Course Descriptions - Literature & Special Topic

SPAN 442: Special Topics in Latin American Literature & Culture

Anthropocene and Science Fiction in Latin America

Instructor: Miguel Ángel Albújar Escuredo

TuTh 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM, Wescoe 1009

Class #65972

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SPAN 442: Special Topics in Latin American Literature & Culture

Latin America in Motion: Music, Film, and Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Instructor: Natalia Camacho

MW 2:00 PM - 03:15 PM, Wescoe 1009

Class #66274

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SPAN 443: Peninsular Hispanic Studies

"Fictionalizing the Spanish Empire in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries"

Instructor: Patricia Manning

TuTh 09:30 AM - 10:45 AM, Wescoe 4012

Class #65917

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SPAN 443: Peninsular Hispanic Studies

"Grammar, Discourse, & Society"

Instructor: Ana Laura Marques

MWF 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM, Bailey 110

Class #61643

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SPAN 540: Colloquium on Hispanic Studies

"Well, What Do You Know?: Ways of Knowing Across the Spanish-speaking World"

Instructor: Sean Gullickson

TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm, Wescoe 2600

Class #60604

Over the course of thousands of years of history, across five continents and through interactions with hundreds of civilizations, the Spanish-speaking world offers a plethora of models for how we know and interact with the world around us. In this course, we will explore these ways of knowing, including the picaresque and princely guides of the early modern era, indigenous cosmologies throughout the Americas, speculative and future climate fictions, the shifting influence of Catholicism across the centuries, and more. We will also apply several ways of learning to these areas. Beyond traditional literary texts (literature, film, etc), we will learn with music, fine art, architecture, videogames and board games. You have spent years with us in the Spanish department and more generally at KU learning and learning and learning some more. In SPAN 540, we will reflect on that learning, place it in the context of larger global and historical currents, and go forward with a greater vision of where we are in the world and how we can shape it. 

SPAN 730: Topics in the Literature of 13th- and 14th-Century Iberia

"Literature in Thirteenth-Century Castile: Time and Space in Medieval Iberian Literature"

Instructor: Isidro J. Rivera

TuTh 2:00pm-3:15pm, Wescoe 2600

Class #66082

View Course Description (.pdf)

This course will focus on the concept of space and time in the literary production of thirteenth-century Castile.

The primary texts to be studied include:

• Alfonso X: Selections, General estoria, Libro de los juegos
• Anon.:Auto de los Reyes Magos
• Anon.:Libro de Apolonio
• Anon.:Historia de la donzella Teodor
• Gonzalo de Berceo:Vida de Santa Oria

Secondary readings will provide the necessary historical background for the analysis of the primary texts on the reading list. These critical readings texts will include selections from the following:

• Bower, A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry
• Dangler, Edging toward Iberia
• Dworkin, A Guide to Old Spanish
• Doubleday, The Wise King
• Menocal, Ornament of the World
• Pinet, Task of the Cleric: Cartography, Translation, and Economics in Thirteenth-Century Iberia

Class sessions will combine lecture with active discussion of the primary texts. Written work will include analytical papers, in-class oral presentations, and final examination.

For more information, contact Prof. Rivera at ijrivera@ku.edu.

SPAN 785: Special Topics in Spanish-American Literature

"Intro to Caribbean Studies: The Price of Paradise"

Instructor: Ninel Valderrama Negrón

Mondays 4:30pm - 7:00pm, Wescoe 2600

Class #60605

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This graduate seminar examines the Spanish-speaking and circum-Caribbean through the lens of debt, not merely sovereign debt, but also the debts of recognition, labor, and ecology that have structured Caribbean life over time.

By understanding the Caribbean as a basin of coasts and routes (rather than simply as “islands”), we move from debates regarding Haitian indemnity and reparations to Puerto Rico’s colonial fiscal governance, from migration and indentured servitude to the climate crisis and tourism infrastructure. Readings combine theory, history, and law with literature, film, poetry, and the visual arts to ask how debt organizes time, belonging, and extraction, and how Caribbean cultural production renders these structures visible, debatable, and narratable.

