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Spanish 10: Writing and Reading: A Critical and Cultural Approach. This course serves as transition between the Spanish LSA (or equivalent preparation) and all upper-division courses (30 and above). Through the study of critical and theoretical vocabulary, and the reading of short stories, poems, films, theatrical plays and journalistic articles, students will acquire analytic tools to comprehend and analyze several types of texts. This course is also designed to familiarize students with different textual genres and a wide array of literary and interpretative key concepts. Prerequisite: Participation in one of the Spanish LSA programs; Spanish 8 or 9; exemption from Spanish 9 based on test scores (see Department web site); or permission of instructor. It serves as a prerequisite for all Spanish courses 30 and higher. Dist: LIT.
Spanish 23: Argentine Cultural Heritage. NEW (10S) This course deepens the student’s knowledge of the Argentine art and cultures through the study and discussion of the visual, architectural and plastic arts, as well as music and performance. The materials will expose the students to the main trends and topics of contemporary Argentine art, cultures and society. Prerequisite: Acceptance into the Dartmouth Foreign Study Program, Argentina. Dist: ART; WCult: NW.
Spanish 24: Spanish Cultural Heritage. This course deepens the student’s knowledge of the Spanish art and cultures through the study and discussion of the visual, architectural and plastic arts, as well as music and performance. The materials will expose the students to the main trends and topics of contemporary Spanish art, cultures and society. Prerequisite: acceptance into the Dartmouth Foreign Study Program, Spain. Dist: ART; WCult: W.
Spanish 30: Introduction to Hispanic Studies I: Middle Ages to 17th Century. This course presents an overview of major literary trends and cultural productions from the Middle Ages to the 17th century in both their Spanish and Spanish American contexts. Students will read a representative selection of major literary works from that period, both Peninsular and Spanish-American, and discuss theoretical, aesthetic, and critical issues pertinent to the Renaissance, the Baroque, colonialism, syncretism, etc. Texts may also be cultural, visual, and/or filmic. Prerequisite: Spanish 10. Dist: LIT; WCult: W.
Spanish 31: Introduction to Hispanic Studies II: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. NEW (10W) This course presents a chronological study of major trans-Atlantic literary trends and cultural productions, corresponding to the cultural and aesthetic movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Students will read a representative selection of major literary works, both Peninsular and Spanish-American, from that period and discuss theoretical, aesthetic, and critical issues pertinent to modernity, empire, enlightenment, nationalism, gender, democracy, etc. Texts may also be, cultural, visual, and/or filmic. Prerequisite: Spanish 10. Dist: LIT; WCult: W.
Spanish 32: Introduction to Hispanic Studies III: 20th - 21st Centuries. NEW (10S) This course presents a chronological study of trans-Atlantic major literary trends and cultural productions, corresponding to the cultural and aesthetic movements from the 1880s to the present. Students will read a representative selection of major literary works from that period, both Peninsular and Spanish-American, and discuss theoretical, aesthetic, and critical issues pertinent to modernismo, the avant-garde, revolution, post-modernism, etc. Texts may also be cultural, visual, and/or filmic. Prerequisite: Spanish 10. Dist: LIT; WCult: W.
Spanish 33: Argentine Civilization: Society, Culture, and Politics in Argentina. NEW (10S) This course studies socio-political events in the Southern Cone that have shaped the contemporary configuration of society in Argentina. Emphasis will be placed on key political figures, social movements, oppositional tensions, dictatorship and democracy, and their articulation in the cultural field. Prerequisite: acceptance into the Dartmouth Foreign Study Program. Dist: SOC; WCult: NW.
Spanish 34: Society, Culture and Politics in Spain. This courses studies socio-political events in the Iberian Peninsula that have shaped the contemporary configuration of society in Spain. Emphasis will be placed on key political figures, social movements, oppositional tensions, dictatorship and democracy, and their articulation in the cultural field. Prerequisite: acceptance into the Dartmouth Foreign Study Program, Spain. Dist: SOC; WCult: W.
Spanish 35: Studies in Spanish-American Literature and Culture. NEW (10S) This course is designed to offer students an opportunity to study a topic of interest in Spanish American literature and culture through the reading of a wide variety of literary and cultural texts. Emphasis will be placed on Argentina and the Southern Cone. Topics may vary. Prerequisite: acceptance into the Dartmouth Foreign Study Program, Argentina. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW.
