Spanish (SPAN-UA)
SPAN-UA XXXX Madrid Stories: Engaging with Madrid Through Intensive Documentary Production (4 Credits)
The city of Madrid will be the primary object of study in this course: its history, its architecture, its people, its neighborhoods, and its place in the Spanish imaginary. Through readings, film viewings, walking tours, and the production of their own documentary shorts, students will have an opportunity to explore, engage with, and document aspects of this protean city. The course, moreover, will provide an introduction to documentary theory, tradition and practice, will encourage students to look, listen and explore Madrid with a documentarian’s gaze, to represent the city from new perspectives, and to seek out stories that deepen their understanding of Madrid and Spain.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 1 Spanish for Beginners- Level I (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
Open to students with no previous training in Spanish and to others on assignment by placement test. 4 points. Beginning course designed to teach the elements of Spanish grammar and language structure through a primarily oral approach. Emphasis is on building vocabulary and language patterns to encourage spontaneous language use in and out of the classroom.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 2 Spanish for Beginners - Level II (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
After completing SPAN-UA 2 or SPAN-UA 10 (see below), students who wish to continue studying Spanish at an intermediate level must take a qualifying exam. Students who pass the exam may enroll in SPAN-UA 3, which is preparation for SPAN-UA 4. Students who complete SPAN-UA 2 or SPAN-UA 10 and pass the qualifying exam with high scores may enroll in SPAN-UA 20, a 6-credit intensive intermediate course that is the equivalent of Intermediate Spanish I and II. Completion of either SPAN-UA 20 or SPAN-UA 4 satisfies the MAP foreign language requirement.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 3 Intermediate Spanish I (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
Review of grammar, language structure, and culture, concentrating on fluency and accuracy through listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities. After completion of this course, students take SPAN-UA 4 in fulfillment of the MAP foreign language requirement.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 4 Intermediate Spanish II (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
Readings and discussions of contemporary Hispanic texts and review of the main grammatical concepts of Spanish. Completion of this course fulfills the MAP foreign language requirement.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 10 Intens Elemen Spanish (6 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
Open to students with some previous training in Spanish or another Romance language (one year of high school Spanish or the equivalent, or two years of high school French, Italian, or Latin) and to others on assignment by
placement exam or in consultation with the director of the Spanish language
program. This is a one-semester intensive course that covers the equivalent
of one year of elementary Spanish (SPAN-UA 1 and SPAN-UA 2). 6 points.
After completing this course, students may go into SPAN-UA 3, which is
preparation for SPAN-UA 4. Students with high scores in the semester (B and
up) or with permission from the Director of the Language Program may enroll
in SPAN-UA 20. Completion of either SPAN-UA 20 or SPAN-UA 4 fulfills the
Core requirement.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 11 Intermediate Spanish for Spanish Speakers (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
Prerequisite: permission of the director of Spanish language programs. Offered every semester. 4 points. An introductory course in Spanish designed for heritage students who understand spoken Spanish but need to develop their speaking, reading, and writing skills. This course serves as a formal introduction to Spanish grammar. In addition to grammar and vocabulary review, this course incorporates cultural and literary readings in Spanish to develop written and oral communication skills.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 20 Intens Intermed Spanish (6 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 51 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
For native and quasi-native speakers of Spanish whose formal training in the language has been incomplete or otherwise irregular.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 60 Advanced Conversation (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
Intensive course in spoken Spanish, designed to give the student fluency in the use of idiomatic, everyday language as well as a comprehensive, practical vocabulary. For non-native speakers only.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 110 Techniques of Translation (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
Theory and practice of translation through comparison of Spanish and English grammar, syntax, and style.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 111 Literary Translation (4 Credits)
Advanced work in the translation of literary texts.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51 OR Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 122 Advanced Fiction and Non-Fiction (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
Offered every semester. 4 points. Students refine their skills in poetry writing through close reading of individual poems, excerpts from poetry collections, and complete books of poems written by contemporary Latin American and Spanish poets. In class, students reflect on the creative process of poetry writing while they work on their own poems. Collaborative work and individual meetings with the instructor are key to the dynamics of this workshop.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR Advanced Placement Examination Spanish Literature >= 4 OR Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 51).
