Winter 2024 Class Schedule
Winter 2024 course descriptions
PORTUGUESE 115-1: Portuguese for Speakers of Spanish and other Romance Languages
For students proficient in Spanish, French or Italian. Comparative sociolinguistic and interactive approach to communicative competence emphasizing pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure, and patterns of spoken and written Portuguese. Prerequisite: Spanish AP 4 in Spanish, French or Italian, or equivalent on the Spanish Language Placement Exam.
PORTUGUESE 115-2: Portuguese for Speakers of Spanish and other Romance Languages
For students proficient in Spanish, French or Italian. Comparative sociolinguistic and interactive approach to communicative competence emphasizing pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure, and patterns of spoken and written Portuguese. Prerequisite: PORT 115-1.
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. Incudes English or Portuguese discussion sections. Prerequisite for Portuguese discussion section: PORT 201-0, PORT 202-0, or sufficient score on placement exam. Prerequisite for English discussion section: none.
PORTUGUESE 303-0 Topics in Advanced Portuguese: Brasil's Historical and Artistic Perspectives
Students will deepen their knowledge of the Portuguese language through the study of Brazil’s History and Art. By reading from texts, analyzing and discussing videos, documentaries and Artwork depicting Brazil’s historical and socio-cultural aspects, students will have an overall idea about the country’s evolution from pre-colonial times to nowadays’ perspectives. Prerequisite: PORT 201-0, PORT 202-0 or Dept. Placement.
SPANISH 101-2: Elementary Spanish
Second 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 Novice High-Intermediate Low level of proficiency. Prerequisite: SPANISH 101-1.
SPANISH 105-8: First Year Writing Seminar (Taught in English)
Why is service learning important? Today's job market demands more than just classroom knowledge; employers seek impactful individuals. Surveys by the Corporation for National and Community Service reveal that volunteering boosts employment odds by 30% and makes candidates 80% more attractive to companies. Yet, college students volunteer less than other populations. This seminar explores the benefits of local community volunteering. It offers students real-world experience, skill development, and career exploration. Collaborating with nonprofits helps first-year students discover professional paths and time-management skills. Additionally, volunteering fosters happiness and a sense of belonging among college students. A minimum of 8 hours of community service is required to pass the course.
SPANISH 115-1: Accelerated Elementary Spanish
First 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 Novice High-Intermediate Low level of proficiency. Offered in winter. Prerequisite: Spanish Language Placement Exam.
SPANISH 121-2: Intermediate Spanish
Second 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 121-1.
SPANISH 200-0: Advanced Spanish for Heritage Language Learners
This course readies heritage Spanish learners for advanced studies in the target language by exploring contemporary topics in the Spanish-speaking world. It provides insights into how historical events have influenced the present in Latin America, Spain, and the U.S. Latino/a/x communities. Students will develop a critical awareness of their language skills, with a focus on reading and writing. It is designed for students who grew up with Spanish as their main language at home. Prerequisite: Spanish heritage learners who have completed SPANISH 127-0, AP of 4, or Departmental Placement.
SPANISH 201-0: Advanced Spanish I: Contemporary Latin America
This course is designed to develop all modes of communication in Spanish as students progress towards the advanced-low level of proficiency, through the interpretation and analysis of sociopolitical topics in Latin America. In addition, the critical examination of authentic materials will help students explore how the recent history of Latin America has shaped its present. Prerequisite: SPANISH 121-3, 125-0, 199-0, AP of 4 on the Spanish Language Exam, or Departmental Placement/Reassessment.
SPANISH 204-0: Advanced Spanish II: Artivism in Times of Political Change
This course is designed to develop all communication modes in Spanish at the advanced-low level of proficiency, through the exploration, interpretation and analysis of multimodal texts centered around politically and socially engaged art. The course will explore the role that the creative arts played in the political and social sphere in 20th-century Spain and Latin America while connecting these movements to current times. Prerequisite: SPANISH 197-0, 201-0, 203-0, 207-0, AP of 5, or Departmental Placement .
SPANISH 260-0: Literature in Latin America before 1888
Survey of pre-Hispanic, colonial, and romantic traditions in Latin America. Focus on authors and texts such as Popul Vuh, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Martín Fierro. Prerequisite (may be taken concurrently): SPANISH 204-0. Prerequisite (may be taken concurrently): SPANISH 200-0 or 204-0.
