Spanish W3300
Advanced Language through Content
Fall 2012
Section Topics
Section 002
Gay Culture in Contemporary Spain
Francisco Rosales-Varo
MW 4:10pm - 5:25pm
In this W SPAN 3300 course, designed within the framework of the teaching of Advanced Spanish through Content, we will try to answer the following questions:
1. How can we define the concepts of queer and culture in contemporary Spain?
2. What kind of social conditions determine queer culture in contemporary Spain?
3. How did this new situation create a new gay-queer sensibility, if there is such?
4. What kind of new documents would represent this new culture?
5. What methodology of analysis can we use to interpreter with due accuracy queer communication in contemporary Spain?
Section 003
Spaces of the Uncanny: Fantastic Cultural Productions in Latin America and Spain
Wendy Muñiz
MW 11:40am - 12:55pm
The fantastic has long been a controversial field in Hispanic culture. Examining a range of 19th-21st century Latin American and Spanish cultural productions that have been linked to this so-called genre, in this course we will explore the problem of how to study, and represent, the fantastic. What is “the fantastic”? How does this “genre” metamorphose into diverse media in distinct historical contexts? Special attention will be given to different theoretical approaches to the fantastic, short stories, films, and the organization of public space as it relates to the uncanny. Geared toward developing the student’s creative and analytical skills in Spanish, the course will revolve around in-class discussions, compositions, oral presentations, and a final project.
Section 004
Contemporary Hispanic Caribbean: Cultures and Identities
Cristina C. Pérez Jiménez
TR 8:40am - 9:55am
This course provides an introduction to the contemporary Hispanic Caribbean (1960's to the present) and its search for cultural and political self-definition. We will analyze short-stories, essays, films and music, with reference to their varied contexts, in order to better understand the construction of national and regional identities. Special attention will be given to the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class, as well as the experiences of migration. In short, by contrasting and comparing the recent artistic and political trajectories of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, we will examine the cultural practices that inform present day Hispanic Caribbean identities. Students will engage with advanced Spanish grammar through class discussions, collaborative work and compositions.
Section 005
Inmigración hispana y las políticas educativas en los Estados Unidos
Maria Lozano
TR 11:40am - 12:55pm
El curso tiene como base el estudio de la inmigración hispana a los
Estados Unidos. Comenzaremos con una vista histórica de los
movimientos migratorios en EEUU en general, para luego centrarnos en las leyes migratorias que ha afectado a los hispanos. El curso
finalizará con una vista a las políticas educativas de los estados en
los que el inglés es la única lengua de enseñanza en las escuelas y
las cuales limitan el uso de otras lenguas en el salón de clases.
Section 006
Subversive Practices: the Arts under Political Repression
Agnese Codebó:
TR 11:40am - 12:55pm
This course will focus on Argentinian cultural production during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. We will examine the repercussions of the Dirty War (1976-1982) on visual, literary, and performing Arts. The course will also attend to the development of advanced language skills through short papers, oral presentations and a final research project.
Section 007
Performance and the New World
Nicole Hughes
MW 6:10pm - 7:25pm
This course will introduce students to the performances that staged cultural, religious, and epistemological contact in the Spanish expansion projects in the Americas. We will read, among other texts, theatrical works by which Nahuas acted out the Spanish Reconquista, accounts of Incas performing choreographed battles, and sermons in which Spanish preachers imitate local rhetorical traditions. We will also consider "performance" as a conceptual lens for reading religious processions and pilgrimages, ritualized attempts to extirpate idols and destroy huacas, transformations of architectural and natural spaces, as well as conversion and confession practices, festivals and fiestas. The course will consistently question how these events may have provided opportunities for various forms of resistance or imposition, preservation or invention. We will also return throughout the semester to the question of the identities these performances presented and/or forged and consider how they regulated interaction or sustained mutual misunderstanding.
Section 008
Translating Cultures
Javier Pérez-Zapatero
TBA
Through special attention to translation theory and practice in the context of an examination of the issue of multiculturalism in New York, the course aims to increase critical skills, awareness of formal/informal registers, and command of academic writing structures among native speakers with varying degrees of previous language instruction. For heritage speakers of Spanish only.
Section 009
Gritos y silencios: Culture and Authoritarianism in Twentieth-Century Latin America and Spain
Leigh Shadko
TR 4:10pm - 5:25pm
From the Iberian Peninsula to the Southern Cone, the twentieth century witnessed the rise -- and fall -- of authoritarian regimes in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world. This course will examine the ways in which writers, filmmakers and visual artists, both locally and in exile, responded to and reflected on the authoritarian experience and the troubled transition to democracy. Students will develop their language skills by engaging in class discussion, preparing oral presentations and written responses to course material, and completing a final research project.
Section 010
Salsa: Popular Music and Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Cultural History
Juan Pablo Jiménez-Caicedo
TR 6:10pm - 7:25pm
This section is based on the exploration of the theme of Salsa as a genre of popular music and its intrinsic connections with the Afro-caribean and Afro-Latin American cultural history. This theme will serve as the organizing principle for the work done in class; which includes but is not limited to an intensive exposure to advanced concepts of Spanish lexico-grammar through written and oral practice, along with an introduction to the principles of academic writing in Spanish.
Methodologically, this course is based on Halliday's (1980) premise that there are three fundamental aspects in the process of learning a language: learning language, learning through language and learning about the language. That is, in this course students will be learning Spanish, they will be learning more about Hispanic popular culture and history through Spanish, and they will be learning about the Spanish language itself and how it works within particular contexts. Thus, students will be exposed to key cultural texts in both narrative and expository genres through readings, music, film and discussions. Then, they will be guided to a detail analysis of macro and micro genre features drawing on the tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday,1978). Especial attention will be paid to how texts represent reality (field), establish relationships (tenor) and are organized (mode) to achieve their communicative purposes by means of their registers. Finally, students will write their own texts in the different studied genres.