Spanish

2010-11

01 Elementary Spanish

Grammar, pronunciation, oral practice, and reading. Major emphasis on speaking and on aural comprehension. Three hours a week in class, plus two hours with a teaching assistant and regular work in the language laboratory.

For students without previous training in Spanish. This course prepares students for Spanish 03.  Limited to 15 students. Fall semester:  Lecturers Aldea-Agudo and Nieto-Cuebas and Assistants.  Spring semester:  Lecturer Aldea-Agudo and Assistants.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022

03 Intermediate Spanish

A continuation of Spanish 01. Intensive review of grammar and oral practice. Reading and analysis of literary texts. Three hours a week in class plus one hour with a teaching assistant. Prepares students for Spanish 05.

For students with less than three years of secondary school Spanish who score 3 or 4 on the Advanced Placement Examination.  Limited to 15 students. Fall semester: Lecturers Nieto-Cuebas and Garcia and Assistants.  Spring semester:  Lecturers Nieto-Cuebas and Aldea-Agudo and Assistants

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022

05 Advanced Spanish

While expanding on the grammar essentials covered in Spanish 03, this course helps the student further develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Spanish.  It is directed toward students who already have a good linguistic-communicative competency, broadening their contact with different kinds of texts, deepening their grammatical understanding, and enabling them to communicate through a variety of forms and registers.  Upon completing the course, students should be able to make themselves understood with accuracy and fluency and participate easily in a wide range of formal and informal communicative situations.  An array of literary texts and readings, not ordinarily considered literature and films, will be used.  Three hours a week in class plus one hour with a language assistant.  Conducted entirely in Spanish.  Prepares students for Spanish 07 and literature courses. This course counts for the major.

Requisite: Spanish 03 or permission of Language Coordinator. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester:  Lecturer Maillo and Assistants.  Spring semester:  Lecturer Garcia and Assistants.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022

06 Spanish Conversation

This course emphasizes fluency speaking and is designed to provide students the opportunity to practice the language through discussion of selected texts and topics of interest.  Spanish 06 prepares students to express opinions, ideas, points of view and critiques on debates, readings and films.  With this goal in mind, this course will also provide exposure to other language skills important to the development of fluency in speaking Spanish. The course will meet for three hours per week with the instructor and one hour with a teaching assistant. This course counts for the major.

For students who have completed Spanish 05 or with permission of Language Coordinator. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester:  Aldea-Agudo and Assistants.  Spring semester:  Lecturer Maillo and Assistants.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019

07 Advanced Spanish Composition

In this course students will learn how to approach writing as a process.  The emphasis is on writing as a communicative act rather than as a mere language exercise.  As such, emphasis is given to the interaction between the author and the text, the target audience, and the purpose and message of the final product.  In order to develop the necessary skills that good writers should have, the course will focus on expanding vocabulary, exploring rhetorical techniques for organizing information, developing strategies for writing, and characterizing the target audience(s).  At the same time we will insist upon critical readings, and the processes of revising and editing.  In addition, this course includes the study of written texts (narrative, description, poems, reports, essays, letters, etc.), and of literature's many genres and subgenres (prose, poetry, drama, etc.).  This course counts for the major.  Conducted entirely in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 05 or with permission of Language Coordinator. Limited to 15 students. Fall and spring semesters.  Lecturer Garcia.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018

09 Spanish for Heritage Speakers

This course is designed specifically for native or heritage speakers of Spanish with oral proficiency but little or no formal training in the language. Generally, these are learners who were raised in homes where Spanish was spoken. The course is designed to build on the language base students already possess. Spanish-speaking students are not viewed as using an “improper” form of Spanish that is incorrect or needs to be eliminated. Rather, their language is viewed as an extremely valid means of oral communication. The primary purpose of this course is to develop reading and writing skills, although all of four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are emphasized via cultural and community activities.

Limited to 15 students. Fall and spring semesters.  Lecturer Nieto-Cuebas.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015

11 Readings in Hispanic Literature

This course gives students the tools and critical vocabulary for advanced work reading the canon of Hispanic literatures (Spain, Latin America, and the Caribbean Basin).  Students will be able to identify aesthetic trends and historical periods such as the Golden Age, the Romantic era, the Generation of 1927, and "El Boom."  The syllabus will include a wide variety of authors of different national, political, and artistic persuasions.  A medium- to high-level knowledge of the Spanish language and reasonable proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Spanish are required.  This course counts for the major.  Conducted entirely in Spanish.