SPANISH 261-0: Literature in Latin America since 1888
This course provides an overview of some of the major trends in Latin American literatures 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 writing. 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; the formative impact of nationalism and internationalism; and the concern for finding autochthonous modes of expression. Prerequisite (may be taken concurrently): SPANISH 200-0 or 204-0.
SPANISH 277-0: Introduction to Latinx Literature (Taught in English)
In the United States, we often talk about Latinx people using blurry labels. We discuss the Latino vote, the Hispanic population, and the Latinx community. This course explores the nuances of these labels through the stories that Latinx authors have been narrating for the past six decades. As we follow characters through conflicts and inhabit their quotidian lives, we will navigate between the specificity of a story and the complexity of a Latinx identity. Class discussions will study emotional ties to places and languages, feminist thought, and the racial and ethnic diversity within the Latinx community. We will read well-established and emerging authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Manuel Muñoz, and Kali Fajardo Anstine. A one-semester course cannot do justice to the rich genealogy of Latinx writing. This course follows an illustrative sample of authors from the 1970s onward and focuses on short stories, poetry, and essays. It aims to provide students with a historical, political, and literary foundation for further exploration of Latinx literature.
SPANISH 302-0: Advanced Grammar
An advanced course designed to polish and improve language usage through in-depth study and development of grammar knowledge and skills, focusing on items most problematic for non-native speakers of Spanish. Prerequisite: SPANISH 200-0 or SPANISH 204-0.
SPANISH 345-0: Reading the "Boom"
This course will focus on the Latin American “Boom”--the literary, cultural, and commercial phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s that internationalized Latin American literature. The Boom inaugurated what some critics called a “revolutionary writing” that not only challenged literary practices from the first half of the 20th century, but also generated a parallel boom of critical writing about Latin American literature and writers. Through critical essays, documentary films, and autobiographical accounts, we will consider the historical, political, literary, and personal factors that contributed to the Boom phenomenon, the ways in which it was viewed and represented at the time and in subsequent decades, and its role within Latin American literary and cultural history. Primary materials will include Carlos Fuentes’s La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) and Manuel Puig’s Boquitas pintadas (1969), which represent different phases of the Boom and also trends in the “new” narrative, and José Donoso’s Historia personal del boom (1972; 1983), which presents a Boom author’s behind-the-scenes version of literary events and personal relationships during the 1960s-1970s. Secondary materials will include essays by other Boom writers, filmed interviews with authors, and feature-length films (one a thematic and technical source for La muerte de Artemio Cruz and the other an adaptation of Boquitas pintadas). IN working with these materials, we will both explore the characteristics of Boom novels and develop further an ability to read and analyze literary texts in their own terms and within a variety of contexts. Prerquisite: 1 course out of SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.
SPANISH 395-0-2: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Literature and Cultures: The Urban Gaze: Film, Theory, and the Contemporary Latin American City
This class will approach the contemporary Latin American city through the lens of film and critical theory. Each week, we will relate one (or two) films with a work of recent critical theory that illuminates different aspects of the neoliberal reality in the region from the 80s to the present: privatization and dispossession, domestic labor and exploitation, growing slums and processes of urban self-determination, economic crises and growing grassroots economies, among other subjects. We will explore how Latin American filmmakers have turned to experimental modes of cinematography –particularly documentary approaches– to capture intricate urban forms and the daily lives, conflicts, political situations, and dignities of the region’s inhabitants. This way, these films bring to the screen reflections on Latin America that dialogue with critical concepts such as baroque economies (Verónica Gago), urban commons (Silvia Federici), survival circuits (Saskia Sassen), or the multitude (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri). As a project for this class, students will create a short documentary video on the Latinx Chicago.
SPANISH 395-0-3: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Literature and Cultures: Contemporary Latin American Amerindian Practices and Epistemologies
In some contemporary Latin American practices, Amerindian inspiration and knowledge are powerful materials that multiply the possibilities of contemporary art and writing. By bringing up other genealogies with the recourse to their ancestral knowledge and practices, they pluralize the pasts of Latin American culture, its legacies, but also, I would like to suggest, the forms, materials, and repertoires of what we understand today as contemporary art and writing in Latin America. This course proposes to think about the relationship between ancestral knowledge and poetics (ways of doing) in contemporary Amerindian practices, how these poetics are inscribed in the present, and the influence and inspiration they have brought into contemporary Latin American culture.
