphic and oral cultures, and the original and its derivatives.

Spanish 231-0 – The "New" Latin American Narrative

Taught in English

Emphasis on novels and short fiction from the Latin American "Boom" of the 1960s and 1970s, with attention also to important precursors and recent trends. Focus on works by writers such as Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy, and Luisa Valenzuela.

Spanish 232-0 – Discovering Jewish Latin America

Taught in English

Exploration of the Jewish presence in Latin America; focus on diverse forms of cultural production (e.g., literature, testimonial writing, film, photography, theater, art, music) throughout the region.

Spanish 250-0 – Literature in Spain before 1700

Survey of the origins of the Spanish language and the development of Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the Spanish Golden Age. Study of representative figures and major literary developments in conjunction with political and cultural history.

Prerequisite: 220.

Spanish 251-0 – Literature in Spain since 1700

Survey of literature in Spain from the 18th to the 20th century. Study of representative figures and major literary developments in conjunction with political and cultural history.

Prerequisite: 220.

Spanish 260-0 – Literature in Latin America before 1888

Survey of pre-Hispanic, colonial, and romantic traditions in Latin America. Focus on authors and texts such as Popul Vuh, Cristobal Colon, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and Martin Fierro.

Prerequisite: 220.

Spanish 261-0 – Literature in Latin America since 1888

Survey of the modern period, including modernismo, the historical avant-garde, the "Boom," and recent literary trends. Authors such as Delmira Agustini, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Ruben Dario, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Marti, Pablo Neruda, Cristina Peri Rossi, and Elena Poniatowska.

Prerequisite: 220.

Spanish 277-0 – Introduction to Latina/o Literature

Survey of major writers and movements from Spanish colonial era to the present, covering a range of genres and ethnicities.

Prerequisite: None

Spanish 310-0 – Origins of Spanish Civilization

Introduction to Spanish civilization from its origins to 1453. The course focuses on the Roman, Visigoth, and Muslim conquests and their differences, the Christian Reconquest, and the evolution of Spanish from Latin, with attention to representative literary, artistic, musical, and historical materials.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 320-0 – Golden Age of Poetry and Prose

Major authors of the 17th century, including Garcilaso de la Vega, Fray Luis de León, and Santa Teresa de Jesús. Works by Cervantes other than Don Quijote.

Prerequisite: 1 course from SPAN 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 321-0 – Golden Age Drama

Major dramatists of the 17th century, including Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderon de la Barca.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 323-0 – Cervantes'/Don Quixote

Close reading of Don Quixote, with attention to its historical and cultural context.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 330-0 – The Age of Romanticism in Spain

Analysis of the principal literary forms of the romantics in relation to major themes and ideas of the age and to key historical events such as the end of the Spanish Empire and the establishment of the new liberal regime.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 331-0 – Realism in Spain: The Problem of Representation

Theories and practices of realist authors in modern Spanish literature. Issues of literary representation and mimesis. Aesthetic and ideological foundations of realism in the 19th century and in 20th-century variants such as social realism, antirealism, and postmodern documentarism.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 332-0 – Avant-Garde Writers and Experimental Fiction in Spain

Aesthetic principles, modes of writing, and uses of media of avant-garde writers and artists in 20th-century Spain. The use of experimental forms in the critique of the bourgeois order and late capitalist society.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 333-0 – The Spanish Civil War: The Good Fight

Analysis of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and its effects on 20th-century Spanish culture and society. Issues may include the relationship between utopic thought and artistic avant-gardes during this period; literary and filmic representations of the war; and the war's connections to Nazi Germany and World War II.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 334-0 – Memory, History, and Fiction in Spain since 1930

The uses of memory and history in fiction and film produced after the proclamation of the Second Republic. Approaches to rewriting myth and history in autobiography, historiography, and historical fiction.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 335-0 – Modern Fiction in Spain: Studies in Genre

Study of literary genres (narrative, poetry, drama) or subgenres (detective fiction, autobiography, the fantastic). May be repeated for credit with different topic.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 340-0 – Colonial Latin American Literature

Major texts and writers of the early colonial period, including chronicles of discovery and conquest from both indigenous and Hispanic sources. Works by authors such as Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Hernan Cortes, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Bartolome de las Casas, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 341-0 – Latin America Modernismo

Significant poetry, narrative, and criticism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Topics such as decadence, aestheticism, the flaneur and the rastacuero, cosmopolitanism, the modern city, and exoticism.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 342-0 – Region and Rootedness in Latin America

Literary traditions evolving from Latin American conceptions of regional and indigenous cultures in the 19th and 20th centuries. Authors such as Jose Maria Arguedas, Miguel Angel Asturias, Rosario Castellanos, Romulo Gallegos, Jose Hernandez, Jose Carlos Mariategui, Clorinda Matto de Turner, and Jose Eustasio Rivera.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 343-0 – Latin American Avant-Gardes

Poetry, prose, and visual art by major figures and groups in 20th-century vanguard movements. Works by authors such as Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolas Guillen, Felisberto Hernandez, Vicente Huidobro, Manuel Maples Arce, and Cesar Vallejo.