SPAN 985: Seminar in Spanish American Literature & Culture

"From Commodity Form to Rubble: Colombian Cultural Production After and Before the End

Instructor: Santiago Rozo-Sánchez

Tuesdays 4:30pm - 7:00pm, Wescoe 2600

Class #66083

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This seminar examines Colombian cultural production from 1989 to the present by asking what the country’s most powerful explanatory categories have made visible and what they have kept from view. For decades, “drugs” and “violence” have served as the default keys to Colombia, both at home and in the global market for its images, stories, and suffering. The course treats these categories as historical mediations rather than self-evident truths. It reads literature, film, comics, visual art, theater, popular festivals, and music alongside the state’s own speech: slogans, laws, and country-branding campaigns. Organized in four periods, the seminar moves from the commodity form that organized the drug economy of the 1990s, through the affective tautologies of violence during the years of state denial of the armed conflict, to the acoustic politics of memory and repair after the Victims’ Law and the 2016 peace accord. It ends with the rubble of the present, from which recent artists and writers try to imagine possible futures.

Theoretically, the course starts from the notion of mediation (Jameson, Kornbluh, Williams, Martín-Barbero). It puts this notion in dialogue with the paradigms that shaped the humanities in each period: material culture, affect and psychoanalytic theories of enjoyment, sound studies, and theories of history, ruin, and speculative fabulation. These frameworks are read critically, as symptoms of their moment as much as tools for analysis. Primary works include films by Víctor Gaviria, Luis Ospina, and Federico Atehortúa; fiction by Fernando Vallejo, Rafael Chaparro Madiedo, Juan Cárdenas, and Laura Ortiz Gómez; graphic memory projects from Montes de María and Urabá; and the festivals of San Martín and Riosucio. The course also takes up the archival experiments of Frente Cumbiero, Ondatrópica, and Los Guaqueros.

PORT 612: Accelerated Basic Portuguese for Spanish Speakers II

Instructor: Ana Laura Marques

MW 2:00 - 3:15pm, Wescoe 2600

Class #57607

PORT612 is an intermediate-high to advanced language course designed for Spanish speakers aiming to develop proficiency in Brazilian Portuguese. Through a contrastive analysis of phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary, students will explore the key linguistic differences and similarities between Spanish and Portuguese. The course emphasizes practical language use, including a range of academic genres in Portuguese through oral and written assignments. In addition to linguistic development, students will engage with intercultural topics from the Lusophone world. The course also encourages students to consider academic research in Portuguese-language studies, including linguistics, sociolinguistics, and Brazilian cultural studies. By the end of the course, students will be able to analyze linguistic connections, communicate effectively in Portuguese, and express informed perspectives on intercultural issues.
 

Prerequisite: PORT611, Graduate student status in Spanish. Undergraduates in Spanish may be admitted with consent of the instructor. Classes are conducted in Portuguese.
 

SPAN 440: Topics in Transatlantic Hispanic Studies

"Más que un deporte: Soccer and Society in Spain and Latin America"

Instructor: Sean Gullickson

MW 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM

Few cultural phenomena have the global reach and impact of soccer. 1.5 billion people around the world watched the 2022 FIFA World Cup final between France and Argentina. The upcoming World Cup in North America is expected to have an economic impact the same size as El Salvador’s annual GDP. The most-followed accounts on Instagram are those of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, two superstars of the game. It is a passion for billions around the world, but particularly in Spain and Latin America where fútbol has important ties to culture, literature, politics, economics, and history. This course will seek to map out and analyze these connections between sport and society. From colonialism to el clásico, the Dirty War to narco-soccer, the Hand of God to the hand of a dictator, we will explore the passion, power and purpose of soccer in the Spanish-speaking world. Readings from canonical authors like Galeano and Marías will be paired with documentaries, podcasts, journalistic pieces and, of course, soccer games from throughout history. Together, we will use these materials and our in-class collaboration to answer big questions about soccer’s place in Latin America and Spain.

SPAN 441: Special Topics in Spanish Literature & Culture

"Studies in Medieval and Post-Medieval Cultural Production"

Instructor: Isidro Rivera

TuTh 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

The United States is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, and approximately 20% of the population – 68 million people – identify as Latine. The experiences and cultural production of this group are crucial to our understanding of the Spanish-speaking world writ large as well as to our development as citizens of Kansas, the US and the world. 