SPAN-UA 150 Esferas: Journal of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese (2 Credits)
Esferas is a 2-credit course designed to support the journal Esferas, the online and print on demand undergraduate journal of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The journal works as an extension of the academic learning in the department, and each year features one of the subject areas covered in our courses. Students will learn and perform all activities related to the publication of an academic journal, including but not limited to performing peer review, editing, and online and on page editing and proofreading. Students will also learn how to read, interpret and write about the featured topic, acquiring the necessary proficiency in the scholarship available to write an introduction for the journal. The final paper, which will consist of an introduction for the journal, will be selected from the students’ final project and published.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
Prerequisites: (Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 152 Internship (fall) (2-4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Open only to majors. Available every semester. 2 or 4 points per term. Course credit for internship projects in approved businesses, schools, social service agencies, and cultural or governmental offices. Supervised by the director of undergraduate studies. Interested students should apply to the department early in the semester before they wish to begin their internship.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 160 Independent Study (fall) (2-4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Summer terms
Prerequisite: permission of the director of undergraduate studies. Open only to majors. Available every semester. 2 or 4 points per term. Research and reading project carried out under the supervision of a faculty sponsor. Interested students should arrange for faculty sponsorship and permission of the director of undergraduate studies during the semester prior to the project.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 201 Iberian Atlantic (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
This course explores the Iberian Atlantic world, from Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) and Anahuac (indigenous America) to the era of Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization that closely tied the Iberian Peninsula, Western Africa, and the Americas to one another in a vast oceanic inter-culture and political economy.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 205 Cultural History of Latin America (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
This course provides an introduction to the making of modern Latin America through the study of key cultural practices in literature, visual art, film, and performance from the 19th century to the present. The course is organized around key concepts, which may vary by semester and by instructor
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 220 Key Works: (4 Credits)
What are the key works of the Iberian, Latin American, and Luso-Brazilian
worlds? The shifts and overlaps between the cultural geographies designated
by these different terms already indicate that there is no easy answer to
this question. Spanish and Portuguese literary histories have traditionally
responded to it by telling a story of the ‘schools’ and ‘generations’ of
(usually male) writers in both languages succeeding one another from the
Middle Ages to the present; Latin American philologists have, since the
nineteenth century, replied with their own origin stories of literary and
cultural independence, focusing on the ways artists and writers would have
been breaking with the conventions of their colonial motherlands and
embraced their own, ‘new’ worlds. Clearly, all these histories –and the
lists of ‘great works’ they produce– are deeply political, not least
because each of them entails a series of exclusions and marginalizations:
What about poetry written in Catalan or Basque? Or in Aymara, Mapudungun,
Guaraní? What about the sonic and religious crossings between Western and
Central Africa and Brazil, the Caribbean, or the Colombian Pacific coast?
What about the literary and performative expressions of LGBT communities,
of those living away from the great urban centers, of women, of Amerindian
nations? Rather than to supply students with an exhaustive list of
‘essential readings’, then, this course aims to think of the canon as a
problem. It encourages students to think of the field of Spanish, Latin
American, and Luso-Brazilian studies not as a given, and fixed, body of
knowledge, but as a field of disputes and struggles. By looking at a number
of literary texts and other cultural artifacts that have, to a greater or
lesser extent, been enshrined in the canon, we shall also ask what this
selection tells us about the politics of the field, about the themes and
questions that are foregrounded by it, and the alternative stories and
voices it either silences or empowers. The course will usually be offered
by a team of two members of faculty, so as to provide a broad sample of
readings across the field’s multiple geographical and historical
subsections. Materials to be studied include literary works as well as
other cultural artifacts such as films, music and visual artworks, as well
as critical readings putting these into wider aesthetic and political
contexts or offering analytical approach to them.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 225 Key Words: Research Approaches (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
This course aims to introduce students to an array of critical and methodological approaches to cultural production, particularly in relation to the Iberian, Latin American and Luso-Brazilian world. It presents interdisciplinary approaches to the formidably diverse cultural traditions and productions from these cultural geographies, their national/local particularities and their global projections. From oral and written cultures to performance and aural worlds, from colonial to neocolonial configurations, the study of Iberian, Latin American and Luso-Brazilian cultures requires an interdisciplinary, multi-perspective approach.
The structure of the course functions as an introduction to the cutting-edge research in our department, as different professors will present and discuss their research and offer an introduction to particular areas of study and expertise. The student will become acquainted with key critical notions that shape our fields of study at the same time that he/she will explore the research potential of these concepts by confronting diverse object of studies —from literature and the performing arts to film and print culture– in order to produce critical responses that will foster the development of analytical and writing skills. By the end of the course, the student will have an up-to-date sense of the critical discussions in the field, and an array of tools that will be central for his/her future courses in the department as well as in other lines of study.
Even though the course will normally be taught in English, students may also be working through reading materials in Spanish and Portuguese, thus helping the language acquisition at a university level.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: SPAN-UA 200.
SPAN-UA 260 Cultural History of Spain (4 Credits)
Typically offered Spring
This course provides an introduction to the making of modern Spain through the study of key cultural practices in literature, visual art, film, and performance from the 19th century to the present. The course is organized around key concepts, which may vary by semester and by instructor.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 301 Women's Writing in Latin America (4 Credits)
Feminist critical perspectives on a selection of fiction, essays, and poetry written by women. May include works by Mar?a de Zayas, Sor Juana In?s de la Cruz, Gertrudis G?mez de Avellaneda, Rosal?a de Castro, Delmira Agustini, Ana Mar?a Matute, Alejandra Pizarnik, Emilia Pardo Baz?n, Carmen Mart?n Gaite, Ana Mar?a Bombal, Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel, Diamela Eltit, Ana Lydia Vega, and others.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51).
