Winter 2022 Class Schedule
Winter 2022 class Schedule
Winter 2022 course descriptions
PORTUGUESE 115-1: 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: AP 4 or equivalent on the Spanish Language Placement Exam.
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.
PORTUGUESE 210-0: Icons, Legends, and Myths in Brazil
Representations in graphic materials, documentaries, film, theater, folklore, narrative fiction, and popular music of historical, literary, and popular figures in the national imagination. May include English or Portuguese discussion sections. Prerequisite for Portuguese section: PORT 201-0, PORT 202-0, or sufficient score on placement exam. Prerequisite for English section: none.
Historical Studies Distro Area
Interdisciplinary Distro - See Rules
Literature Fine Arts Distro Area
PORTUGUESE 303-0: Topics in Advanced Portuguese
Advanced review of grammar concepts and idiomatic use of spoken and written Portuguese. Deals with a variety of topics in the context of Brazilian culture, history, literature, and current events. May be taken more than once for credit with change of topic.Prerequisite: PORT 202-0 or equivalent.
SPANISH 101-2: Elementary Spanish
Class two of this three-quarter, first-year language course is only for students who have never studied Spanish or studied it less than 2 years in high school. By the end of the sequence, students will be able to use Spanish beyond the classroom in meaningful and authentic ways at the Intermediate Low level of proficiency. This means that students will be able to communicate short messages on everyday topics that affect them directly.
Students may not begin Spanish 101 in the middle of the sequence.
SPANISH 105-6: First-Year Seminar on the Research University: Its Past, Future and Present
The recent proposal to eliminate virtually all humanities majors from the University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point (March 2018), one of many such proposals in the last few years, will serve us as an entryway into understanding not just the public university and the humanities, but the modern research university, both public and private, and the mission of the undergraduate liberal arts and graduate education within it. How did the university reach its current manifestation and where does it go from here? Beginning with an overview of its origins in the German Enlightenment, the seminar will then shift to focus on the development of existing departments and programs at the end of the nineteenth century and the disciplinary knowledge which they house nowadays. We will be especially interested in the rise of the research university in the United States after 1945 and its decline some forty years later. We will seek to understand undergraduate liberal arts education and graduate education within the pedagogical and administrative frameworks in which they function. What is their relationship to job markets, and how do different institutions position their students in relation to those markets? We will also study the university’s various members and constituencies, such as students, faculty, and administrators, and their roles. Within this context, we will explore challenges facing the modern research university, including the impact of neoliberal policies and mounting student debt, public vs. private institutions, the decline of academic freedom, the high cost of postsecondary education, the growth of contingent labor, the downsizing of tenure-track faculty, the corporatization of university administration, technical training vs. liberal arts curricula, and the introduction of consumer culture into the higher education, among others.
SPANISH 115-1: Accelerated Elementary Spanish
This two-quarter (Winter and Spring Quarters), first-year language course in introductory Spanish is designed for students with previous experience in Spanish. By the end of the sequence, students will be able to use Spanish beyond the classroom in meaningful and authentic ways at the Intermediate Low level of proficiency. This means that students will be able to communicate short messages on everyday topics that affect them directly.
To enroll in Spanish 115, students must take the Spanish Language Placement Test. Students may not enroll in 115-2 without having completed 115-1.
SPANISH 121-2: Intermediate Spanish
This three-quarter, second-year language course in intermediate Spanish is designed to further develop the intercultural communicative proficiency of students, with an emphasis on the functional use of Spanish and cultural content and reflection. By the end of the sequence, students will be able to use Spanish beyond the classroom in meaningful and authentic ways at the Intermediate High level of proficiency. Students may not begin Spanish 121 in the middle of the sequence. Successful completion of 121-3 fulfills the Weinberg foreign language requirement.
SPANISH 197-0: Language in Context: Latinos, Language and Culture
A course (only offered in Winter Quarter) for heritage learners of Spanish with an intermediate-high/advanced-low level of proficiency. The course introduces students to the socio-political and linguistic richness of Spanish-speaking communities in the United States.
Prerequisite: Spanish 121-3, Spanish 125-0, or Spanish 127-0, AP score of 4 or the Spanish Language Placement Test.
SPANISH 199-0: Language in Context: Contemporary Spain
First course of a third-year sequence designed to develop speaking and writing skills in Spanish at the advanced level of proficiency. Spanish 199 is a student-centered course that serves as an introduction to the recent history, politics and society of contemporary Spain, while solidifying some grammatical patterns, and acquiring new vocabulary related to the content covered.
