Spring 2022 Class Schedule

• Spring 2022 Class Schedule
• Spring 2022 Course Descriptions

Spring 2022 class Schedule

Spring 2022 course descriptions

PORTUGUESE 115-2: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers

For students proficient in Spanish. Comparative sociolinguistic and interactive approach to communicative competence emphasizing pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure, and patterns of spoken and written Portuguese.Prerequisite: PORT 115-1.This course is equivalent to PORT 121-3.

PORT 201-0: Reading and Speaking Portuguese

 This intermediate course is designed to expand mastery in reading and speaking Brazilian Portuguese through select cultural videos, readings of literary cronicas, periodicals, and the Internet. Prerequisite: PORT 115-2, PORT 121-3, or sufficient score on placement examination.

PORT 380-0: Contemporary Brazil: Literature and Film

This course will explore selected themes and aesthetic trends in Brazilian literature and film (but mostly film) produced in the 21st century. We will be particularly interested in discussing how in the last two decades a number of Brazilian films have blurred the boundaries between fiction and documentary, with an increasing emphasis on social and historical issues. In order to do so, we will first study the development of realism in literature throughout the 20th century. Although we will pay some attention to film techniques, our major concern will be with narrative strategies, ideological content and the ethics of representation. Although there
will inevitably be days in which I will lecture, we will rely heavily on class discussion in a seminar format. Students will have the opportunity to do their readings and write their papers in English or Portuguese.

SPANISH 101-3: Elementary Spanish

Third course of a three-quarter sequence in introductory Spanish. Students will learn Spanish in order to use it beyond the classroom in meaningful and authentic ways at the Intermediate Low level of proficiency. This means that students will be able to communicate messages on everyday topics that affect them directly.

Prerequisite: SPANISH 101-2

SPANISH 115-2: Accelerated Elementary Spanish

Second course of a two-quarter sequence in introductory Spanish designed for students with previous experience in Spanish. Students will learn Spanish in order to use it beyond the classroom in meaningful and authentic ways at the Intermediate Low level of proficiency. This means that students will be able to communicate messages on everyday topics that affect them directly. Offered in spring. Prerequisite: SPANISH 115-1.

SPANISH 121-3: Intermediate Spanish

Third course in a three-quarter sequence in Intermediate Spanish. Further development of communicative proficiency with an emphasis on the functional use of Spanish and cultural content and reflection. Prerequisite: SPANISH 121-2.

SPANISH 199-0: Language in Context: Contemporary Spain

An introduction to the culture and sociopolitical issues of contemporary Spain is the basis for reviewing and solidifying communicative functions that pose certain challenges to Spanish learners, and for fully integrating all language skills in Spanish. Prerequisite: SPANISH 121-3, SPANISH 125-0, AP score of 4, or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam.

SPANISH 201-0: Conversation on Human Rights: Latin America

This course is designed to develop all communication modes in Spanish through the interpretation and analysis of current topics in Spain and Latin America. The analysis of media will serve as an entry point for students to individually explore how past events have shaped current circumstances of Spanish-speaking countries. Prerequisite: SPANISH 121-3, SPANISH 125-0, SPANISH 199-0, AP4, Departmental Placement (Online Placement Test and Reassessment)

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 the individual and society. Emphasis on textual analysis and development of descriptive, narrative and argumentative essays. Prerequisite: SPANISH 201-0, AP score of 5, or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam.

SPANISH 204-0: Reading and Writing the Art of Protest

SPANISH 205-0: Spanish for Professions: Health Care

Advanced course to develop communication skills in Spanish for healthcare purposes. Emphasis on language skills for the medical field, specialized terminology and vocabulary, and cultural nuances. Prerequisite: New SPANISH 201-0 (Fall 2022), Spanish 203-0 or AP score of 5.

SPANISH 207-0: Spanish for Heritage Speakers

Third course in a sequence for heritage language learners. Focuses on the development of writing skills and communicative abilities in a formal, academic register through the study of academic and literary texts that examine current issues related to the Spanish-speaking world and in particular, the Latinx community in the U.S. Prerequisite: SPANISH 197-0, AP score of 5, or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam. 

SPANISH 250-0: Literature in Spain Before 1700

This course will offer a panorama of Spanish literature from the Medieval period to the end of the Golden Age. Our literary readings will be the baseline for understanding the social and historical context of the transformations that the Spanish empire endured throughout the centuries. We will pay especial attention to the Arabic and New World’s influence on the cultural production of Spain. In doing so, we will delve into the significant developments brought to literary form by the Spanish authors.

SPANISH 251-0: Literature in Spain Since 1700

This course offers an overview of major movements and debates of Spanish modern literature, in conjunction with the study of key literary terms and methodology. Students will be able to improve their oral and written Spanish, as they familiarize themselves with the Spanish modern literature as well as the main currents of literary criticism. We will think in and out of the canon of Spanish literature with a critical approach. Issues such as the construction and deconstruction of authorship, the audience, literary genres, avant-garde experimentation and censorship will be discussed. Novels, poetry, and plays are analyzed in their political and cultural context, with an emphasis on the impact of empire and post-empire, feminism, multi-culturalism, and plurilingualism. This course provides a foundation to further study literature and culture in more advanced courses.