SPAN-UA 302 Latin American Cinema (4 Credits)
This course provides an introduction to Latin American Cinema, and may focus on particular national cinemas, transnational cinematic trends, genres or periods within its history in Latin America, or may be organized thematically around specific issues and ways of examining cinema history, including gender or class histories and may include different technologies of cinematic production. This class may be offered in English, Spanish or Portuguese and will be indicated in semester course description.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51 OR Advanced Placement Examination Spanish Literature >= 4).
SPAN-UA 303 Verlo. Leerlo. Fotografía y Discurso en Latinoamérica (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
The goal of this course is to analyze the role and history of photography and its relationship with the written word in writers working in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course first answers the questions: What is a photograph? How is it read? We will follow the history of Latin American photography, from its beginnings in the decade of 1830 to the present, and follow readings engaging the tension of the photograph as a historical document or as an artistic work. The main role of the course, however, is to see how photographs affect writing; we will read texts where photography is the main concern (but where no photographs appear) and texts that play on the page with the relationship between image and word. Several main themes are discussed: photography and history, photography and archive, photography and madness, photography and sexuality.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51 OR SPAN-UA 100 OR SPAN-UA 111 OR Advanced Placement Examination Spanish Literature >= 4).
SPAN-UA 304 Armas Secretas: Leer a Julio Cortázar Hoy (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
The Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) remains one of the most important Boom authors in Latin America. His incursions into the fantastic genre, his development of a new theory of the novel in Hopscotch or 62: A Model Kit, his exploration of popular culture in texts like the hybrid around the Day in Eighty Worlds or the comic-strip novel Fantomas, and his political essays like Nicaraguan sketches, trace not only his own developments as an author but also the development of Latin American culture and politics in the 20th century. This advanced seminar will follow the evolution of Cortázar’s writing with a specific emphasis on his fantastic stories and their relationship to Poe and Borges, his strategic use of popular culture, specifically his use of visual language and jazz music as a means of questioning the limits between high and low, the influence he received from the Cuban revolution, and the political struggles he faced as émigré writer in France.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51).
SPAN-UA 305 Archives of the Body (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
What is an “archive” and what does it have to do with representations of the body? How do we Know (or think we know) what we do about bodies and desires in the past and present? How and why do certain bodies come to be recorded, documented, and remembered in the first place? This course examines the notion of “archives of the body” through the lenses of sexuality, desire, and memory in the Americas. We will explore topics including representations of the monstrous in museum exhibits; animal bodies in natural history and taxidermy exhibits; colonialism in the Americas; the politics of display and exhibition; the development of
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51).
SPAN-UA 309 Gestos Movimientos y Literatura (4 Credits)
Dance and literature have always been seen as heterogeneous practices; dance works with real bodies in motion, while literature moves through words, and produces bodies in movement. The purpose of this course is to examine the space of articulation that brings together these two practices, while responding to several questions: 1. How does philosophy think and write about dance and movement? 2. In what ways, and to what ends, are gesture, movement and danced used in literary texts? 3. How does theory and criticism use gestures, movement and dance as metaphors for thought? 4. How can we use movement and the gestures of dance and literature as the ground for knowledge and thought? 5. How does dance produce literature and viceversa? This course will include texts by Cirilo Villaverde, García Lorca, Luis Palés Matos, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Andrés Caicedo, Claudia Salazar and Mario Bellatin; the films of Almodóvar; flamenco dance representation and the choreography of José Limón, Marha Graham, Pina Bausch, Oscar Araiz, Arthur Aviles and Alicia Díaz. Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 200 (Critical Approaches) or permission by professor.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 330 Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
See under section heading for prerequisite. When conducted in English, this course is numbered SPAN-UA 551. Offered every semester. 4 points. Sample topics include literature of the fantastic, history and fiction in Spanish America, literature of the neobaroque, cultural relations between Spain and Spanish America, literature and ethnicity, and construction of gender in Spanish American literature.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 360 Topics in Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
See under section heading for prerequisite. When conducted in English, this course is numbered SPAN-UA 951. Offered every semester. 4 points. Sample topics include the medieval epic, Spanish mysticism, theory and literary practice in the Spanish baroque, Spanish romanticism, contemporary Spanish poetry, Spanish postmodernism, and contemporary Spanish culture.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
Prerequisites: SPAN-UA 200.
SPAN-UA 364 Spanish Cinema, 1960s to Present (4 Credits)
The course, taught in Spanish, offers a survey of Spanish cinema from the 1960s to the present, through the study of 12 key films, with particular emphasis on the last two decades. Contextual information will be given about relevant political and social factors. The classes will provide training in both cultural and audiovisual analysis of film texts. Directors covered will include Saura, Buñuel, Borau, Erice, Almodóvar, Medem, Amenábar, Bollaín, Gutiérrez, Villaronga.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: SPAN-UA 50 AND SPAN-UA 51.