Spanish 36:Studies in Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature. This course is designed to offer students an opportunity to study a topic of interest in the literature's and cultures of Spain through the reading of a wide variety of literary and cultural texts. Topics may vary. Prerequisite: acceptance into the Dartmouth Foreign Study Program, Spain. Dist: LIT; WCult: W
Spanish 37: Texts and Contexts: Topics in Writing. This course is designed to help students develop excellence in writing as they prepare for upper level literature and culture courses in Spanish. Topics will vary according to term and faculty as well as the "texts" studied in the course (literary, filmic, cultural, and visual). Given that thinking, reading, and writing are interdependent activities, Spanish 37 is designed to offer students an opportunity to study a topic of interest in Hispanic literature or culture while simultaneously emphasizing the advanced writing skills required of a research paper. Frequent exercises in writing and close textual study are basic to this course. Prerequisite: Spanish 10 or permission of instructor. Sample Syllabus. (Pdf file). Dist: LIT; WCult: W.
Spanish 40: Hispanic Literature and Culture by Period. This course will focus on the study of the significant historical periods and cultural movements of the Hispanic world. It is organized according to chronological eras that are marked by distinct cultural and literary movements. Areas covered will be the Middle Ages, the culture of the Renaissance and the Baroque, the Colonial Period, Enlightenment and Modernity, Nineteenth-Century Romanticism and Realism, the Avant-Gardes, Post-modernism, and new developments in the contemporary period. One or more periods will be selected for study. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies
Spanish 43: Hispanic Literature and Culture by Genre. A literary genre is defined as an established category of written work employing a set of recognizable common conventions, such as technique, style, structure or subject matter. This course will focus on the study of Hispanic literature's and cultures and is organized around one or more basic genres like poetry, drama, novel, and essay. Other articulating categories for the course may include epic poetry, tragic drama, short-fiction narrative, the picaresque novel, and melodrama, among others. The course will provide students with the appropriate critical vocabulary to understand the specificity of the genre or sub-genre examined in the course. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies
In 09F, The Poetics and Politics of Love in Contemporary Spanish Verse. This course examines the expression of distinct forms of love and love as trope in contemporary poetry from Spain. In the ideological tug-of-war that spanned the twentieth-century, love is political. The triad of form, content, and context communicate the (im)possibility of these forms of love in the work of poets such as Salinas, García Lorca, Cernuda, Fuertes, Atencia, Villena, Rossetti,García Montero, and Janés. Sprague.
In 10W, "The Boom" Spanish America's explosive entry onto the transnational literary scene in the 1960's featured novels by Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Alejo Carpentier. This course explores the aesthetics, politics, and economics that produced the Boom. We will examine the Boom's effects on the development of the novel as genre, how it marketed "Spanish America" as a culturo-ideological construct, and how it reshaped Spanish American literary history. Biron.
Spanish 50: Gender and Sexuality in Hispanic Studies. This course will explore how the study of gender and sexuality is integral to understanding the complexities of Hispanic societies and cultures. In addition to analyzing literary texts and cultural and artistic productions, students will also examine theoretical and critical approaches to the study of gender and sexuality. Topics may include feminist movements, the construction and performance of gender, the theory and practice of women’s writing, sexual identities, and queer theories as they relate to Hispanic embodiments and representations in literature and culture. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: CI.
In 10W, Desiring women. Gender and Protofeminism in Early Modern Spain and Latin America. The course studies the construction and representation of male desire of women and of women's desires in the specific context of Spain and Latin America, roughly between 1500 and 1700. On the one hand, we will use a gender theoretical framework to analyze the early modern male gaze and the construction of desire of women in the work of male canonical writers (Garcilaso de la Vega; Quevedo; Tirso de Molina). On the other hand, we will delve into protofeminist writings such as those penned by Sor Juana de la Cruz and María de Zayas, to frame their work into a literary and theoretical feminist tradition, and to understand their construction of desire (sexual, intellectual, domestic) through the theory and practice of writing. Cirnigliaro.
Spanish 53: Topics in Spanish Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Poetics. Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S. The focus of study for this course will be the evolution of the Spanish language from its old and early modern manifestations to contemporary uses. Specific geographical contexts will be given special attention. Topics may include the constitution of Castilian as a national language and its relation to other peninsular languages; the history of linguistic change on all levels (phonetic/phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic); the influence of Arabic, indigenous languages of the Americas, English, and dialectal variants. Fundamental notions of rhetoric and poetics will be central to this course as well. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies.