SPANISH 260-0: Literature in Latin America before 1888

TBD

SPANISH 261-0: Literature in Latin America since 1888

This course provides an overview of some of the major trends in Latin American literature and culture since 1888, while at the same time offering opportunities to improve students’ oral and written Spanish. The course will emphasize various literary styles and ideological constructions that, in different ways, reflect the complexity of Latin American cultures. While introducing students to the social and historical context in which the works were written, the course will focus on the following issues: the cultural and political dimensions of literature; the representation of class, gender, and race; literary enactments of modernity through the literary form and avant-garde aesthetics; the tensions between nationalism and cosmopolitism; and the positionality of Latin American literatures during and after the Cold War.

SPANISH 277-0: Introduction to latina/o Literature

 This course will introduce students to major Latina/o/x authors, genres, and movements by exploring a diverse corpus of literary texts. We will take a historical approach, examining how Latinx writers from various communities (Puerto Rican, Mexican American, Cuban American, Dominican American, Colombian American) have understood their relationship to the United States from the late nineteenth century up to the present. We will also question the category of Latinx. How do the experiences and histories of the various groups described under that label benefit from and/or resist identification as a single ethnicity? Most importantly, we will ask what poetry, memoirs, and novels have to offer as a way of understanding Latinx experiences. By the end of the quarter students will have an overview of the heterogeneous literary voices and aesthetics that constitute US Latinx literature.

SPANISH 340-0: Colonial Latin American Literature

This course focuses on colonial Latin America in the late 16^th and early 17^th century. Within this period, we will examine narrative and poetic works by Indigenous and European authors in which the nature, history, and implications of the recent history of the “New World” (in particular, the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese) is contested, rewritten, and reimagined. We will be especially interested in the different ways that these works engage with both local and transatlantic influences. Key terms and questions to be explored include polemics, prophecy, hybridity, plurality, extirpation, preservation, and translation. While the primary language of the class will be Spanish, sources will include texts originally written in multiple Indigenous and European languages (provided in translation in Spanish or English).

SPANISH 343-0: Latin American  Avant-Gardes

Will be updated soon

SPANISH 395-0: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino and/or Iberian Cultures

  We will study four contemporary Spanish novels that represent or perform different types of (racist, sexist, ageist, environmental) micro-violence. They are written by diverse, emerging authors and published in the last few years. Our purpose is to understand the possibilities of the genre novel in helping us express, explore, and reflect on every-day, slow violence. This course will be given in coordination between Northwestern University and Princeton University, where another group of students is taking a similar course. To foster interaction and collaboration between students from both institutions, we will host two of the novel authors (one in person, one over zoom), organize workshops, and write assignments together. We all will examine why to write novels, what is micro-violence, and how the intimate experience of reading and the shared experience of discussing a novel can help us grasp the quotidian violence we and others experience, stimulate empathy, and promote solidarity.

SPANISH 397-0-2: Global Im/Mobilities

This seminar asks the following questions about borders, migration, and citizenship: (1) What are the forces—political, cultural, and environmental—that facilitate or inhibit human circulation? (2) How do governments, NGOs, scholars, and wider publics draw distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate forms of human mobility (e.g., “economic migrants” versus “refugees”)? (3) How are migrants affected by efforts to regulate their movement, and what alternative forms of citizenship and belonging have they created? We will draw on a broad range of geographical examples and read widely across disciplines. Collectively, we will explore the ways that global im/mobilities have been lived, and how they shape our world today.

SPANISH 397-0-3: Jews and Muslims in Spain

This undergraduate seminar examines the shifting place of Jews and Muslims in contemporary Spain. Together, we will explore several interrelated questions: (1) How have “Spain” and “Europe” variously been defined as modern, white, Christian, or secular by figuring Jews and Muslims as others? (2) How have these terms and the forms of life and history that they purport to represent changed over time? (3) What are the similarities and differences between the “Jewish Question” and the “Muslim Problem”? (4) How do Jews and Muslims understand themselves in relation to Spain, Europe, and to each other? At a time when racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and right-wing populist movements are ascendant in Spain and across Europe, we will work collaboratively to not only answer these questions, but to formulate new ones. To do so, we will consult scholarship in anthropology, history, cultural theory, and philosophy as well as on fiction, film, and journalism as resources. Throughout the term, we will be especially attuned to the forms of inclusion and exclusion that have affected Jews and Muslims in Spain, always with an eye toward how such abstractions come to matter in everyday life.

SPANPORT 410-0: Topics in Early Modern Literature and Cultures

This course critically examines the relationship between corporeality and language in the early modern Iberian transatlantic. To this end, we will study a range of texts, including grammars and linguistic treatises, doctrinal and Inquisitorial documents, and lyric and narrative poetry. We will read these materials in light of and against scholarly debates on topics including glottopolitics, mediascapes, the sensorium, etc. While the primary language of the class will be Spanish, sources will include texts originally written in multiple Indigenous and European languages.

SPANPORT 425-0: Studies in Contemporary Literatures and Cultures

In this course we will study Spain’s development into a multicultural and multiracial nation as a result of mass immigration since the 80s. Through an exploration of political documents, cultural studies, film and literature, we will analyze and discuss the questions of immigration and multiculturalism in Spain from 1985 to the present. Throughout the course we will consider the following questions: How has Spain changed in cultural terms and how have those changes affected conceptualizations of race and migration?

SPANPORT 560-0: Foreign Language Teaching: Theory and Practice

A foundation of theories and research in second language acquisition and second language pedagogy, along with analysis and practical application for the Spanish language classroom. One 3-hour class meeting a week. Outside of the classroom, students will observe three classes of Spanish language courses taught at Northwestern University.

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