SPAN-UA 401 Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture - in English (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
Recent topics include: New Borderlands in Latin America and Spain, Cultures of the Mexican Revolution, Myth and Literature, Hispanic Cities, Latin American Film, Intimacy and Precarity, Performance and Human Rights in Latin America, Literature and Animality, and Is Spanish One Language?
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 411 Mapping the Americas (4 Credits)
Typically offered Spring
Culturally as well as economically and politically charged ideas of space and place have been key to the mapping of the New World since the beginnings of Western colonial expansion. The ‘New World’, from this point of view, has in fact often functioned as a heterotopia of the Old. Heterotopias, in Michel Foucault’s coinage, are counter-sites that exist within the fabric of social or even natural space but that also contest, challenge and invert it. Museums, gardens and hospitals but also boats and colonies are examples of such places that stand out from the surrounding spatial order, thus also making the latter ‘readable’ from a marginal point of view. In the Americas, the colonial organization of space also triggered a proliferation of ‘heterotopic’ sites: from the ‘frontiers’ crossing cities and regions that render transparent the violent and contradictory foundations of American societies, to slave cemeteries and prison islands, to clandestine torture camps and strip-mined mountains. Yet heterotopias are also sites of radical experimentation and freedom, from Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond to urban hangouts of counterculture and sexual dissidence from Tango to Camp. The methodology of this course is highly participative, encouraging students to explore physical as well as virtual places and to contribute to the production of a dynamic, online-based archive of locations under analysis.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 421 Theater & Poetry of The Spanish Golden Age (4 Credits)
Typically offered occasionally
Selected texts from 16th- and 17th-century Spain (traditionally considered a ?Golden Age? of art and literature), read in the context of Counter-Reformation culture and Spain?s changing place in early-modern Europe. Authors include Garcilaso, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calder?n de la Barca, Quevedo, and G?ngora. The course may be taught with a focus on theatre or poetry or both.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 461 Topics in Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture (English) (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
See Topics in Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 462 Cervantes and Don Quixote (4 Credits)
Typically offered occasionally
Close readings of the principal prose works, particularly Don Quijote and/or the Novelas ejemplares, supplemented by critical and historical readings. Special attention paid to questions of madness and desire, authorship, the seductions and the dangers of reading, the status of representation, the relation between history and truth, the Inquisition, Spanish imperialism, the New World, the Morisco expulsion, etc.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 463 Spanish Theatre: (4 Credits)
This course will examine the representation and
presence of race, gender, sexuality, and power in early modern Spanish
drama. Taking a chronological frame, we will cover these themes beginning
with medieval Iberian pageantry and ending with the works of Pedro Calderón
de la Barca and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. To guide and nuance our class
discussions and readings, we will interrogate the staging and performance
of race, gender, sexuality, and power along the lines of: courtly and civic
coronations, pageantry, and tournaments; the Renaissance underworld of *La
Celestina*; the short-skit interludes of Lope de Rueda; Lope de Vega and
the *comedia nueva*; African dances and blackface performance;
cross-dressing and gender dissidence in Tirso de Molina and Sor Juana;
queer readings of Agustín Moreto's *El lindo Don Diego*; celebrity and the
stardom of actors; clothing, cosmetics, and stage props; and, architecture,
urban space and cities.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: Any course numbered SPAN-UA 3## where # represents any number.
SPAN-UA 470 Structure and Variation (4 Credits)
4 points, lecture/workshop. First offered spring 2016, and every spring thereafter. Prerequisites: SPAN-UA 100 Advanced Grammar and Composition or SPAN-UA 111 Advanced Spanish for Spanish Speakers, or the equivalent.
This course will consist of a general vision of the linguistic structure of the Spanish language, the basic tools (sound and word combinations) that enable speakers of different areas to understand each other, the study of sentence meaning and of how the language varies according to social, geographic and pragmatic factors. The first module will concentrate on the sounds of Spanish
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 498 Senior Honors Seminar (fall) (2-4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
n/a
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9004 Intermediate Spanish II (4 Credits)
Spanish 9004 (Intermediate Spanish II) is a four-credit intermediate level course that reviews and continues the material covered in Spanish 9003. Readings and discussions of contemporary Hispanic texts and review of the main grammatical concepts of Spanish. Completion of this course fulfills the CORE foreign language requirement.
The principal goal of this course is to provide you with the opportunity to improve your oral and written communication skills in the language, by applying all the grammar rules you have learned and will be reviewing. You will be expected to substantially increase your working vocabulary and make solid progress in reading and writing skills.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: SPAN-UA 9003.