Spanish 55: Hispanic Literature, Culture, and Politics. This is an interdisciplinary course that studies through diverse representations in literature and the arts major sociopolitical realities that have shaken and transformed the Hispanic world such as the Conquest, colonialism, the rise of the modern nation states, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions, the Spanish Civil War, Latin America’s “dirty” wars, etc. The course will explore the interconnection between culture and politics allowing the student to read culture as a political text and political events as texts. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies.
In 09F, Humor and Politics in Latin American Literature, Film and Culture. Comedy and humor often serve to undermine cultural elitism and denounce social injustice. Many Latin American authors, filmmakers, and artists have used comedy and humor in politically subversive ways, but also as a way to legitimize the cultures and communities of the marginal and disenfranchised. This course will explore several theories of humor as well as Latin American traditions of humor. Reyes.
Spanish 60: Race and Ethnicity in Hispanic Studies. Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S. A common misperception about race and ethnicity is that they are uniformly defined and that one region’s understanding of these terms is identical to any other. How are race and ethnicity conceptualized and represented in Spain, Latin America, and U.S. Latino communities? This course will examine the particular historical, regional, and cultural factors that give rise to different notions of race and ethnicity in the Hispanic world. Individual offerings of this course may focus on one or more of the following: Moorish Spain and the Reconquista; the Jewish Diaspora in Spain and Latin America; indigenous societies in Latin America; racial and cultural “mestizaje”; whiteness, racial purity, and “blanqueamiento”; slavery, the African Diaspora, and “afro-latinidades.” Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: C
Spanish 63: Hispanic Film Studies. Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S. Film and the visual arts in Spain, Latin America, and/or the US will be studied under different approaches in order to: understand the historical evolution of film making within these contexts; examine the different film genres (surrealism, neorealism, melodrama, film noir, Hollywood realism, animation, documentary, etc.) in their Hispanic contexts; study the body of work of renowned Latino, Spanish, and Latin American filmmakers and visual artists; analyze important cultural or historical events through their visual representations (the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Cuban Revolution, end of Francoism, etc.); etc. Students will become familiar with relevant concepts in film analysis, film theory, and cultural studies and learn how issues of representation in the visual arts are linked to their literary counterparts. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: ART; WCult: Varies
Spanish 65: Hispanic Performance, Media, and the Arts. In our increasingly globalized society, what impact have transnationalism and new technologies had on the formation and articulation of local cultures in the Hispanic world? How do subjects remember and represent themselves as embodied actors in the spaces where conflicting and contestatory identities meet? How have television, the visual and graphic arts, and music redefined national space and identity in Spanish, Latin American, and U.S. Latino communities? Individual offerings of this course may focus on one or more of the following: theater, performance, and performativity; comics and the graphic arts; literature and the marketplace; the politics of mass media; sports and national identity; and popular culture’s strategies of resistance. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: ART; WCult: Varies.
In 10S, Gallery of Treasures and Horrors: A Century of Images in Spain. This course will analyze the dynamic relation between a group of still and moving images, and the constitution of a national imaginary. The course will explore how iconic and paradigmatic images have helped to conform our understanding of Spain’s recent history. It offers a historical and cultural approach to modern and contemporary Spain, as well as an introduction to visual cultures. Gómez.
Spanish 70: Great Works of Hispanic Literature: Don Quixote and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S. Few novels of the Hispanic world have had greater resonance than Cervantes’ Don Quijote (published between 1605 and 1615) and Gabriel García Márquez’ Cien años de soledad (1969). Both have continually fascinated their readers and provoked myriad interpretations and reinterpretations. This course seeks to understand each text as an autonomous work of literature and as a highly creative response to the literary and cultural forces in which it was forged. Individual offerings of this course will focus on one of these literary masterpieces. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies
In 10S, Don Quixote. From the time of its publication in 1605 (Part I) and 1615 (Part II), Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote has provoked radically different interpretations. Taking as a point of departure both the comic and the romantic interpretations, the course will examine the meaning of the Quijote across the centuries. In addition to exploring the historical context, such as social conflicts in the Hapsburg monarchy, the course will attend to literary history and offer an approach to the novel as literary genre. Lozano.
Spanish 73: Special Topics in Hispanic Literary and Cultural Production. Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S . This course is offered periodically with varying content so that writers, genres, historical contexts, or theoretical approaches not otherwise provided in the curriculum may be studied. The course can be offered any term and its distinct content, theoretical, or methodological approach will depend on the area of specialization of the instructor. Prerequisite: Spanish 37. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies.