Prerequisite: 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 344-0 – Borges

The poetry, essays, and short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 345-0 – Reading the "Boom"

Historical, literary, and cultural characteristics of the "Boom" in the 1960s and 1970s and the development of the "new" narrative in Latin America. Readings include novels, short fiction, and essays by authors such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortazar, Jose Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Manuel Puig, Juan Rulfo, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 346-0 – Testimonial Narrative in Latin America

Study of the tradition of testimonial writing in Latin America with attention to cultural, political, and historical contexts and questions of truth, memory, and subjectivity. Works by authors such as Miguel Barnet, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Alicia Partnoy, Elena Poniatowska, Jacobo Timerman, and Rodolfo Walsh.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 347-0 – Literature and Revolution in Latin America

Revolutionary practices in Latin American literature as well as literary representations of revolution. Authors such as Mariano Azuela, Nellie Campobello, Alejo Carpentier, Roque Dalton, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Neruda, and Rodolfo Usigli.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 348-0 – Readings in Latin American Short Fiction

Theory and practice of Latin American short fiction. Close readings of texts by authors such as Reinaldo Arenas, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortazar, Rosario Ferre, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Augusto Monterroso, Elena Poniatowaska, and others.

Prerequisite: 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 350-0 – Visual Culture in Latina/o America and Spain (NEW COURSE)

This course will introduce students to photographic practices in Latin America, from the mid-19th century to the present day. After reviewing various moments of the invention of photography in Europe and elsewhere, we will be especially interested in thinking about photography in Latin America broadly, especially as it appears in a variety of practices and genres such as landscape, survey, portraiture, snapshot, photojournalism, and art. As such, topics of interest include the representation of class, race and ethnicity; the visual consolidation of national and regional spaces; photography as a consumer culture; the state's creation of visual disciplinary regimes; the use of pictures as tools of contestation and memorialization; and others. Readings from the fields of history, art history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural criticism.

Prerequisite: 1 course from SPAN 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 360-0 – Spain: Studies in Culture and Society

Significant issues in the social, political, and cultural development of Spain.

Prerequisite: 220.

Spanish 361-0 – Latin America: Studies in Culture and Society

Analysis of the history of culture in Latin America with an emphasis on the intersection of politics, society, and literature and on the relationship between literary and visual culture.

Prerequisite: 220.

Spanish 361-0 – Contemporary Art and Visual Culture of the Caribbean

This seminar course on contemporary art and visual culture of the Hispanic Caribbean explores how the region has been represented and imagined from the early twentieth century to the present. Interdisciplinary in nature, this course pays particular attention to the role of certain political and historical events in shaping visual production and effecting the dissemination of certain types of images. We will explore visual, literary, political and historical texts such as the artwork by Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera and films such as Arte de hacer ruinas (Cuba), La ciudad perdida (Puerto Rico), En el tiempo de las mariposas (Dominican Republic) and Memorias del subdesarrollo (Cuba). From this course students can expect to gain an understanding of how the Caribbean has been represented in contemporary art and visual culture and how a more nuanced approach to these representations can help us gage their social contributions.

Spanish 361-0 – Latin American Cinema: A Comparative History

One of the most engaging ways to explore the complex relationship between national and global culture is through the medium of film. This course offers students a comparative cultural history of Latin American cinema, focusing on key moments from the early 20th-century to the present. We will be paying close attention to how film production in Latin America has historically responded to the tension between the construction of national identities on the one hand, and on the other, the significant--at times overwhelming--influence of Hollywood and European art films. During the first half of the quarter, we will be analyzing silent films, musicals, film noir, surrealist cinema, and adventure films; in the second half, we will study contemporary films from Mexico and the Southern Cone. However, while we will be focusing on these regions, throughout the quarter we will also be referencing influential non-Latin American films in order to better understand how, from the 1920s to the present day, Latin American filmmakers (and their audiences) engaged with and selectively appropriated elements from Hollywood and European cinematic productions.

