Course Descriptions
Fall 2024
SPAN 429: Spanish Phonetics & Phonology
SPAN 429 offers a comprehensive exploration of contemporary Spanish pronunciation (Phonetics and Phonology) through interactive lectures and student-centered activities. Students engage in critical readings to grasp the fundamental concepts of Spanish sound formation and phonological processes in authentic contexts, enhancing their listening and speaking skills. The course delves into regional characteristics of Spanish pronunciation, fostering discussions in Spanish and emphasizing regular attendance.
SPAN 463: National Traditions in Latin America: “Contemporary Feminism in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States"
This course explores contemporary feminist movements, topics, and trends in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. The course focuses on three thematic units: motherhood, abortion, and femicide. To allow for an in-depth comparison, each unit includes a variety of cultural materials (literary texts, legal documents, films, news, and chronicles) from the three countries.
SPAN 520: Structure of Spanish
SPAN 520 offers a fundamental exploration of Spanish grammar from a linguistic perspective, ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students new to Linguistics. Through interactive lectures and student-centered activities, students engage in English-Spanish-English translation exercises, emphasizing grammatical variability across regions, social groups, and situations.
SPAN 745: Don Quixote
In the 409 and 419 years since Miguel de Cervantes published El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, it has become one of the most influential novels ever written. In addition to reading Cervantes’ novel in its entirety, we will consider the material and book cultures in which editions of the Quixote were produced an illustrated, including the 1945 edition illustrated by Salvador Dalí (and pictured below) in the Spencer Research Library.
We will also use the Quixote as a lens through which to examine the history of literary criticism, including interdisciplinary approaches to textual studies, by critics such as Leo Spitzer, Roger Chartier, Américo Castro, Anthony Close, Pablo Jauralde de Pou, Fredrick de Armas and Fernando Bouza.
SPAN 780: Intro to Hispanic Studies
SPAN 780 serves as the Introductory course to the graduate program in the department of Spanish and Portuguese. The course explores a variety of theoretical and methodological approximations to the transdisciplinary field that is Hispanic Studies. The course combines theoretical texts with various forms of cultural expression in order to provide students with a glimpse at the wide range of directions and possibilities in the field.