2023-2024 Course Descriptions: Department of Spanish & Portuguese

2023-2024 Course Descriptions

PORTUGUESE 101-1: Elementary Portuguese (Summer Quarter)

Introduction to grammar and development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Brazilian Portuguese, as well as the history and culture of Portuguese-speaking countries.

PORTUGUESE 101-2: Elementary Portuguese (Summer Quarter)

Introduction to grammar and development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Brazilian Portuguese, as well as the history and culture of Portuguese-speaking countries. Prerequisite: PORT 101-1 or sufficient score on placement test.

PORTUGUESE 101-3: Elementary Portuguese (Summer Quarter)

PORTUGUESE 105-8: First Year Writing Seminar (Spring Quarter - Taught in English)

Black Lives in Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Writing, Culture, and Perspectives.

Black writing matters, and Afro-Brazilian authors have made indispensable contributions to the literature of the Americas and the African diaspora. Brazil has the largest Afrodescendant population outside of Africa. It was the last country in the Western hemisphere to formally abolish slavery in 1888, and it imported more enslaved human beings from the transatlantic slave trade than any other country in the world. Africans and their descendants have shaped virtually every aspect of Brazilian culture, history, and society. So why focus on Afro-Brazilian literature? How do we define it, and what does it have to say about Black history, Black identity, and Black lives in Brazil?

To explore these questions, students will analyze English-language translations of Afro-Brazilian fiction, poetry, testimony, theory, graphic novels, documentary, and song lyrics. These texts reveal the central role of Afro-Brazilian women in the construction of Afro-Brazilian literature. By the end of the course, students will be able to name some of the most influential Afro-Brazilian authors and make meaningful connections and comparisons between their rich and multifaceted works. Students will also be able to write and talk about how Black authors have challenged racism and intersecting structures of oppression in a global context from the 19^th century to the present. Students will leave the class with an appreciation for how Afro-Brazilian literature can help us not only critique society but also collectively imagine a more equitable and inclusive future for all in Brazil and beyond.

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

PORTUGUESE 201-0: Reading and Writing 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.

PORTUGUESE 202-0: Reading and Writing Portuguese

Instruction in reading and writing expository and narrative prose. Emphasis on vocabulary, linguistic skills, and syntax appropriate to formal written Portuguese. Analysis and development of written skills in different types of discourse genres. This course counts toward the Minor in Portuguese. Prerequisite: PORT 115-2, PORT 121-3, or sufficient score on placement examination.

PORTUGUESE 210-0: Icons, Legends, and Myths in Brazil (Taught in English)

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: Brazil's Historical and Artistic Perspectives (Winter Quarter)

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.

PORTUGUESE 380-0: Contemporary Brazil: Literature & Film (Spring Quarter - Taught in English)

This course will allow students to explore a series of critically acclaimed Brazilian films from the 1980s to the present. The films will be accompanied by theoretical and historical readings that provide a framework for their analysis, as well as fictional texts that will provide further context. We will discuss different topics regarding Brazilian culture, politics, urban violence, racism, dictatorship, and populism. In order to do so, we will first acquire a theoretical approach to discuss cinema. Our major concern will be the narrative strategies, ideological content, and the ethics of representation. Students will rely heavily on class discussion in a seminar format. During the quarter, students will have to write three short papers in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. This course counts toward the major or minor in Spanish or Portuguese. The class will be taught in English.

SPANISH 101-1: Elementary Spanish

First course of a three-quarter sequence in introductory Spanish, designed for students who have never studied Spanish or studied Spanish less than two years in high school. Students will learn Spanish in order to use it beyond the classroom in meaningful and authentic ways at the Novice level of proficiency.

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 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. Prerequisite: SPANISH 101-2.

