Courses in Spanish
spring 2012
[Please see the Directory of Classes for the timetable of courses with multiple sections. Readings, assignments, and class discussion in Spanish unless otherwise noted.]
SPAN 1101y
Elementary Spanish I
(multiple sections)
4 pts. Prerequisites: placement score 0-279 in the department's Placement Examination. An introduction to Spanish communicative competence, with stress on basic oral interaction, reading, witting, and cultural knowledge. Principal objectives are to understand and produce commonly used sentences to satisfy immediate needs; ask and answer questions about personal details such as where we live, people we know and things we have; interact in a simple manner with people who speak clearly, slowly and are ready to cooperate; and understand simple and short written and audiovisual texts in Spanish.
SPAN 1102y
Elementary Spanish II
(multiple sections)
4 pts. Prerequisites: SPAN W1101 or a score of 280-379 in the department's Placement Examination. An intensive introduction to Spanish language communicative competence, with stress on basic oral interaction, reading, witting and cultural knowledge as a continuation of Spanish W1101. Main objectives are to understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of immediate relevance; communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a direct exchange of information on familiar matters; describe in simple terms aspects of our background and personal history; understand the main point, the basic content, and the plot of filmic as well as short written texts.
SPAN W1113y
Rapid Reading and Translation
Helene de Aguilar
T 6:10-8:00
3 pts. Prerequisites: Offered only to graduate students in GSAS. This course, conducted in English, is designed to help graduate students from other departments gain proficiency in reading and translating Spanish texts for scholarly research. The course prepares students to take the Reading Proficiency Exam that most graduate departments demand to fulfill the foreign-language proficiency requirement in that language. Graduate students with any degree of knowledge of Spanish are welcome. A grade of A- or higher in this class will satisfy the GSAS foreign language proficiency requirement in Spanish.
SPAN 1120y
Comprehensive Beginning Spanish
(multiple sections)
4 pts. Prerequisites: a score below 379 in the department's Placement Examination or some previous exposure to the language. One-term intensive coverage of the contents of SPAN W1101 and SPAN W1102. A student may not receive credit for both SPAN W1120 and the sequence SPAN W1101-SPAN W1102.
SPAN 1201y
Intermediate Spanish I
(multiple sections)
4 pts. Prerequisites: SPAN W1102 or SPAN W1120, or a score of 380-449 in the department's Placement Examination. An intensive course in Spanish language communicative competence, with stress on oral interaction, reading, writing, and culture as a continuation of SPAN W1102 or SPAN W1120.
SPAN 1202y
Intermediate Spanish II
(multiple sections)
4 pts. Prerequisites: SPAN W1201 or a score of 450-624 in the department's Placement Examination. An intensive course in Spanish language communicative competence, with stress on oral interaction, reading, witting and culture as a continuation of SPAN W1201.
SPAN 1208y
Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students
Jesús Suárez García
MWR 1:10-2:25
4 pts. Prerequisite: a score of 450-624 (a placement recommendation of SPAN W1202) in the department's Placement Examination and oral fluency in Spanish. Designed for native and non-native Spanish-speaking students who have oral fluency beyond the intermediate level but have had no formal language training. (If you place below Spanish W1202 in the placement exam you should follow the placement recommendation received with your test results. If you place above Spanish W1202, you should take Spanish W3300. If in doubt, please consult the corresponding Coordinator of the Language program for each level:
Elementary I and II (Diana Romero)
Intermediate I and II (Reyes Llopis-Garcia)
Spanish 3300 (Francisco Rosales-Varo)
SPAN 1220y
Comprehensive Intermediate Spanish
(multiple sections)
4 pts. Prerequisites: SPAN W1102 or SPAN W1120, or a score of 380-624 in the department's Placement Examination. One-term intensive coverage of the contents of SPAN W1201 and SPAN W1202. A student may not receive credit for both SPAN W1220 and the sequence SPAN W1201-SPAN W1202 or the equivalent Barnard sequence SPAN BC1203-SPAN BC1204.
SPAN W3265y
Latin American Literature in Translation
Alfred Mac Adam
MW 2:40-3:55
3 pts. A panoramic study of modern Latin American fiction.