Spanish 363 – Topics in US Latina/o Literary and Cultural Studies

Analysis of diverse literary and/or cultural productions by and about US Latino/as. Topics may include the politics of representation, cultural and social identity, race, ethnicity and gender, transnationalism and globalization. Case studies vary across cultural practices, media, and literary texts.

Prerequisite: 220 or consent of instructor.

Spanish 380-0 – Topics in Film: The Silver Screen in Latin America and/or Spain

Introduction to film in Latin America and/or Spain during the 20th century. Topics vary and may include a historical survey of film, a study of films of a specific period, a comparative analysis of literary works and cinematic adaptations, or the work of specific filmmakers. May be repeated for credit with different topic.

Prerequisites: 201 or 202; 203 or 207; 204; and 1 other 200-level literature or culture course.

Spanish 390-0 – Undergraduate Seminar

Advanced course on topics in literature and culture and research methods; oriented toward the development of an individual research project. Open to qualified seniors with consent of an adviser. Open to majors in Spanish at the junior and senior year only.

Spanish 395-0 – Special Topics in Latin American, Latino, and/or Iberian Cultures

Advanced study of topics in the literary traditions of either Latin America or Spain. Possible topics include intellectual history, transatlantic exchanges, the short story, literature of the fantastic, feminist traditions, hybrid cultures, and history and fiction. May be repeated for credit with different topic.

Prerequisite: 1 course from 250, 251, 260, or 261.

Spanish 397-0 – Topics in Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Literatures and Cultures

Taught in English

Aspects of the literatures and cultures of Latin America and Spain. Possible topics include postcolonial criticism and its reception in Hispanic cultures, notions of translation, theories of poetics, orality and oral culture, literature and film, the memoir, and travel writing. May be repeated for credit with different topic.

Spanish-397-0 – Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and/or Iberian Cultures: The Crisis of Marriage in Brazilian, Portuguese and Lusophone African Fiction

Taught in English

In this course, we will look at representations of marriage, adultery and polygamy in literary works, movies, and photographs from Lusophone countries from the 19th to the 21st century. Starting with a discussion of Gustave Flaubert's classic novel of adultery Madame Bovary (1856), we will raise several questions: how did writers associate reading and cheating? How did letters become an important agent in the keeping and revealing of secrets and forbidden affairs? How did the institution of marriage change in response to the growing demands for women's rights? Finally, how does literature create and criticize fantasies of love, desire and consumption? To answer these questions, we will read novels by Eca de Queiroz, Machado de Assis, and Paulina Chiziane. Other writers may include Clarice Lispector, Mia Couto, Jorge Amado, Sophia de Mello, and Rubem Fonseca. The course will move from a specific focus on the impact of Madame Bovary in different cultures, particularly on how writers from countries such as Portugal and Brazil responded to the classic novel, to larger questions about representations of women, marriage, and sexuality in literature. Students will practice close reading and interdisciplinary methodologies, exercising comparative approaches between texts or different media. All the assigned readings will be in English, but students with familiarity with other languages, such as French and Portuguese, are encouraged to read the texts in their original languages.

Spanish 397-0 – Special Topics in Latin American, Latino, and/or Iberian Cultures: On Debt

Taught in English

Debt is a social relation. It has received cosmological, theological, and economic articulation for centuries. Yet, at its core, debt is a form of social binding, hence a social bond. This course will examine debt as an economic, social, and historical relation in order to consider its critical function, thereby exploring the very idea of a critique of debt. We will read texts by Nietzsche, Marcel Mauss, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, David Graeber, Maurizio Lazzarato, Eletra Stimilli, among others. We will also consider ancient and contemporary articulations of debt forgiveness, relief, or cancellation (as articulated, for example, by Strike Debt or the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt). This will give us an opportunity to refer to cases of debt in Latin American and the Caribbean.

Spanish 397 – Special Topics in Latin American, Latino, and/or Iberian Cultures: Indigeneity and Gender in Latin América

Taught in English

This course will examine representations of indigenous peoples in Latin America during the 19th and 20th centuries, with special attention to constructions of race and gender. We will explore topics such as the racial and gendered associations used to construct indigeneity, the exclusion of alternative indigenous gender subjectivities, and the double subordination indigenous women have historically experienced.

Spanish 399-0 – Independent Study

Independent reading under supervision. Consultation with director of undergraduate studies required.

Graduate

SPANPORT 401 – Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory

Introduction to theoretical and critical traditions in Latin American and Peninsular traditions and elsewhere.

SPANPORT 410 – Topics in Early Modern Literatures and Cultures

Analysis of primary works and the major critical theories and debates regarding the literary and cultural production of the Early Modern period (Golden Age Spain and/or Colonial Latin America).