SPANISH 397-0: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Literature and Cultures: Spanish Inquisitions: Crypto-Jews and other New Christians in Iberia and America, 1400-1700 (Taught in English)
This class is dedicated to the study of the Inquisition in early modern Spain and colonial Latin America, probably the most famous institution of Iberian history. We will examine its medieval roots during the Middle-Ages, and the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition in response to the mass conversion of Jews during the fifteenth century. We will discuss the problem of religious conversion and heresy, the persecution of New Christians of Jewish, Muslim, or indigenous descent, and the role of the Inquisition in censoring books and creating Catholic conformity during the age of reformations. We will consider methodological questions such as using Inquisitorial records for studying social and cultural history, and historiographical ones concerning religious violence and tolerance, modernity, and state formation.
SPANPORT 450-0-1: Topics in Cultural Studies: Amerindian Heterochronies in Contemporary Latin American Cultures
Contemporary Latin American cultural practices have been profoundly permeated by Amerindian imaginaries, wisdom, and ways of knowing and doing. These contemporary Amerindian practices and the presence of ancestral Amerindian knowledge in other contemporary Latin American practices interrupt the linearity of a conception of culture, challenge totalizing universals, dispute systems of meaning, and compel us to rethink what we understand today as contemporary Latin American cultures. This course seeks to interrogate the knots of these Amerindian practices and knowledges in and with contemporary Latin American culture. It will analyze practices produced by artists who perceive themselves as Amerindian and how Amerindian practices and knowledge, beyond their authors and producers, appear as a vector of rebellious forces and knots of resistance.
SPANPORT 450-0-2: Topics in Cultural Studies: Gender in Colonial Spanish America (Winter Quarter - Taught in English)
From the early representations of land as gendered in the chronicles of Christopher Columbus, to the gender crossings of a trans nun who became a conquistador in Peru, this course will consider the central role gender played in the colonization attempts of Latin America through the crónica or chronicle genre. We will also explore important African, Indigenous and Mestiza/o perspectives through archival material, images, codices, and other primary source material. Emphasis will be placed on the shifting terrain of defining the gender binary and its relation to race and class in the emergent concept of “América.” A reading knowledge of Spanish is recommended for this course, but not required.
*Please note that this course does not count as one of the department’s two required courses for students in the Spanish and Portuguese doctoral program.
SPANPORT 480-0: Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture: Reading the 19th Century Brazilian Novel with Machado de Assis
In this course we will read 19th century, mostly canonical novels from Brazil, alongside short stories by the afro-descendent writer Machado de Assis (1839-1908), considered by many to be the most important author in the entire history of Brazilian literature. Each week we will read one novel and two or three of his short stories dealing with the same themes, such as: slavery, indigeneity, race and racial mixture, fugitivity, education and the bildungsroman, queer families, gender, sexuality, and adultery. The purpose of the course is threefold: first, to offer an in-depth survey of the foundational writings and authors of Brazilian literature; second, to understand, from a comparative approach, how these writers approached some of the most pressing issues of 19th-century; third, to imagine how Machado de Assis read and evaluated the novels produced at the time. Because we want to read as much fiction as we can, the class discussions will not require any secondary readings, although a list of relevant theory and criticism will be provided and may be utilized in the oral presentation, exam or research paper. All readings will be available in Portuguese and English translations, and almost all in Spanish translations.
SPANPORT 560-0: Foreign Language Teaching: Theory and Practice
This course is designed for graduate students who will be teaching Spanish or Portuguese as a Second Language at Northwestern University, and undergraduate students who are planning to become Spanish/Portuguese instructors. The course provides an overview of traditional and current foreign language teaching methods and pedagogical trends to approach the language-learning process. The theoretical background will be applied to the development of second language learners’ intercultural communicative competence. The course will present students with the components of effective teaching tools, such as lesson planning, student needs analysis, classroom management, materials design and evaluation. In sum, students will acquire the pedagogical tools and metalinguistic awareness that they need to become successful second language instructors.