SPAN-UA 9010 Intensive Elem Spanish (6 Credits)
Intensive Elementary Spanish, SPAN-UA 9010, is an accelerated 6-credit course that combines Spanish for Beginners I and II. This course focuses on the development of communication language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. These four skills will be approached and practiced in order to help students immerse and interact in a Spanish language context. Grammar will be taught through a communicative approach; classroom activities will integrate the language skills mentioned above. Classes will be conducted in Spanish. There will be emphasis on verbal practice, which will be carried out beyond the sentence level. Use and understanding of basic grammatical terminology will also be a necessary component of the course.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9012 Spain in Conversation (4 Credits)
This course promotes students' familiarity with several important social and cultural issues in contemporary Spain, with an emphasis on the development of conversational skills. The course explores six topics to encourage students' understanding of the country while expanding their vocabulary and improving their oral and written skills. The course does not focus on a formal review of Spanish grammar but rather on learning and practicing the grammar skills needed for class participation, oral presentations, and the writing of short essays. Co-curricular activities will include trips to sites in Madrid. Students will also complete a Final Research Project.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9015 Intensive Spanish for Advanced Beginners (6 Credits)
Intensive Spanish for Advanced Beginners is a six-credit intensive language course designed to help students with limited knowledge of Spanish strengthen their language skills and develop their cultural competency. Our immediate and ultimate goal is on improving communication skills ins Spanish through listening, speaking, reading and writing. Interaction and building learning communities are emphasized in all of our classroom and at-home activities. The course covers the material of Spanish 2 and Spanish 3 in one semester. Successful completion of this course prepares students for a fourth semester college Spanish language course.
By the end of the semester, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of reading and writing skills at the appropriate level. They will be able to read, write, speak and present information in Spanish with more fluency and confidence.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9020 Intensive Interm Spanish (6 Credits)
SPAN-UA 9020.002 (Intensive Intermediate Spanish) is a six-credit course that continues and reviews the introductory level Spanish learned in SPAN-UA.1 and SPAN-UA.2, or in SPANUA. 10, while introducing literary readings, short films, and more complex composition exercises. The course involves an integration of the four basic skills: listening, speaking,reading and writing with the aim to improve communication in Spanish. Through this integrated approach, you will participate in a practical application of vocabulary, grammar,and culture. The course emphasizes mastery of language skills through specific contexts and dialogical situations.At the end of the course students will read a novel which will also be used to review many of the grammatical points covered in the textbook and class work, to improve analytical thinking and literary criticism skills, as well as to verbally express opinions about the situations presented in the novel.
The goals of this course are to provide you with the opportunity to improve your oral and written communication skills in the language, by applying all the grammar rules you have learned and will be reviewing. You will be expected to substantially increase your working vocabulary and make solid progress in reading and writing skills.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 2 OR SPAN-UA 10 OR SPAN-UA 9002 OR SPAN-UA 9010 OR SPAN-SHU 10).
SPAN-UA 9023 Spanish for Healthcare Professionals (2 Credits)
Spanish for Healthcare Professionals is a two-credit course for beginner to
intermediate level students, designed to expand students' speaking skills
beyond the practical, day-to-day language functions in the medical
environment.
The goal of the course is to serve as a complement for the beginner and
intermediate level student pursuing a career in the health care professions
or a student generally interested in communicating with patients in
Spanish. It has been structured to serve the specific needs of the nursing,
medical and global public health student community. Students will typically
take this course in conjunction with a beginner or an intermediate level
Spanish language course. This course may not be used toward completion of
the CORE language requirement.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9025 Spain Today (in Spanish) (4 Credits)
The course is designed for students at the intermediate level that would
like to perfect their Spanish, as they expand their knowledge regarding
literature, cinema, and social and political problems that exist today
within modern Spanish society. The reading of different texts, such as
newspaper articles and short stories, and various videos and films
throughout the semester will serve to expand lexicon, strengthen grammar
and improve students' language oral and written skills. The students will
participate actively in class discussions and be guided to conduct their
own research on topics related to Spain today.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9026 Argentina Hoy/ Argentina Today (4 Credits)
The course is designed for students who want to perfect their Spanish as they expand their knowledge regarding social and political issues within modern Argentine society. The reading of different dramatic texts and viewing of various films throughout the semester will serve to expand lexicon, strengthen grammar and improve the student's style. The objective of this course is that the students familiarize themselves with everyday language of current newspapers and magazines, at the same time as they enter into the world of local culture. To this end, every week the students will analyze and debate the cultural and literary content texts that are to be studied and every two weeks the students will present a written composition of the topics covered in class. In the classroom linguistic correction will be emphasized along with auditory practice through the use of a wide range of materials and resources: theoretical explanations, comprehension and vocabulary exercises, film viewing, as well as exercises that highlight certain morphological aspects or grammatical usage of Spanish. Classes will be conducted in Spanish.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9035 Proficiency Extension for Heritage Spanish Speakers (2 Credits)
Spanish for Spanish Speaking Students is a two-credit course, designed for students who are native or near-native speakers, with little or no formal training in the language. These students are usually raised in a household where Spanish is the main language spoken. As this class is taken concurrently with an Intermediate or Advanced Grammar level course, we will focus on native speakers’ specific needs to expand their vocabulary choices, learn formal discourse conventions, and develop reading and writing competency. It is important to point out that by no means is this a class that imposes a specific variety of Spanish.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9050 Advanced Spanish (4 Credits)
For non-native speakers only. Expands and consolidates
students' lexical and grammatical understanding of the language and
introduces them to the fundamental principles of expository writing.