SPAN W3300y
Advanced Language through Content
(descriptions of individual sections)
3 pts. Prerequisites: Fulfillment of the language requirement. An intensive exposure to advanced points of Spanish grammar and structure through written and oral practice, along with an introduction to the basic principles of academic composition in Spanish. Each section is based on the exploration of an ample theme that serves as the organizing principle for the work done in class. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies unless exemption is granted by the Director of Undergraduate Studies or the corresponding Coordinator of the Language program for each level:
Elementary I and II (Diana Romero)
Intermediate I and II (Reyes Llopis-Garcia)
Spanish 3300 (Francisco Rosales-Varo)
SPAN W3330y
Introduction to the Study of Hispanic Cultures
(multiple sections)
3 pts. Requirements: SPAN W3300. The course constitutes a wide-ranging consideration of cultural production with a view to making students aware of its historical and constructed nature. Students will explore concepts such as language, history and nation; culture (national, popular, mass, and and high); the social role of literature; the work of cultural institutions; globalization and migration; and the discipline of Cultural Studies. The course is divided into weekly units that address these subjects in turn, and through which students will also acquire the fundamental vocabulary for the analysis of cultural objects. Spanish W3330 gives students the conceptual framework with which to engage in the study of Hispanic culture in Spanish W3349 and Spanish W3350. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.
SPAN 83330y (Cross-listed as CPLS W3333)
East/West Frametale Narratives
Patricia Grieve
MW 1:10-2:25
3 pts. What do the Tales of the Arabian Nights, the Panchatantra, and the works of Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, María de Zayas, and Cervantes have to do with the narrative forms of films such as the romance "Love Actually," Stephen King's psychological thriller "Secret Window," or Christopher Guest's mockumentary "Best in Show"? Frametale narratives, the art of inserting stories within stories, in oral and written forms, originated in East and South Asia centuries ago; tales familiar to Europe, often called novellas, can trace their development from oral tales to transmitted Sanskrit and Pahlavi tales, as well as Arabic and Hebrew stories. Both Muslim Spain and Christian Spain served as the nexus between the East and Europe in the journey of translation and the creation of new works. This course examines, through readings and contemporary films: the structure, meaning, and function of ancient, medieval, and early modern frametale narratives; literary and cultural topics, including Christian, Muslim, and Jewish relations in medieval and early modern Mediterranean societies; how complex and entertaining narratives develop from their 'bare bones' origins in joke books, laws and legal theories, conduct manuals, collections of aphorisms and other wise and pithy sayings, misogynist non-fiction writings, and Biblical stories. Qualified students may write papers in Spanish, French, or Italian. Global Core.
SPAN W3349y
Hispanic Cultures I: Islamic Spain through the Colonial Period
(multiple sections)
3 pts. Requirements: SPAN W3330. This course provides an overview of the cultural history of the Hispanic world, from eighth-century Islamic and Christian Spain and the pre-Hispanic Americas through the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period until about 1700, and covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the colonial areas that would eventually become the various countries of Spanish America. Students will become familiar with major events and significant political, social and cultural trends in the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas before the eighteenth century, including such topics as oral vs. manuscript vs. print culture, elite vs. popular culture, conquest and resistance, transculturation, and the links between cultural production and ideology. Emphasis will be placed on the historical context and on the development of close reading skills. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.
SPAN W3350y
Modern Hispanic Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Present
(multiple sections)
3 pts. Requirements: SPAN W3330. This course surveys cultural production of Spain and Spanish America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for the study of the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic world in the context of modernity. Among the issues and events studied will be the Enlightenment as ideology and practice, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the wars of Spanish American independence, the fin-de-siècle and the cultural avant-gardes, the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century (Spanish Civil War, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions) and the Hispanic presence in the United States. The goal of the course is to study some key moments of this trajectory through the analysis of representative texts, works of art, and film. Emphasis will be placed on the historical context and on the development of close reading skills. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.