Spanish 75: Creative Writing in Spanish. This course offers a workshop in creative writing to be taught by prominent writers in residence in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. It is designed for native speakers of Spanish, heritage speakers, and Spanish majors in their junior or senior years. Seminar-sized class meets twice or three times a week plus individual conferences when necessary. The class will consist of group workshops on student writing (fiction, poetry, and/or theater) and individual conferences with the instructor. Students will be admitted on a competitive basis and should submit a short writing sample of poetry, fiction, and/or a play to the Department’s Administrator prior to obtaining permission to enroll. The limit for this class is 14. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies
In 10W, Creative Writing in Spanish. Students will produce creative work on literary genres such as narrative fiction, poetry, drama, or autobiography. Following the structure of a writing workshop, the course will explore basic literary notions and concepts with the purpose of designing a poetics and aesthetics that serve as a foundation for literary creation. Departing from the students' own work, this course is organized on two axes: reading and textual analysis. During each class session students will read texts written by their peers and collectively analyze them. Based on the critiques, particular strategies and literary techniques will be explored in order to facilitate the creative process. Palou.
Spanish 80: Senior Seminar in Hispanic Studies. The senior seminar in Hispanic Studies is designed to provide Spanish majors with a small group setting that facilitates in-depth discussion of key concepts of critical theory, literary studies, and the discipline. The seminar will encourage students to research and explore relevant topics related to Hispanic literature and the arts and experiment with the application of the different concepts under discussion in creative ways (essay writing, visual arts projects, performance pieces, etc). Prerequisite: Senior standing. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies.
In 09F, Nostalgia in the Age of Globalization: Hispanic film between the city and the countryside. This seminar intends to offer an insightful vision on contemporary Hispanic culture, with a specific emphasis on the film production of the last three decades. The critical debate of the course inserts the dialectic relationship between the dominant influence of urban life and receding rural culture within the theoretical framework of globalization. Special attention will be devoted to the concepts of nostalgia and idealization as dominant modes of representation of the countryside. The in-depth analysis of relevant films and literary works will provide a better understanding of one of the most recurrent topics in contemporary culture. del Pino.
In 10W, Literature on the Verge of a Political Breakthrough. This course studies literary texts whose primary goal is to advocate for the transformation of society by attempting to redefine ethnic, cultural, political, and gender identities through aesthetic means. We will explore new definitions for articulating a civil society seen as more heterogeneous and less haunted by the values inherited from the Franco dictatorship. Authors include Goytisolo, Semprún, Vázquez Montalbán, Riera, and Lucía Etxebarria. Aguado.
In 10S, Twentieth Century Re-Discovery of Latin America’s Cultural Heritages. This course will explore the process of rediscovery of national heritages and how the search for non European cultural identities highlights the African and Amerindian components in the different Latin American regions. How do these identities relate to Western social systems and philosophical currents? This and other relevant questions will be explored in the writings of Gallegos, Guillén, Palés Matos, Carpentier, Arguedas, Castellanos, Reyes, Borges and others. Pastor.
Spanish 83: Independent Study. A program of individual study directed by a member of the Spanish and Portuguese faculty. Spanish 83 will normally consist of a program of reading and research that is not covered in regularly scheduled course offerings. After consultation with the faculty advisor of the project, all Independent Study proposals must be submitted for approval to the Department. Only open to majors in Spanish or Romance Languages. Under normal circumstances, no student may receive credit for this course more than once.
Students interested in pursuing an Independent Study must identify their topic and faculty advisor, and present a proposal to their faculty advisor and to the Department for approval by the last week of the term prior to registering for Spanish 83. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.
Spanish 90: Honors Course. Supervised independent research under the direction of a designated advisor. Honors majors will normally elect this course as the first in the required sequence (90 and 91) for completion of the Honors Program. Spanish 90 is intended to prepare the student for writing the Honors thesis, through readings in primary and secondary texts, theory and methodology. The course will include periodic written assignments and culminate in a final paper. Prerequisite: Admission to the Honors Program.
Spanish 91: Honors Seminar. A prearranged program of study and research during any term of the senior year, on a tutorial basis, with individual faculty members (normally the thesis advisor). A thesis and public presentation are the expected culmination of the course. Prerequisite: Prior admission to the Department's Honors Program; clear evidence of capability to perform honors level work, normally indicated by completion of Spanish 90 with a grade of B+ or higher.