SPANISH 105-7: College Seminar (Fall Quarter - Taught in English)

What do we do about a world that doesn't conform to our expectations? Do we set out to mold reality to our vision or accept it as it is? How do we forge ahead with our dreams if others do not share our values or goals? Cervantes' Don Quixote tackles these big questions in ways that are both moving and funny as it narrates the adventures of the bedraggled hero--a man driven mad by reading too many fantasy novels--and his earthy sidekick Sancho Panza. The novel contains themes that resonate with our lives today, exploring not only what it means to write--and read--fiction but also asking us to evaluate what kind of person we want to be in the world. In our class, we'll read the novel closely and debate how its essential questions can shape our personal choices moving forward.

SPANISH 105-8: First Year Writing Seminar (Winter Quarter - 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 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. Offered in spring. Prerequisite: SPANISH 115-1.

SPANISH 121-1: Intermediate Spanish

First 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 101-3, 115-2, or 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 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 at the Intermediate Mid proficienty level. Prerequisite: SPANISH 121-2.

SPANISH 125-0: Accelerated Intermediate Spanish

Further development of communicative proficiency at the intermediate high level with an emphasis on the Hispanic world and the development of cultural competence. This means that students will be able to communicate familiar and some researched topics, often across various time frames. Offered in fall only. Prerequisite: AP of 3 or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam.

SPANISH 127-0: Accelerated Intermediate Spanish for Heritage Language Learners

The main purpose of this course is to build upon the language knowledge that students bring to the classroom and advance their proficiency of Spanish for multiple contexts. The course content will generate opportunities for students to hone their oral and written skills, to become acquainted with more formal registers of Spanish and to deepen their sense of pride in their linguistic and cultural heritage in order to communicate more effectively and more confidently in the target language. Offered in fall only. Prerequisite: AP of 3 or sufficient score on Spanish Language Placement Exam.

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 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. 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 231-0: The "New" Latin American Narrative (Taught in English)

So, what's "new" about the New Latin American Narrative? The course approaches this question by considering several key trends in Latin American literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Focusing on novels, short fiction, and testimonial writing & film, we will study representative works from the so-called pre-Boom, Boom, and post-Boom decades (1940s-50s, 1960s-70s, 1980s). Although the new narrative is often identified with Boom novels (such as One Hundred Years of Solitude) and with the Boom era overall—when Latin American literature "exploded" onto the world stage--we will take a broader view to consider the diverse types of narrative representing “new” currents in the region. Reading and discussion will focus on formal aspects of narrative and on cultural and historical contexts that shaped the production and reception of new narrative works by well-known figures. Primary texts: Borges’s and Cortázar’s “fantastic” fictions and essays on narrative poetics; Fuentes’s revolutionary Boom novel about 20th-century Mexico (The Death of Artemio Cruz); Ferré’s irreverent feminist stories about Puerto Rican society and culture; Valenzuela’s ironic dramatic fictions about political repression in Argentina; García Márquez’s documentary-testimonial tale about an exiled filmmaker’s covert return home during the Pinochet era (Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littin). Secondary materials will provide literary, historical, and cultural contexts for primary works. Readings and discussion are in English.

SPANISH 250-0: Literature in Spain before 1700

Survey of the origins of the Spanish language and the development of Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the end of the Spanish Golden Age. Study of representative figures and major literary developments in conjunction with religious and cultural history. Prerequisite (may be taken concurrently): SPANISH 200-0 or 204-0.

SPANISH 251-0: Literature in Spain since 1700

Survey of literature in Spain from the 18th to the 20th century. Study of representative figures and major literary developments in conjunction with political and cultural history. Prerequisite (may be taken concurrently): SPANISH 200-0 or 204-0.

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 200-0 or 204-0.

SPANISH 261-0: Literature in Latin America since 1888

Survey of the modern period, including modernismo, the historical avant-garde, the "Boom," and recent literary trends. Authors such as Delmira Agustini, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, and Cristina Peri Rossi. 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 280-0: Introduction to Spanish Linguistics

An introductory course designed to present students with an overview of the phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, and sociolinguistic and pragmatic elements specific to Spanish language. Prerequisite: SPANISH 200-0 or SPANISH 204-0.