Utilizes exercises, readings, and intensive practice of various prose
techniques and styles.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9051 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (4 Credits)
For native and quasi-native speakers of Spanish whose
formal training in the language has been incomplete or otherwise irregular.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9062 Understanding Current Issues in Spain (4 Credits)
This course aims to develop students’ awareness about the contemporary culture of Spain, while improving students’ oral competence in Spanish. The culture and daily life of Spain in the 21st century will be examined throughout oral presentations, formal and informal conversations, interviews, reports, etc. Spain will be presented in its diversity, richness, and uniqueness with the help of supporting materials such as newspaper articles, TV and radio programs, commercials, short films, chats, etc. Finally, our goal is that the students gain an understanding of the new culture and that they be able to create new intercultural spaces by means of the comparisons to their own culture. This course is based on culture, language and training in oral communication.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9063 Spanish for Commerce (4 Credits)
This course is designed for students who wish to attain a command of Spanish in relation to the worlds of business and international relations. Special emphasis on the development of oral expression through activities that focus on business practices.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9064 La Lengua De Buenos Aires (Spanish) (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
La lengua de Buenos Aires is an advanced conversation course, which seeks to makestudents familiar with the most outstanding features of the Spanish of the Rio de la Plata area. It does also work as an introductory map to the main problems and questions of the culture of the city of Buenos Aires. Through a lively discussion of current cultural conflicts in politics, literature, music, drama and film, the course will enhance the listening and reading abilities of the students, while improving their speaking and writing proficiency in Spanish. These said conflicts and their transformations are key to an understanding of the way porteños speak and think. From a first section devoted to political discourse, we will move on to a consideration of its rhetorical precedents in argentine literature. This will give us the critical tools we need to further our inquiries in other fields such as rock, drama, journalism and film.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9112 Blogging Spain (in Spanish) (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
This course will provide students with basic journalistic skills so that
they may report on their cultural experience in Spain. We will work with
newspaper articles, podcasts, radio and TV programs from the Spanish media
to cover current social, political and cultural issues, such as
immigration, national identities, regional differences, gender roles,
tourism and famous personalities. The coverage of political and cultural
developments in Spain in the American media will also be examined to
complement our newsgathering and research. Course projects include the
publication of a blog with articles on the students´ experience at NYU in
Madrid – planned trips, visits to museums and other activities - as well as
visits to a radio or TV station in Madrid. Our aim will be to acquire a
broad understanding of contemporary Spanish society while developing new
linguistic skills in Spanish.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9206 Cultural History of Latin America: Ciudad, Paisaje y Arquitectura (In Spanish) (4 Credits)
The purpose of this course is to study Latin American cities,
landscape and architecture as they appear in aesthetic representations,
from the 19th century to the present, paying special attention to
Argentinean and Brazilian examples. Historical analysis will be used better
to understand present day cultural formations. To this end, we will explore
the spatial and landscape designs from the Argentinean pampa that led to
the conception of Sarmiento's civilización-barbarie dichotomy, especially
through the intellectual networks established by Victoria Ocampo with Le
Corbusier and the poet Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil with Lota de Macedo
Soares; we will follow the (political) history of the creation of the
Palermo parks; and we will trace the aesthetic and political writings of
the River Plate from 19th century to the present.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9207 Myths Icons & Invented Trad: A Cultural History of Latin America (in Spanish) (4 Credits)
Mitos, Íconos y Tradiciones Inventadas seeks to make students familiar with the rich and complex history of Latin America through the study of some of its most known and iconic cultural expressions. It does also work as an introductory map to the most influential and widespread approaches in Latin American social sciences, cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, students will not only have a first encounter with key historical processes that lie behind some well know cultural icons, but also will be introduced to arguments and ways of writing that help constitute modern Latin American educated Spanish. The course is structured in four topics. The first two weeks work as an introduction, and are devoted to ways of representing political authority in Latin America. The core of the course seeks to study and discuss three issues that are crucial for an understanding of our present: Violence in Latin America, Drugs and the Narco-machine, The Economy of Latin American Passion. Students will study these topics through a variety of cultural materials, including literary texts, film, papers from several disciplines, theater plays, art shows and songs.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9208 Intro to Latin American Studies (in English) (4 Credits)
This course is designed to introduce students to some of the most important problems and debates about Latin American history, society and culture. Latin America is a complex region full of contrasts. Its population is both racially and culturally heterogeneous. Its many countries share some common cultural roots and political origins, but also have distinct histories. National histories and individual societies did not always follow parallel paths. We will consider the general as well as the specific paths, and study the successes, failures, contrasts and future challenges facing the region. The structure of this course is primarily chronological but also thematic. We will start with the Conquest and its legacies and we will end with the problems that we experience today in big cities in Latin America. We will pay particular attention to the enduring legacies and challenges of some specific historical issues, such as slavery and the particular entrance of Latin America into global capitalism. The course favors a multi-disciplinary approach, and therefore we will use a different array of materials including films, letters, photographs and essays. We will emphasize first hand accounts of the topics we discuss.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9225 Key Words: Research Approaches (4 Credits)
Typically offered Spring
This course aims to introduce students to an array of critical and
methodological approaches to cultural production, particularly in relation
to the Iberian, Latin American and Luso-Brazilian world. It presents
interdisciplinary approaches to the formidably diverse cultural traditions
and productions from these cultural geographies, their national/local
particularities and their global projections. From oral and written
cultures to performance and aural worlds, from colonial to neocolonial
configurations, the study of Iberian, Latin American and Luso-Brazilian
cultures requires an interdisciplinary, multi-perspective approach.