Requisite:  Spanish 07 or with permission of the Language Coordinator.  Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2010-11.  Professor Suarez.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022

12 Hispanic World: Past, Present and Future

A survey course that provides an understanding and appreciation of the Spanish-speaking world (including both North and South America and Spain) through language, geography, history, economics, sociopolitical issues, folklore, literature and art. The different units in this course are geographically oriented, and they will focus on individual countries or particular Hispanic groups. Writing skills will be refined by the completion of research papers, and communication skills will be developed further by class discussions and oral presentations. Comprehension will be enhanced by presenting students with literary texts, movies, documentaries and periodicals. The course is conducted entirely in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or consent of Language Coordinator. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Lecturer Maillo.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015

15 Latino Literature

[RC] A survey course that focuses on the polyphonic literary production of Latinos in the United States, from the colonial period (Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca) and the age of independence (Eugenio María de Hostos, José Martí), to the Chicano Movement (Cesar Chavez, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles), the Nuyorrican Poets (Miguel Algarín, Pedro Pietri, Tato Laviera), the Puerto Rican Young Lords (Iris Morales, Pablo “Yoruba” Guzmán), and the contemporary period (Julia Alvarez, Oscar Hijuelos, Esmeralda Santiago, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Junot Díaz). Attention will be given to various genres—poetry, fiction, chronicle, memoir, essay, and theater—exploring the continuity and change in a tradition made of distinct, often incompatible national groups like Mexican Americans, Cuban-Americans, and Puerto Ricans in the mainland. Conducted in English.

Spring semester.  Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2011

16 Golden Age Literature

A study of Spanish consciousness from the beginning through the Golden Age. Emphasis on the chivalric and picaresque traditions, mystical poetry, sacred and secular drama, and the invention of the novel. Conducted in Spanish.

For students who have completed Spanish 05, or the equivalent in secondary school Spanish (advanced standing or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement Examination).  Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Maraniss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2010

20 Generations of 1898 and 1927

Readings from major writers of the Spanish generations of 1898 and 1927: Baroja, Machado, Valle-Inclán, Miró, García Lorca, Salinas, Alberti, Guillén, Cernuda. Conducted in Spanish.

Fall semester. Professor Maraniss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Fall 2010, Fall 2012, Fall 2014

23 Caribbean Women Claiming Their Islands

This course will explore the works of 19th- and 20th-century women writers, who through homesickness, and political commitment, passionately re-wrote the histories of their islands based on their personal stories of love and belonging. We will focus on the Spanish Caribbean and its diverse diasporic experiences in Paris, Madrid, and New York. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or consent of the instructor. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Suarez.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008

28 Seventeenth-Century European Theater

(Offered as SPAN 28 and EUST 28.) Readings of plays by Spanish, English and French playwrights of what has been, in the modern world, the great century of the stage.  Works of Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Shakespeare, Molière, Racine, Webster and Wycherly.  Conducted in English.  Students will read plays in the original languages whenever possible.

Limited to 40 students.  Spring semester.  Professor Maraniss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2011, Fall 2013

32 Women Writers of Spain

Twentieth-century Spanish women writers have carved out a particular niche in the canon of Spanish literature. Often envisioned as a single entity, they have, however, distinguished themselves as just as unique as individual writers as their male counterparts. This course will consider contemporary novels, short fiction, essays and poetry authored by women with an overarching question of how one defines an escritura femenina in Spain and what - if anything - differentiates it as a gendered space from other modes of writing. While the course will focus on women writers and the representation of the feminine in Spanish writing, we will also examine texts that present an un-gendered space as a point of comparison and contrast. Conducted in Spanish. 

Requisite: Spanish 07. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Brenneis.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2016

33 Spanish Film

This course features Luis Buñuel, his early association with the Spanish literary and artistic vanguard (Valle-Inclán, García Lorca, Dalí), his life and his work within surrealism in France, commercialism in Hollywood, exile in Mexico, and later apotheosis as an old master of European cinema. Conducted in English.