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 335-0: Modern Fiction in Spain: Studies in Genre

We will study how the DIY culture can be applied to literature, visual arts, and the publishing industry by exploring a genre that has been often marginalized: fanzines. Fanzines are non-professional, low-resources publications about a specific topic, movement, aesthetic, or group. Specifically, we will study fanzines produced by the counter-culture, punk, queer and feminist groups in Spain since the end of the fascist dictatorship to the present (1975-today). We will study their relationship to mainstream literature through the reading of a contemporary classic novel that includes, and reflects on, fanzines, Cristina Morales’s Lectura fácil (2018). Topics addressed in the novel and the fanzines include disability, feminism, dance, mental health, and politics. Students will read this contemporary classic, will study diverse fanzines, and, in groups, will design, print, and distribute their own fanzines as final project. This class may include interviews with creators of fanzines and local visits in the Evanston/Chicago area. Prerquisite: SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

SPANISH 343-0: Latin American Avant-Gardes (Spring Quarter)

This course provides a survey of the literary phenomenon of Latin American avant-garde movements in the early 20th-century. While placing special emphasis on the production and circulation of poetry in the formation of debates defining the period, the class will also consider an array of related literary, philosophical, and artistic works—including prose manifestoes, critical journalism, essayistic writing, painting, sculpture, cinematography, architecture, etc. The primary language of the class and source materials will be Spanish. However, given the transregional and internationalist nature of the phenomenon, the class will also foreground the multilingual character of literary production and consumption in avant-garde circles, the trasnational exchanges between Latin American writers and artists hailing from other parts of the world, and the perennial negotiation between local questions of identity and canon versus the international dimension of the political, artistic, and philosophical debates informing avant-garde movements across the world. Prerequisite: SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

SPANISH 344-0: Borges (Spring Quarter)

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: SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

SPANISH 347-0: Literature and Revolution in Latin America

This course will explore the responses of Latin American artists, writers and cultural critics to a critical moment of revolution in Latin America: the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and its influence in Latin American revolutionary movements. We will ask how cultural texts “of the moment” seek to portray, dialogue with, and/or intervene in these experiences of violent political upheaval. We will also analyze how society is politized and how revolution is organized and represented by artists and writers. We will also examine the argentintian revolutionary groups (los años 70s) and Venezuelan revolution experience (Socialismo del siglo XXI). Prerequisite: SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

SPANISH 350-0: Visual Culture in Latin/o America & Spain (Spring Quarter)

This class explores the photographic representations of major social and historical events in Latin America from the turn of the 19^th century through out the 20^th century. We will look at when and how photography became a medium of visual expression in Latin American culture; we will examine questions on the construction of a shared Latin American identity; and how different kinds of photographs (journalistic, ethnographic, territorial surveys, documentary, artistic) work as cultural interpretive tools. We will also practice how to write critically about photographs in relation to historical and literary works, learn about major photographers and how their images were produced, circulated and now participate in a larger historiography of the medium. We will put emphasis on the study of photographic themes that are singular to the Latin American experience: colonialism, revolution, native society, modernization, politics and self-determination. Prerequisite: SPANISH 250-0, 251-0, 260-0, or 261-0.

SPANISH 363-0: Topics in US Latina/o Literary and Cultural Studies: U.S. Latinx Literature in Spanish: Identity, Culture, & Transnationalism (Spring Quarter)

Recently, there is growing awareness of the tremendous impact Latino/a/x writers have had in the fabric of the United States. And yet, this is not new. Spanish speaking works and testimonies have existed since the inception of the U.S. Likewise, immigrant and U.S. born Latinx writers have long written about their experiences and have enriched the literary perspectives of this country. This course focuses on the literary and historical trajectory of Latino/a/x in the United States from the time of the Spanish explorations/conquests to the current surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border. Themes such as language, assimilation, generational differences, immigration, exile, migration, gender, and sexuality will all be considered.