The structure of the course functions as an introduction to the
cutting-edge research in our department, as different professors will
present and discuss their research and offer an introduction to particular
areas of study and expertise. The student will become acquainted with key
critical notions that shape our fields of study at the same time that
he/she will explore the research potential of these concepts by confronting
diverse object of studies —from literature and the performing arts to film
and print culture– in order to produce critical responses that will foster
the development of analytical and writing skills. By the end of the course,
the student will have an up-to-date sense of the critical discussions in
the field, and an array of tools that will be central for his/her future
courses in the department as well as in other lines of study.
Even though the course will normally be taught in English, students may
also be working through reading materials in Spanish and Portuguese, thus
helping the language acquisition at a university level.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9260 Cultural History of Spain (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
This course provides an introduction to the making of modern Spain through
the study of key cultural practices in literature, visual art, film, and
performance from the 19th century to the present. The course is organized
around key concepts, which may vary by semester and by instructor.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9330 Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall
Sample topics include literature of the fantastic, history and fiction in Spanish America, literature of the neobaroque, cultural relations between Spain and Spanish America, literature and ethnicity, and construction of gender in Spanish American
literature.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
Prerequisites: (SPAN-UA 50 OR SPAN-UA 51 OR SPAN-SHU 100 OR Advanced Placement Examination Spanish Literature >= 4).
SPAN-UA 9331 Culture, Identity and Politics in Latin America (In Spanish) (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
The course comprises topics related to culture, cultural identity and
cultural and identity politics referred to five cases located in Latin
America: 1) indigenous peoples in Argentina (areas of Chaco: Qom/toba-
Wichí and Mocoví, and Patagonia-Pampa: Rankülche) and indigenous peoples in
Amazon (Achuar) and, 2) Andean farmers (Aymaras) and indigenous workers of
Chaco (Toba), 3) popular sectors of the City of Buenos Aires ("villeros"
[shanty town residents], pickets, "barras bravas" [soccer hooligans]) and
4) middle class in San Pablo and Buenos Aires. Through this empirical tour
students will learn about and analyze different records related to the
debate on "culture" that commenced years ago: essentialism and
constructivism, redefinition of opposing concepts nature/culture,
multiculturalism, domination and resistance, activism, etc.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9332 Borges y Cultura Argentina (in Spanish) (4 Credits)
The course is designed to introduce students to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Through reading, analysis, and discussion of short fiction or poems and critical bibliography, the students will examine the dichotomy civilization-barbarism in Borges works (in connection to the Argentine cultural tradition since nineteenth century); some key topics in his texts such as tigers, labyrinths and libraries; the relationship between writing and translation (specifically in the English translations of his fictions); the political aspects of the literature produced by Borges and other contemporary Argentine writers on Eva Perón. The course will also develop the connections between Borges and other contemporary Argentine writers.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9360 Topics in Peninsular Spanish Literature and Culture (4 Credits)
Sample topics include the medieval epic, Spanish
mysticism, theory and literary practice in the Spanish baroque, Spanish
romanticism, contemporary Spanish poetry, Spanish postmodernism, and
contemporary Spanish culture.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 9361 Spanish Culture Through Cinema (in Spanish) (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall, Spring, and Summer terms
The course offers students a formal and theoretical analysis of some of the most important Spanish films from recent decades, highlighting the wide variety of genre and style in Spanish cinematographic production. Discussion of the movies will give relevance to their historical and social context. Special emphasis will be given to the three most relevant Spanish film directors of today: Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, and Alberto Rodríguez.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9400 Advanced Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture (Spanish) (4 Credits)
The course description for this Topics course varies depending on the topic taught. Please view the course description in the course notes section below.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 9401 Tpcs in Hisp Lit & Cult: (4 Credits)
The course description for this Topics in Spanish course varied depending varies depending on the topic taught. Pleas view the course description in the course notes section below.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: Yes
SPAN-UA 9411 Mapping the Americas (4 Credits)
Typically offered Spring
Culturally as well as economically and politically charged ideas of space
and place have been key to the mapping of the New World since the
beginnings of Western colonial expansion. The ‘New World’, from this point
of view, has in fact often functioned as a heterotopia of the Old.