Limited to 35 students. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Maraniss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2007, Spring 2010

34 Pedro Almodóvar

(Offered as SPAN 34 and FAMS 34.)  This course studies the films of Spanish director and screenwriter Pedro Almodóvar. Although he began as European cinema's favorite bad boy, Almodóvar has since restyled himself and his "art" in accordance with traditional authorial discourse and has become one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the world. This process of evolution roughly coincides with--and must be studied in relation to--Spain's period of rapid political and cultural transformation since the death of right-wing military dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. The course also addresses the ways Almodóvar's work addresses broader issues such as consumerism, ontology, gender, and film authorship itself.  This course requires once-per-week film screenings at a time to be determined.  Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite:  Spanish 07 or consent of the instructor.  Fall semester.  Visiting Professor Crumbaugh.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010

36 Representation and Reality in Spanish Cinema

A critical overview of the role filmmakers from varied backgrounds have taken in interpreting similar trends in contemporary Spanish culture and society. By analyzing recent Spanish cinema along with selected fictional and non-fictional texts on current issues in Spain, we will explore such questions as women's roles in contemporary society, immigration and exile, globalization, and experiences of war and violence, among other themes. This course will take a transatlantic approach, examining how these issues are imagined within Spain as well as by filmmakers and writers from the Americas, and study the sociological, cultural and political forces that have inspired such cinematic representations. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 05, 07 or consent of the instructor. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Brenneis.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 2009, Spring 2013, Spring 2017, Spring 2021

41 Haiti in Fact and Fiction

This seminar focuses on an exploration of Haiti, its history and the fiction which that history and experience—as place, emblem, broader symbol, and metaphor—have given rise to. The site of a signal revolution which “lies at the crossroads of multiple discourses as a defining moment in world history,” Haiti is the world’s only Republic brought into being by the successful revolt of slaves. It is Latin America’s first post-colonial state, as well as the second of this hemisphere’s independent nations. It is, likewise, initial locale, provoking source and inspiration for the literary “Marvelous American Reality” Alejo Carpentier and the Haitian novelist Jacques Stéphen Alexis both consider as archetypically Haitian and American: a reality of marvel which, they maintain, Haiti at once produces, embodies, and imaginatively inspires.

With the elements of Haitian history as our common fund and contextual backdrop, students will critically read and compare Haitian theme novels by Hispanic writers such as Carpentier (Cuba) with those of contemporary Haitian authors in whose work the enduring legacies, current dilemmas and complexities of Haiti’s experience are also the principal object of narrative passion and concern.

This course will be taught in English.  Spanish majors who wish to count this course toward fulfillment of requirements will be invited to write papers in Spanish.

Fall semester. Visiting Professor Márquez.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010

44 The Spanish Civil War: Art, Politics, and Violence

(RC) Seventy years ago, the Spanish Second Republic was engaged in a civil conflict that had become a holy war to the European left and right. This course will examine the effects of the war and its passions upon the lives and works of several exemplary writers and artists in England (Orwell, Auden, Romilly, Cornford), France (Malraux, Bernanos, Simon), Spain (Machado, Hernández, Lorca, Picasso), the United States (Hemingway, Dos Passos), and South America (Neruda, Vallejo). Students are encouraged to read texts in the original languages whenever possible. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Maraniss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Spring 2011

46 Cuba after 1989: Culture, Film, and Literature

(RC) In 1989 the Berlin Wall was chiseled away, changing global culture and politics forever. In Eastern Europe, the rhetoric and divisions necessitated to fuel the cold war were transformed into new discourses of democracy and capitalist opportunities. In contrast, Cuba, remaining an iron-clad communist state, fell into a deep “periódo especial,” which ushered in a two-tiered economy greatly dependent on the European tourist industry. The revolutionary dream, many would argue, was then voided. Arguably, “fin-de-siglo” Cuba is a state in crisis. And a new, rich, often hypnotic, production of culture, film, and literature is available to give us a sensational glimpse of the latest of Cuban conditions. In this class we will be reading and screening some of the most outstanding materials from this period. Authors will include Abilio Estévez, Zoe Valdés, Pedro Juan Guttiérez, and Daína Chaviano. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 7 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Suárez.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2009, Fall 2012, Fall 2014

55 Madrid

Considered the heart of Spain by some and an authoritative figurehead by others, Madrid is unquestionably a space of cultural and political conflict while serving as a visible intermediary between the Iberian Peninsula and the world. Incorporating an interdisciplinary study of film, popular music, fiction, plastic arts, political movements, history and topography of the city, this course will seek to explore the place of Madrid in the Spanish and global popular imagination. Although we will delve into the city’s history, the course will place particular emphasis on the 1980s movida madrileña through the present-day role of Madrid in global politics, particularly as pertains to the 2004 terrorist attacks and their political and cultural aftermath. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or consent of the instructor. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Brenneis.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2012

56 Puerto Rican Flows

In this class we will study Puerto Rico's Commonwealth Status, its implications, and the resulting diasporas, film, and literature. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or consent of the instructor. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Suárez.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2012

60 Jorge Luis Borges

A comprehensive study of the style, originality and influence of the contemporary Argentine author (1899-1986). His essays, poetry, and fiction will be discussed in the context of Latin American and international literature. Conducted in Spanish.