SPANISH 395-0: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Cultures: Haunted Infrastructures of Modern Mexico (Fall Quarter)

Since the end of the 19th century, large-scale infrastructure projects such as trains, dams, and roads have transformed the landscapes, ecologies, and cultures of Mexico. Usually, these projects have been officially cast as material symbols of Mexico’s modernization and development, works that promise a “better” future. Meanwhile, through the use of forms such as the realist novel, the travel journal, the avant-garde manifesto, the experimental film, or the futurist poem, literature and art have examined how these projects bring with them profound and haunting social transformations. They have thus approached infrastructures with fascination, but also with caution, disappointment, or fear. In this class, we will explore experimental forms of literature, art, and film that address infrastructural development in modern Mexico from different angles and in changing political circumstances. We will also discuss contemporary social struggles, conflicts, and movements related to large-scale infrastructure projects in Mexico today.

SPANISH 395-0: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Cultures: Literature and Revolution in Latin America 20th Century (Fall Quarter)

This course explores the debate on literature and revolution during the second half of 20th century Latin America. The analysis focuses on Cuba, 1959, year of the triumph of the Cuban revolution, as an epicenter that spreads the revolutionary ideas that ignited revolutionary movements all over Latin America; tacks back to the texts of Bolivar and Martí, mentor figures for many revolutionary projects, to explore the cultural changes that outline the era of political changes in the second half of 20th century. We will pay close attention to the process of politization of life that occurred during the heyday of revolution till the development of the new state and revolutionary hegemony. We will resort to literary texts written during the revolutionary era to explore the impact of revolution on them and how writers respond to the new political horizon, especially in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. We will explore how literary texts sustain, defy, or even ignore the reinvention of life and social relations characteristics of those times, and also how politics in turn defy literature.

SPANISH 395-0-2: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Cultures: The Urban Gaze: Film, Theory, and the Contemporary Latin American City (Winter Quarter)

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 Cultures: Contemporary Latin American Amerindian Practices and Epistemologies (Winter Quarter)

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 Literatures and Cultures: The Formation of Sephardic Diaspora and Culture, 1400-1800 (Fall Quarter - Taught in English)

This historical survey will follow the Jews of Spain as they were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century and became members of a global diasporic group and Sephardic Jews. We will focus on the 1492 Expulsion and the political and religious processes that led to it; on immigration to various new locales in the Mediterranean and Western Europe; on the creation of new religious and racial identities of “New Christians”; on the formation of a Sephardic canon, and on many other central topics in the history of the Sephardic diaspora and its culture. We will use this opportunity to explore questions essential to historical thinking: the nature of historical change and the challenges of studying continuity rather than rupture; processes of identity and community making and their archival traces; and the differences between history, historiography, memory work and nostalgia. We will pay special attention to the diversity of the Jewish experience by comparing and contrasting various perspectives on Sephardic history and applying new methods from the history of gender and race.

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 (Winter Quarter - 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.

SPANISH 397-0: Topics in Latin American, Latina and Latino, and Iberian Literature and Cultures: Indigenous Testimonios in Translation (Spring Quarter - Taught in English)

The Latin American testimonio, or testimonial, genre is a gendered and contested site of knowledge production. Typically representative of Indigenous women and other disenfranchised peoples during times of great political oppression, testimonios have been understood in conflicting ways—some scholars claim that testimonios are uniquely able to challenge authoritarianism, yet others assert that they are unable to represent the “true” experience of oppression. In this course, we will unsettle and problematize the testimonio genre and its myriad interpretations through representative examples such as those of Rigoberta Menchú and Domitila Barrios de Chúngara. Each testimonio will be contextualized via the sociohistorical context within which each testimonio was produced. Topics may include colonial, nineteenth-century, and/or contemporary testimonios.

SPANPORT 415-0: Studies in the 19th Century Literature and Cultures (Fall Quarter)

Our emphasis will be on rethinking the traditional image of the nineteenth century as homogeneous to reveal its inevitable heterogeneity, essential to our understanding of the inauguration of Latin American modernity. We will review readings of these discourses from different historical moments and examine how these discourses have given way to other critical traditions.