SPANPORT 410 – Introduction to Colonial Latin America: Narrative, History, Theory

This course offers a critical overview of the epistemological practices and ideological underpinnings that shaped the multi-faceted process of colonialism in what we call today Latin America. Focusing on indigenous, mestizo and European texts produced from the late fifteenth century to the late seventeenth century, we will explore the diverse power struggles, strategies of negotiation, and misunderstandings that underlie the production of the foundational textual knowledge in and about America.

Key to this course is the debate on the social and political consequences that the introduction of the European technology of writing had on Native American societies. A fundamental tool for colonial administration and Christian evangelization, alphabetic writing fostered both spaces of incorporation and of exclusion of indigenous peoples. We will analyze how writing shaped a particular notion of literary canon and of archive that tied knowledge to alphabetic writing, while framing indigenous peoples as objects to be analyzed, but not as subjects who produced knowledge. The colonial concept of literacy and the more recent postcolonial critical redefinitions of it will guide this approach.

This course also aims to frame the debates on colonial literature beyond the axis of literacy. For that, we will discuss how the concept of legibility can allow us to have a better understanding of the process of marginalization of native pre-Hispanic modes of inscription and communication, but also of native uses of alphabetic writing.

Going from colonial texts to theory, this course intends to familiarize students with major contemporary critical theories and debates that have led to a productive destabilization of terms and concepts such as indigeneity, indianness, discovery, conquest, colonization, empire, mestizaje, hybridity, and otherness.

Readings will be in English and Spanish. Class discussion will be in Spanish. All written work should be done in Spanish.

SPANPORT 415 – Studies in 19th Century Literatures and Cultures

Analysis of the discursive models of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Latin American and/or Iberian literary and cultural production. Topics vary. May be repeated for credit with a different topic.

SPANPORT 420 – Studies in Twentieth-Century Literatures and Cultures

Analysis of movements, trends, and issues in twentieth-century Latin American, Iberian, and/or U.S. Latino literary and cultural production. Topics vary. May be repeated for credit with different topic.

SPANPORT 425 – Studies in Contemporary Literatures and Cultures

Analysis of recent movements, trends, and issues in recent Latin American, Iberian, and/or U.S. Latino literary and cultural production. Topics vary. May be repeated for credit with different topic.

SPANPORT 430 – Topics in Latino/a Literatures and Cultures

This graduate seminar introduces students to the major critical theories, approaches and debates regarding the literary and/or cultural production of U.S. Latino/as. Topics may include literary studies, popular culture, the media, and expressive arts within the frameworks of race, ethnicity, post-colonialism, border studies, cultural hybridity, identity formation, the politics of representation, gender, sexuality, social class, transnationalism, and globalization.

SPANPORT 430 – Sound(ing) Race, Gender and Class: Readings in Latinx Popular Music and Literature

This seminar will introduce students to Latinx cultural studies through an analysis of Latinx popular sonic traditions and literary texts. While musical traditions circulate hemispherically across Latin America, specific sounds and rhythms have been central sites for the construction of Latinx postcolonial identities. Salsa, corridos, cumbias, bachatas, and nortenas, for instance, have become expressive cultures that articulate the postcolonial experiences of diverse ethnic communities in Latino USA who have had limited access to high forms of art and literacy.The course will begin by introducing students to various theories about popular culture and music - concepts such as productive pleasure, listening as a critical act, and performance as the embodiment of resisting identities - that diverge from the aesthetic approaches to literary texts. What does it mean to listen rather than to read? How can we construct social meanings out of musical performances? How does the concept of voice relate to Latinx decolonial knowledge? By listening to musical performances, learning about particular musical genres, and reading literary texts that propose a critical dialogue with these sonic traditions, we will be able to expand not only our understanding of Latinx expressive and popular cultures as critical sites of resistance, but also to engage methodologically and theoretically in popular music as a site where sounds challenge the logocentric hegemony of reading in our production of knowledge. Course requirements include a class presentation, weekly written responses to the readings, and a final, 8-10 page original research paper.

SPANPORT 450 – Topics in Cultural Studies

This graduate seminar offers analysis of specific topics and debates within cultural studies and visual culture in Latin America and/or Iberia. Theme and focus vary. May be repeated for credit with different topic.

SPANPORT 455 – Comparative Studies in Latin American and/or Iberian Literatures and Cultures

Study of diverse works, figures, genres, and traditions from Latin America and/or Iberia that have engaged with related topics, forms, and/or currents from inside and outside these regions. Focus and materials will vary each year.