SPPO W3461y
Image Making in the Iberian Worlds
Alessandra Russo
TR 1:10-2:25
3 pts. This course aims to introduce undergraduate students to the variety of artistic forms created between the XVth and the XVIIIth centuries in the four parts of the world as an unpredictable consequence of the expansion projects of Portugal and Spain from Europe to America, Asia and Africa. This variety can be analyzed as the fruit of the reciprocal transformations between local (Taíno, Mexica, Maya, Inca, Japanese, Moghol, Sapi, but also Venetian, Flemish, etc.) traditions and the complex phenomenon of the curculation of objects throughout the planet. The impact of Western models (Christian iconographies, perspective techniques, new architectural construction systems, etc.), materials and media (engraving, oil painting, etc.) on these local traditions will be addressed, as well as the reverse influence of local traditions on Western models and techniques. From codices of New Spain to Japanese screen-folds, and from Indian or African ivory-imagery to Peruvian colonial textiles, encompassing mother-pearl mosaics, feather-paintings, silk nun-shields, graffiti, corn sculptures, kero-cups, obsidian-mirror crosses, maps, as well as more “canonical” media (oil and wall-painting, wood-sculpture, silver or gold production etc.), the course will continuously place each object in its specific historical, political and anthropological context. The making of these images and objects will be understood as a concrete aesthetic relationship between factura and idea, that is to say, between the most tangible and material aspects of their manufacture and the different ideas, meanings, interpretations and discourses involved in these same productions. We will also pay attention to the heterogeneous uses of these images, which range from the juridical (use of painted codices as testimonial proofs in trials) to the administrative (use of maps to organize and govern a territory), from the liturgical (use of new Christian imageries in churches) to the political (sending of gifts throughout the planet), and from the illicit (graffiti) to the civic (mural decorations in a colonial officer's house).
SPAN W3491y
Latin American Humanities II : From Modernity to the Present (in English)
(multiple sections)
3 pts. An introduction to the history and culture of Latin America, from the advent of modernity to the present, that is, after the foundational period of nation formation. The course will begin by addressing the phenomenon of modernity in a peripheral context in order to understand the specificity of cultural production in Latin America. The relationship between metropolitan discourses and their creative transformation in Latin America will provide a fertile ground for the study of the continent's history and cultural movements. The overarching concern will be to study how notions of Latin American culture were negotiated at certain historical turning points by different agents such as writers, artists, and politicians. Among the themes and topics examined will be positivism and cosmopolitanism, the close and contentious relationship between art and political engagement during the Mexican and the Cuban revolutions, the Boom of Latin American literature in the 1960s, the military dictatorships of the 1970s, and the migrations that have characterized the new global realities. Students are encouraged, but are not required, to take Latin American Humanities I (Spanish W3490). This course is on the "A list" of courses for the Major Cultures Core requirement. No knowledge of Spanish required, but students with knowledge of Spanish may read the works in the original. This course may count toward the major or concentration in Hispanic Studies and the concentration in Portuguese Studies.
SPPO W3541y
Don Quixote de la Mancha
Dale Shuger
MW 4:10 - 5:25
3 pts. Miguel de Cervantes’ El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha has been credited with giving rise to a genre (the novel), a national identity (imagine a Spain without the Quijote), and two archetypal figures who immediately leapt from Cervantes’ pages into the popular and literary imaginary. It has been read as parody, satire, social critique, allegory, realist novel, psychological novel, and postmodern novel. It is always found on any list of ‘Great Works’ yet unlike most of its neighbors on those lists, it has also been adapted into cartoons, comic books, and a Broadway musical. It is comic, it is tragic; it is erudite, it is simple; it is a picture of 17th century Spain, it is a timeless tale of the human spirit. During the course of this class, students will be able to come to their own decisions about some of these issues. Rather than attempt to abridge the work or squeeze it into part of a larger survey, we will dedicate almost our entire semester to a close reading of the work. As a supplement to the text, I will provide critical material the on literary and historical traditions which inform the work as a whole or particular episodes, but the main focus of class discussion will be the text itself. In the last weeks of the semester, we will focus on the different ways that Don Quijote has been interpreted and adapted in the centuries since its publication—by authors, visual artists, cinematographers, and philosophers--reflecting on what these interpretations say both about the work and the moment of interpretation.
SPAN W3555
Film, Just Arrived: Spain (1896-1936)
Alberto Medina
MW 11:10-12:15
3 pts. Just a few years after its arrival, that newly circus attraction called cinema became a mass phenomenon of unprecedented influence in the social and cultural Spanish context. Writers, artists, politicians reacted with fascination, enthusiasm or fear. The new media was the focus of a complex debate in which historical transformations were being perceived and thought as mediated by the new apparatus. Literature, painting and other artistic forms got inspired and radically transformed by the newcomer but the same could be said about an audience whose collective conscience and image of itself were now conditioned by film spectatorship. If the nation was now something like a film audience, considering what would appear in the screen and its potential for subjection or liberation, was the focus of a rich collective dialogue, not only in newspapers and the public sphere but also in a multiplicity of artistic media.