SPANPORT 450-0-1: Topics in Cultural Studies: Amerindian Heterochronies in Contemporary Latin American Cultures (Winter Quarter)

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 450-0-1: Topics in Cultural Studies: Care and Harm (Spring Quarter)

This course focuses on the dialectics of care and harm in contemporary literary, philosophical, and artistic productions. We will explore multiple theoretical frameworks, including critical disability theory, new materialisms, and posthumanism, vis à vis modern and contemporary texts and performances produced in Spain and Latin America that center care and harm. Some key topics addressed will be: contemporary reelaborations of Spinozian desire to live, radical care and activism, the democratization of science, pharmacology, dysphoria, decolonized epistemologies of care, mourning, sacrifice, addiction, charity, pandemics, and neoliberal/welfare state. Key questions will be: why does care feel like harm sometimes? Why there is a distrust for care services in contemporary societies? How are racialized and gendered care labor transforming? What experiences of autonomy and interdependence are at stake? Readings in Spanish and English.

SPANPORT 455-0: Comparative Studies in Latin American and/or Iberian Literatures & Cultures: Archive Poetics: Subaltern Knowledges and Irreverent Uses (Fall Quarter)

This seminar studies the contemporary appropriation, uses and reactivations of cultural archives in modern and contemporary Argentine literature and culture. We conceive the archive as a social machine that organizes and administers both texts and documents as well as our bodies through different forms of technology that registered our present. We explore the processes of memory that foreground the central role of archives, especially when it comes to the production of knowledge and experiences of subaltern communities, historically excluded. If archives have often been the basis for the rethinking of cultural heritages and foundational fictions, we pay particular attention to the new elaborations of historical, social and cultural models and uses deployed by 20^th and 21^st Argentine writers. Thus, we delve into art and literature engagements that erode the national archive’s former boundaries, stability, function and meaning performing political intervention and subversions that prove to be increasingly recombinant and generative. At the core of our theoretical framework, we test Jorge Luis Borges’ famous proposition that marginal cultures -minor literatures have legitimate access to a multiplicity of cultural traditions advocating an irreverent use of the universal archive as the source of true originality.

SPANPORT 480-0: Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture: Reading the 19th Century Brazilian Novel with Machado de Assis (Winter Quarter)

In this course we will read 19^th 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 19^th-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 480-0: Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture: Locating Gender in Indianismo and Indigenismo (Spring Quarter - Taught in English)

In this course, we will consider representative examples of the literary and political traditions known as Indianismo and Indigenismo, both of which were popular in Latin America's nineteenth and twentieth century, respectively. In the first half of the course, we will investigate the colonial origins of indigenismo as well as the relationship between Indianismo during Independence and the nineteenth century. In the final half of the course, we will interrogate twentieth century and contemporary indigenista expression in policy, literature, and/or film. Special emphasis will be placed on the politics of gender in the representation of indigeneity within these texts. Please contact instructor if you do not possess reading knowledge in Spanish. This course will be taught in English.

SPANPORT 480-0: Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture: Black Spain: Resistance and Cultural Production (Spring Quarter)

This seminar will examine Afro-Spanish cultural production from the 1990s to the present. Students will delve into the Black experience in Spain through the analysis of literature, podcasts, social media, film, performances, music, as well as theoretical texts. Taught in Spanish but open to discussion, writing, and final presentation in English.

SPANPORT 496-0: Dissertation Prospectus Writing Workshop

This course seeks to impart to students the knowledge necessary to answer the questions: what is a dissertation, and how do I write one? In the spirit of a workshop, we will work as a group to foster and cultivate the skill sets necessary to formulate and articulate an organizing question adequate to the charge of a significant, independent, multi-year research project. We will call this first stage the prospectus, and we will figure out what it is and how best to write it. We will try to distill multiple and often conflicting statements, expectations, and/or fears about what the dissertation is so we can effectively undertake its preparation and writing.

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.