SPANPORT 480 – Topics in Latin American and/or Iberian Literatures and Cultures

This seminar course explores Iberian and Latin American cultural and political issues in relation to particular representational techniques, prominent literary traditions, subject-and national-making practices, and varied forms of writing literary texts. Topics vary.

SPANPORT 480 – Toward a Decolonial Critical Theory

This course will consider key texts in Frankfurt School Critical Theory alongside Decolonial Thought and Decolonial Feminism. Discussions will consider conception of critique at work in these texts in order to construct a decolonial critical theory of society. Readings will include texts by Gyorgy Lukacs, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Anibal Quijano, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Santiago Castro-Gomez, Maria Lugones, Yuderkis Espinosa-Minoso, and Gloria Anzaldua.

SPANPORT 480 – Brazilian Modernism and Modernity: From Imitation to Anthropophagy and Beyond

In this course, we will discuss the anxieties created by notions of "imitation" at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century in Brazil, and the debates they created not only in the field of aesthetics, but also in the pseudoscientific discourse of sexology, criminology and psychopathology. We will be particularly interested in understanding how these debates on modernity and imitation of French culture evolved through the post-1922 Modernism avant-gardes, and the anthropophagic movement in particular, and the extent to which the latter represented a solution for the anxieties and aspirations of the writers of the period. We will focus on fictional works by Brazilian writers ranging from the abolition of slavery (1888) and the proclamation of the Republic (1889), to the 1920's avant-garde movements. We will also engage with contemporary theories of imitation and repletion Reading knowledge of Portuguese or Spanish is helpful, but not required.

Primary works will include: Raul Pompeia's O Ateneu (1888) [Trans. The Atheneum, ISBN: 0810130793); Aluizio de Azevedo's O Cortico (1890) [trans. The Slum, ISBN-10: 0195121872]; Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro (1899) trans. Dom Casmurro: a novel ISBN-13: 978-0374523039; Joao do Rio's Vertiginous Life (1911); Oswald de Andrade (TBD); Mario de Andrade's Macunaima (1928).

Theoretical works may include works by Antonio Candido and Roberto Schwarz, Viveiros de Castro (Cannibal Metaphysics), Gabriel Tarde, Harold Bloom, Gilles Delleuze, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Rene Girard

SPANPORT 490 – Current Readings in Iberian and Latin American Criticism and Theory

This course will involve intensive student-driven reading and discussion on current topics in Latin American and Iberian theory and criticism. It will be run as a tutorial and an environment for intellectual exchange. It is encouraged as an alternative to independent studies. Students will compose their own reading lists, prepare an annotated bibliography and give weekly presentations.

SPANPORT 495 – Practicum in Scholarly Writing and Publication

Workshop intended to help students to design, research and write a scholarly article. Required for all graduate students in their second year.

SPANPORT 495 – Practicum in Scholarly Writing and Publication

This required seminar focuses on both theoretical and practical aspects of scholarly writing and publication. Reading and discussion, as well as writing assignments, aim to help students become more familiar with different ways in which they will be able to engage with other scholars and critics in their respective fields and areas of specialization. Students will take up the mechanics of scholarly publication, modes of scholarly research and reading, and genres of scholarly writing. The primary goal for each student will be to produce a draft of a publishable scholarly article, based on a paper written for a previous course. Other requirements include: a book review linked to the seminar paper; a formal abstract of the seminar paper; and written feedback on other students' writing. Seminar meetings will combine group discussion and oral presentations, workshop sessions focusing on written assignments, and, as needed, individual-tutorial meetings.

SPANPORT 496 – Dissertation Prospectus Writing Workshop

This course seeks to impart to students the knowledge necessary to answer the questions: what is a dissertation, and how do I write one? In the spirit of a workshop, we will work as a group to foster and cultivate the skill sets necessary to formulate and articulate an organizing question adequate to the charge of a significant, independent, multi-year research project. We will call this first stage the prospectus, and we will figure out what it is and how best to write it. We will try to distill multiple and often conflicting statements, expectations, and/or fears about what the dissertation is so we can effectively undertake its preparation and writing.

SPANPORT 499 – Independent Study

First-year graduate students are discouraged from enrolling in 499. Generally, students in the program take such courses in their second year. You must file a petition for Independent Study. You can download the form and instructions here Independent Study or speak to the graduate program administrator.

SPANPORT 570 – Teaching Assistantship and Methodologies

Tutorial, taken on an ungraded basis, arranged between individual students and faculty, which include attendance at advanced undergraduate course lectures and service in teaching assistantships.

SPANPORT 590 – Research

Independent reading and research.