SPAN W3563
Introduction to Spanish Pragmatics: What do We Do When We Speak Spanish?
Francisco Rosales-Varo
TR 1:10-2:25
3 pts. Prerequisites: SPAN W3349 or SPAN W3350. Pragmatics is a most helpful criterion in the interpretation of many different types of texts. As a new course within our Department's curriculum this instrument of rhetoric analysis is a basic tool in the comprehension of our students' discourse in their literary, cultural, and critical papers. The main objective of this new course is double fold: 1. To provide the student with criteria for analyzing oral discourse beyond Syntax and Semantics. The Pragmatic approach proposed here interprets communication not through forms but through context and cognitive conditions; 2. To improve not only the student's linguistic and communicative competence in Spanish but also their pragmatic skills while giving them ample opportunities to use the language.
SPAN W3750y
Contemporary Latino Literature
Gustavo Pérez-Firmat
TR 1:10-2:25
3 pts. An examination of the imaginative writing of U.S. Hispanics in its cultural and literary context. Representative works in several genres (poetry, fiction, memoir) by Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Dominican-American, and Cuban-American authors, among them: Alurista, Rolando Hinojosa Smith, Richard Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, Cherrie Moraga, Rosario Ferré, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Julia Álvarez, Junot Díaz, José Kozer, Ana Menéndez and Richard Blanco. Topics to be discussed include: the bilingual self, barrios and borderlands, from exile to ethnic, immigrant autobiography, Hispanic New York, mainstream or Gulf Stream, Latino literature and its readers.
SPAN W3992y
Senior Seminar: Peace and Peacemaking
Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco
W 2:10-4:00
3 pts. In this course we are going to explore the genealogy of the concepts and the practices of Peace and Peacemaking in premodern times. During the twentieth century, and in particular from 1919 on, institutions for peace have proliferated in a world that, since that time has known and still knows some of the most tragic conflicts of history. Peace and peacemaking remain one of the most important and unmapped concepts and practices, no matter how urgent and necessary they are claimed to be. By inquiring into the genealogy of these two concepts and their associated practices, we intend to understand the theological, political, legal, and moral circumstances that explain the impossibility of achieving peace while we nevertheless cannot stop looking for it and trying to make it happen. We will analyze the life that these concepts and practices have had within Hispanic culture. We will begin with the processes of peacemaking during the "Reconquista", continue with the Middle Ages, and end with a consideration of peace during the Imperial era throughout the Early Modern period until the historic Peace of Westphalia of 1648 which, for most historians, marks the origin of the modern idea of State. This will allow us to explore not only internal processes of peace and peacemaking, but also international and colonial ones. We will read theoretical texts and primary sources, which will consist of texts, visual art, and other cultural objects.
SPAN W3998
Supervised Individual Research
Alberto Medina
Time/Day: TBA
SPAN W4995
Spanish for the Legal Profession
Helene de Aguilar
MTWR 9:00-9:50
Spanish for the Legal Profession is designed for students already familiar with of the rudiments of Spanish grammar; the class presumes a low-intermediate level of competence, i.e., knowledge of the language roughly equivalent to what is expected at the end of a good first-year college-level course. (Those with native or near-native facility should NOT enroll!). Building on this, we undertake intensive -and rapid - grammar review during the early weeks, conversing in Spanish, interpreting assorted short texts, and acquiring a basic legal vocabulary. Our focus shifts steadily from grammar to content. We read all manner of texts related to the law. These readings include actual court documents, selections from legal codes and constitutions, short stories, a poem or two, excerpts from legal journals, newspaper coverage of legal issues, and transcripts of actual cases. The texts cover a wide range of areas of interest within the law: one transcript, for instance, concerns an environmental suit and another deal with trademark infringement. (I choose them in part for their linguistic and in part for their entertainment value.) Although we do a fair amount of translation, the course aims primarily at increasing vocabulary and improving the students' ability to comprehend, to express and to respond to increasingly complicated ideas in Spanish. To this end we have round-table discussions on legal topics chosen by the class, presentations of "famous cases" and arguments on their outcomes, and, towards the close of the term, a Moot Court in Spanish. I also sing sad Spanish ballads from time to time. Grades are based primarily on classroom participation. There is a midterm examination, and a final exam. The final is usually take-home and involves a two-page commentary on a legal text. Es divertido!