Prerequisite: Spanish 121-3 or Spanish 125-0, AP score of 4 on the Spanish Language and/or Literature or the Spanish Language Placement Test.
SPANISH 201-0: Conversation on Human Rights: Latin America
Second course of a third-year sequence designed to develop speaking and writing skills in Spanish at the advanced level of proficiency. Spanish 201 introduces students to human rights in Latin America during the 20th and 21st centuries. This topic will be addressed through readings, analysis and discussions of articles, literary and historical texts, as well as films. A special focus will be on countries in the Southern Cone and on accurate informal and formal conversation.
Prerequisite: Spanish 199-0 or Spanish Language Placement Test.
SPANISH 203-0: Individual and Society through Written Expression
Third course of a third-year sequence designed to develop speaking and writing skills in Spanish at the advanced level of proficiency. Spanish 203 focuses on the development of writing skills and the review of grammar through an examination of the relationship between the individual and society. Emphasis on textual analysis and development of descriptive, narrative and argumentative essays. This course counts towards the major/minor in Spanish.
This course counts towards the major/minor in Spanish.
Prerequisite: AP score of 5 on the Spanish Language or Literature Exam, Spanish 201-0 or Spanish Language Placement Test.
SPANISH 204-0: Reading and Writing the Art of Protest
Last course of a third-year sequence designed to develop speaking and writing skills in Spanish at the advanced level of proficiency. Spanish 204 focuses on the development of writing skills and the review of grammar through the analysis of socially-committed art. Emphasis on cultural analysis, close readings and the development of longer essays.
This course counts towards the major/minor in Spanish.
Prerequisite: Spanish 203-0 or 207-0.
SPANISH 223-0: Cervantes (Taught in English)
Don Quixote, one could argue, is a novel about how not to write and how not to read. The author, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, pens the work in order to demonstrate the absurdity of chivalric romances, the bestsellers of his day. The protagonist, Don Quixote, is incapable of understanding the difference between the fictions he reads and the real world around him. While all this happened some four hundred years ago, reading and writing are still central to our everyday lives (case in point: you are reading this description to decide whether you will enroll in this class). In the spirit of Cervantes, we will study his famous text with a focus on the practices of reading and writing—how and why did people read and write in 17th-century Spain? How were different forms of writing connected to class, gender, race, and religion? What did literacy mean in the early modern world and what implications does this have for us today? We will employ different methods of reading (close, distant, collective, etc.) and different forms of writing (analytical, creative, etc.) to gain a better understanding of this key text. The class will be taught in English.
SPANISH 251-0: Literature in Spain since 1700
In this course students will get a survey of modern literature written in Spain. We will analyze how the works reflect the changes faced by Spanish societies during and after the decline of the Empire and the identity struggles for the consolidation of a modern national project. Throughout the course, we will also work on the use of basic categories and tools for literary analysis of poetry, short fiction, and drama.
SPANISH 260-0: Literature in Latin America before 1888
This course provides a survey of major Latin American literary works, from pre-Columbian traditions to the era before the emergence of modernism in the late 19th century. We will take a critical approach to the idea of “literature” by analyzing, for example, poetic and dramatic texts alongside historical, legal, and religious documents. Key themes will include the articulation, transformation, and preservation of identity; the tensions and contradictions of the colonial era; and the uneven emergence of republics. While the primary language of the class will be Spanish, we will also consider the linguistic diversity of Latin America through translations of works in Indigenous and European languages.
SPANISH 261-0: Literature in Latin America since 1888
This course provides an overview of some of the major literary figures in Latin American literature and culture since 1888, while at the same time offering opportunities to improve students’ oral and written Spanish. The course strives to communicate how one approaches literary texts by reflecting both on the tools—terms, theories, criticism—for doing so as well as their application to Latin American literatures. While introducing students to the social and historical context in which the works were written, the course will focus on how we talk and write about modern Latin American literatures with an eye to further study in the Department’s literature offerings.