Heterotopias, in Michel Foucault’s coinage, are counter-sites that exist
within the fabric of social or even natural space but that also contest,
challenge and invert it. Museums, gardens and hospitals but also boats and
colonies are examples of such places that stand out from the surrounding
spatial order, thus also making the latter ‘readable’ from a marginal point
of view. In the Americas, the colonial organization of space also
triggered a proliferation of ‘heterotopic’ sites: from the ‘frontiers’
crossing cities and regions that render transparent the violent and
contradictory foundations of American societies, to slave cemeteries and
prison islands, to clandestine torture camps and strip-mined mountains. Yet
heterotopias are also sites of radical experimentation and freedom, from
Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond to urban hangouts of counterculture and
sexual dissidence from Tango to Camp. The methodology of this course is
highly participative, encouraging students to explore physical as well as
virtual places and to contribute to the production of a dynamic,
online-based archive of locations under analysis.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9462 Cervantes and Don Quixote (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
Close readings of the principal prose works, particularly Don Quijote
and/or the Novelas ejemplares, supplemented by critical and historical
readings. Special attention paid to questions of madness and desire,
authorship, the seductions and the dangers of reading, the status of
representation, the relation between history and truth, the Inquisition,
Spanish imperialism, the New World, the Morisco expulsion, etc.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9463 Art Before/Beyond/Without Museums (4 Credits)
Only a tiny fraction of what we call art ends up in the frames and cases of museums. And unlike the artistic impulse, museums have only been around for a few centuries. In this course we will shift the focus on art as it is often studied in humanities departments: from product to process, from decontextualized works exhibited for strangers to tentative and site-specific expressions of diverse individuals and communities. The non-museum art-world of Madrid (artists’ studios, collectives, art fairs, auction houses) will be our textbook and laboratory. The course has an art-
making component; no previous artistic experience is required.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9466 Islam and Spain (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
From the 8th century until the 17th century, Islam played a crucial role in the history of the Iberian Peninsula. Today this period is often portrayed as one of inter-religious harmony, while al-Andalus is simultaneously mourned in contemporary Islamist discourse as a lost paradise. While we look at the history of Al-Andalus and assess the importance of the contributions of Al-Andalus to Europe and America, we evaluate the significance of its legacy in modern Spain. Furthermore, we will study the protagonist role that Spain has played in relations between Europe and the Mediterranean Islamic countries during the Modern Age. Students will gain further understanding and contextualization of current Arab-Muslim geopolitics. As a case study, we will address the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, as well as its ensuing process of decolonization and the consequences that shape the current international relations between the two neighboring countries, Spain and Morocco.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9471 Madrid Stories (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
This course uses documentary filmmaking to explore, observe and interrogate Madrid, its people, its neighborhoods, and its place in the Spanish imaginary. Through the intensive, semester-long process of producing a 5-7 minute documentary film in a small team, students will have an opportunity to explore, engage with, and document aspects of this protean city. It will encourage students to look, listen and explore Madrid with a documentarian’s gaze, to represent the city from new perspectives, and to seek out stories that deepen, contextualize or counterpose pre-existing notions of Madrid and Spain. The course, moreover, will provide a short introduction to documentary theory, tradition and practice.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9472 Migration and Cultural Diversity in Spain: Anthropological Approaches (In Spanish) (4 Credits)
Typically offered Fall and Spring
Migration and Cultural Diversity in Spain” analyzes current migratory flows and their implications, one of the key topics in Spain and the European Union today. This course explores anthropological approaches to developing theoretical and analytical frameworks for understanding the diversity and complexity of migrations and their effects on society and culture.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No
SPAN-UA 9481 Queer Cultures and Democracy (4 Credits)
In the last decade, many Latin American nations have witnessed decisive progress in the legal recognition of non-normative sexualities and gender identities. The conventional map of “advanced democracies” crafting models of democratization to be exported to “less developed” nations seems definitely challenged: a new understanding of the multiple temporalities of queer cultures in North and South America is even more necessary than ever.
In order to explore this multi-layered landscape, this course is aimed at reconstructing the historical detours of queer cultures in Buenos Aires and New York, considered enclaves of queer cultures in Argentina and the US respectively. The course revisits the last three decades in order to question the dominant and frequently reductive narratives of lineal progress. Taught simultaneously in Buenos Aires and New York, the class includes critical readings of queer cultural production as well as work on local archives and interviews with activists and GLTTBI organizations.
Grading: CAS Graded
Repeatable for additional credit: No