Requiste: Spanish 07 or equivalent. Open to juniors and seniors or with consent of the instructor. Limited to 20 students.  Omitted 2010-11. Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Spring 2012

61 Robert Bolaño

(RC) An exploration of the Chilean writer’s life and work in the context of the Pinochet coup, the effects of the Cold War, and his exile in Mexico and Spain. Attention will be given to Bolaño as a self-professed outcast from the mainstream tradition in Latin American literature and his connection to Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Arlt, and Nicanor Parra, among other precursors. His stories (Last Evenings on Earth), novellas (Distant Star, Nazi Literature in the Americas, etc.), and portions of The Savage Detectives and 2666 will be analyzed in detail. Conducted in Spanish. 

Requisite:  Spanish 07 or equivalent.  Limited to juniors and seniors, or with consent of the professor.  Fall semester. Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2010

62 Pablo Neruda

An exploration of the life and work of the prolific Chilean poet (1904-1973) and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His work will be read chronologically, starting with Twenty Love Poems and a Song Of Despair and ending with his five posthumous collections. Special attention will be paid to Residence On Earth and Canto General. The counterpoint of politics and literature will define the classroom discussion. Neruda’s role as witness of, and sometimes participant in, the Spanish Civil War, the Cuban Revolution, the workers’ and students’ upheaval in Latin America in the sixties, and the failed presidency of Salvador Allende in Chile will serve as background. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2009, Spring 2011, Fall 2013

63 One Hundred Years of Solitude

(RC) A detailed study of the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1967. Although other works written by the Colombian author will also be discussed (stories, essays, reportage, and fragments of other novels), the course will concentrate on the structure, style, motifs, historical and aesthetic context of the masterwork that brought him the Nobel Prize in Literature. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 12 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students.  Omitted 2010-11. Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2009, Spring 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2021

65 Cervantes

Don Quixote de la Mancha and some of Cervantes' "exemplary novels" will be read, along with other Spanish works of the time, which were present at the novels' birth.  Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite:  Spanish 05 or equivalent.  Not open to students who have taken Spanish 64.  Limited to 25 students.  Fall semester.  Professor Maraniss.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2009, Fall 2010

77, 78 Senior Departmental Honors

One single course.

Fall semester. The Department.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022

82 Latin America's Great Novels of the Earth

Critics have raved that the novels of the earth, novelas telúricas, are unquestionably part of an important group of foundational fictions that shaped and informed the boom writers of Latin America. Considered some of the greatest writing in their respective countries, these novels and short stories gave detailed descriptions of the land, the local folk, and dying regionalisms. These texts show the struggles of the people to survive the conditions imposed by modernism, and the pueblo’s resilience and courage. We will engage in a sustained textual analysis of Doña Bárbara by Rómulo Gallegos, Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Guiraldes, Los Pasos Perdidos by Alejo Carpentier, and select short stories by Horacio Quiroga. All primary readings and writing are in Spanish. Some of the critical background texts may be in English. 

Requisite:  Spanish 11, 12 or consent of the instructor.  Limited to 18 students. Omitted 2010-11.  Professor Suárez.

2023-24: Not offered

85 Early Spanish American Women Writers

(Offered as SPAN 85 and WAGS 09.) (RC) In this course we will study the writings of women of Spanish America from 1556 to the end of the 19th century, focusing on writers who came from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Peru and Colombia.  Their writings cover the colonial period as well as that of post-independence, and trace the ever-strengthening role of the female voice in Spanish American literature.  There are the voices of an early settler in Argentina and Paraguay, three nuns (Catalina de Erauso, transvestite and soldier; the incomparable Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; and the visionary Madre Castillo) followed by an important group of 19th century women who were finally able to make a living by their pen. The most famous of these is Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, who wrote the first antislavery novel of the Americas, eleven years ahead of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Most of them knew and supported each other by ties of friendship and a strong professional network.  In all of these voices one will hear articulated the desire for the right to express themselves as women and to be heard in a field that was decidedly masculine and often hostile to their efforts.  Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite:  Spanish 7, 11 or 12 or consent of the instructor.  Limited to 15 students.  Spring semester.  Visiting Professor Scott.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2011