SPANISH 344-0: Borges
In this course we will focus on the poetry, essays, and short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. We explore comparatively both the connections to the Latin American and European literary traditions that saw his figure emerged and also to the many debates that his literature helped define: What constitutes a literary text? What is an author/ authority? How to write/read literature in the age of the mass media? How does literary translation inform cultural translation? What cultural traditions can the Latin American writers claim as their own? Starting with his 1920s poetry Fervor de Buenos Aires and his relation to Martin Fierro avant-garde group, we move into the core of his Fictions stories, “El Aleph,” “El Sur,” “The Library of Babel,” to finally discuss programmatic essays, such as “The Argentine Writer and Tradition.” The bibliography on Borges is vast and rich, so we accompany our reading of Borges’ fiction with secondary readings that focus on providing a historical, cultural and specifically literary context.
SPANISH 380-0: Contested Landscapes/ Paisajes en disputa
In this course we will study a set of 20th and 21st Century films that address issues related to land ownership, labor, and landscape throughout Latin America. We will analyze audiovisual works that explore and critique construed (often stereotypical) notions of Latin American landscape: from agricultural or underdeveloped remote regions, to criminalized urban communities. Our approach to such issues will be informed by a multidisciplinary framework that includes film studies, ecocriticism, literature, and Latin American decolonial theory.
SPANISH 395-0: Jewish Argentina
So, you ask… what’s “Jewish” about Argentina? This seems an odd question to ask about a predominantly Catholic Latin American country--even though its small Jewish population is the largest in Latin America and the third largest in the Americas overall. Yet this seemingly homogeneous nation is more multi-ethnic and multi-cultural than you might suppose. Indeed, the story of the Jewish presence in Argentina is a surprising, and yet surprisingly familiar, story. Our approach to that story will be through literature, film, and critical essays. Primary: Los gauchos judíos (1910), a narrative about a Jewish agricultural colony in the early 20th c., by Alberto Gerchunoff, the “founding father” of Jewish-Argentine literature; short stories and essays (1930s-40s) by Jorge Luis Borges (though not Jewish, he has been called a “Jewish writer”); Preso sin nombre, celda sin número (1981), a testimonial narrative by Jacobo Timerman about his imprisonment during Argentina’s military dictatorship; El libro de los recuerdos (1994), a comically reflective novel about a modern Buenos Aires Jewish family, by Ana María Shua; and Derecho de familia (2006), the third film in Daniel Burman’s semi-autobiographical trilogy about contemporary Jewish life in Buenos Aires. Secondary: essays & documentaries on history, culture, and literature.
SPANPORT 450-0: Indigeneities and Textuality in Latin America
This course explores the notion of indigeneity and its attendant textual manifestations and representations in literary and cultural production in Latin America. First, we will consider some definitions of the term, ranging from the implicit in colonial-era texts, to the explicit in 19th and 20th century narratival and essayistic production. Secondly, we will dive into the large, diverse scholarship—much of it contemporary and ranging in origin from social sciences such as anthropology and archaeology to humanities such as history and literary studies—that has attempted to articulate indigeneity in connection to the demands of, alternately, nationalisms, vindicatory movements, social revolution, identitarian politics, and other political and cultural formations in the continent. Key amongst our considerations will be understanding not simply the shapes that indigeneity takes within these disciplinary, cultural and political contexts, but also the mechanisms that allow it to move between them. We will pay special attention to the place of writing and will seek to account for the generation of indigeneity from lettered and cultural objects and their historical moments. Readings will be selected from a range of primary and secondary texts and may include Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Popol Vuh, el Manuscrito de Huarochirí, Manuel Gamio, José Carlos Mariátegui, Fausto Reinaga, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, José María Arguedas, Gamaliel Churata, Alison Spedding, Blanca Wiethüchter, César Calvo, Rigoberta Menchú, Marisol de la Cadena, Joanne Rappaport, Tom Cummins, el Taller de Historia Oral Andina, and others.
SPANPORT 455-0: The Global Avant-Garde
This course offers an overview of 20th century avant-garde movements in Europe and the Americas analyzing the historical contexts in which they emerged. In particular, we explore the literary and visual culture vanguard practices as they migrate from metropolis into significant transfer points through travel, exile, translation, exhibitions, intellectual correspondence, thus fostering international aesthetic movements. We pay special attention to how avant-garde artists and writers negotiated foreign influence and local conditions; and how these movements conceived themselves as profoundly local while speaking in an international idiom. We will also contrast the “historical avant-garde” period of 1920s with its resurgence in the 1960s and the politics of counter- culture movements. Critical readings include: Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Raymond Williams, Fredrick Jamenson, Brent Edwards, Beatriz Sarlo and Roberto Schwartz.