88 Argentina, Brazil, Chile: Film and Politics of Democratization

(Offered as SPAN 88 and POSC 25 [CP, GP].) This team-taught course will examine processes of democratization through the interdisciplinary lenses of political science and cultural/literary theory. By reviewing films, critical texts, cases, and causal arguments, we will explore the history of repressive regimes, the transitions to democracy, and the challenges of enhancing the "quality" of democracy in contemporary Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

The course will be taught twice a week. One day a week, the entire class will meet in one room. The other day, the class will break into two discussion groups, one of which will be conducted entirely in Spanish and will count specifically for Spanish majors. Command of Spanish is not required except for students interested in receiving credit for their Spanish major.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 40 students. Omitted 2010-11. Professors Corrales and Suárez. 

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008

89 Postwar Spain and the Novel

Postwar Spanish novelists were often subject to censorship and overt oppression by the Franco dictatorship while they struggled to understand their own history and translate it onto the page. In this course, we will study the historical and cultural background of dictatorship and democratic Spain (1940-present), reading novels and short fiction that reflect the diversity of modern Spanish literature and its authors. In addition, students will read historical accounts and critical/theoretical materials in order to gain a more complete understanding of how scholars approach the era and its reflection in literature, and view films that attempt to grapple with questions of history and narration in postwar Spain. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite:  Spanish 11, 12 or consent of the instructor.  Omitted 2010-11.  Professor Brenneis.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2010, Spring 2013

90 Spanish Detectives and the género negro

An examination of the Spanish detective narrative as a manifestation of Transition-era Spanish society’s struggles with social and political chaos. The course will incorporate short narrative from Latin America as well as comparisons to British and American conventions in order to convey the unique nature of the Spanish género negro during and after the Franco dictatorship, as well as in present-day popular works. It will include a critical examination of a genre that has both resided on and represented the margins of Spanish society and its foray in recent years into a mainstream and highly exportable cultural phenomenon. Where possible, film and other media will be incorporated. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: Spanish 07 or consent of the instructor. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Brenneis.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2008, Fall 2012

92 Latin American Short Story

(RC) A Talmudic reading of the short-story tradition in Latin America.  Although the course starts with 19th- and early 20th-century pioneers, special attention is given to the masterful practitioners who were writing from the 1940s onward (Borges, Rulfo, Hernández, Carpentier, Cortázar, García Márquez).  Contemporary authors (Allende, Bega, Bolaño, Aira) and even younger voices are also contemplated.  The focus is on appraising a tradition constantly being revamped through its promiscuous relationship with other literary genres (essay, novel, poem, reportage, crónica, testimonio).  Students reflect on structural and linguistic devices as well as on rivalries within the tradition and foreign influences (Poem, Maupassant, Chekhov, Hemingway, et al).  Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite:  Spanish 11, 12 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2010-11.  Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2010

94 Spanglish

A cultural study of language in the Hispanic world (Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States), this course spans almost five hundred years, from the arrival of Spanish to the Americas with Columbus' first voyage, to present-day "pocho lingo" in Los Angeles.  It focuses on the verbal interactions of the missionaries to Florida and the Southwest, the linguistic repercussions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the age of acculturation in the early half of the 20th century, the political agitation of the Chicano Movement as manifested in word games, and the hip-hop age of agitprop.  Students will analyze works by Junor Díaz, Giannina Braschi, Susana Chávez-Silverman, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, and others.  Topics like translation, Bilingual Education, lexicography, and the social impact of mass media will be contemplated.  Emphasis will be made on the various modalities of Spanglish, such as Dominicanish, Cubonics, and Nuyorican.  Plus, the development of Spanglish as a street jargon will be compared to Yiddish, Black English, and other minority tongues.  Conducted in English.

Limited to 25 students.  Omitted 2010-11.  Professor Stavans.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2009, Fall 2014, Fall 2017

97, 97H, 98, 98H Special Topics

The Department calls attention to the fact that Special Topics courses may be offered to students on either an individual or group basis.

Students interested in forming a group course on some aspect of Hispanic life and culture are invited to talk over possibilities with a representative of the Department. When possible, this should be done several weeks in advance of the semester in which the course is to be taken.

Spring semester.

2023-24: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011