This course will explore representations of the Latine experience in the United States through a variety of texts and media, from short stories to film, graphic novels to visual art, music to independent journalism. Our primary focus will be contemporary rather than historical. Covering topics like belonging, migration narratives, pop culture, Spanglish, and politics, we will seek to center the range of Latine voices that have shaped and continue to shape the cultural and social realities of the US and the world.

SPAN 442: Special Topics in Latin American Literature & Culture

"Latin American Telenovelas – The Power of Pop Culture"

Instructor: Ana Laura Marques

TuTh 9:30am - 10:45am

This course explores Latin American telenovelas as a dynamic lens for understanding contemporary societies across the region. Through selected episodes from Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American countries, students examine how these culturally influential narratives shape public debates on class, past, race, gender, family, and national identity. The course analyzes narrative strategies, production contexts, audience reception, and the broader cultural impact of telenovelas on fashion, language, and social norms. By situating these media productions within wider discussions of pop culture and social change, the course invites students to consider how mass entertainment both reflects and transforms everyday life throughout Latin America. Class sessions include clips, presentations, guided discussions, and oral assignments; outside of class, students complete readings, conduct research, watch telenovelas, and engage in written assignments. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify and evaluate narrative strategies, production contexts, and audience reception dynamics within the telenovela genre; discuss critically how telenovelas influence public discourse on class, race, gender, family, and national identity, and engage eCectively in oral and written assignments that integrate analytical, intercultural, and research-based perspectives. 

Prerequisite: Undergraduate Students in Spanish or heritage speakers. Classes conducted in Spanish (mostly) and English.

SPAN 462: 20th Century Spanish-American Studies

"Mediating the Present: A Twenty-First Century Latin American Cinema that Knows, Witnesses, Desires"

Instructor: Santiago Rozo-Sanchez

TuTh 2:00pm - 3:15pm

What does cinema do when it thinks from within the conditions it seeks to understand? This course approaches 21st-century Latin American cinema as a practice of mediation: not a mirror held up to society but a formal, sensory, and political working-through of the contradictions that structure the region's present. Films do not stand outside the realities they engage; they participate in them, giving concrete shape to relations that are otherwise imperceptible. That participation is where both their power and their complicities reside.

The course begins by examining the material conditions under which contemporary Latin American cinema mediates: the economies of film festivals, the expansion of streaming platforms, the fragility of state funding, and the politics of transnational co-production. Who gets to mediate which stories, for whom, and under what constraints? From there, the course develops three analytical operations that students carry throughout the semester. Knows: cinema as a form of critical thinking conducted through images and sounds, exploring how filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel and Carlos Reygadas generate knowledge that other discursive forms cannot. Witnesses: cinema's capacity to make present what has been erased or denied, while interrogating the limits of testimonial mediation, as in the work of Tatiana Huezo, whose films testify to violence precisely through what they withhold. Desires: cinema as a site where longing, drive, and appetite become visible as political forces, explored through the work of Albertina Carri, whose films trace how desire for recovery, for insurgency, for the body, and for cinema itself is always shaped by the structures that produce and constrain it. These three modes are not sequential units but recurring lenses, brought into friction with one another across the semester. The most compelling films and the most productive disagreements emerge where the boundaries between knowing, witnessing, and desiring become unstable

SPAN 540: Colloquium in Hispanic Studies

"Don Quijote"

Instructor: Robert Bayliss

MW 9:00am - 10:15am

TuTh 11:00am - 12:15pm

Why is Don Quijote, according to several accounts, the second-most read book in the world (after the Bible)? How can it be used so often today as an analogy to explain our current circumstances? This course will entail both a detailed study of Cervantes’s masterpiece (and the extensive body of criticism that it has generated) and an exploration of the “afterlife” of Don Quijote in Spain, Latin America and beyond. After studying the novel and the major issues that have been treated in Quijote scholarship, we will study a number of adaptations in print, on stage and on screen. Apart from shorter written assignments given as homework, students will write two longer papers: one textual analysis of Don Quijote due at midsemester (4–7 pages) and a final research paper (12–15 pages).

Prerequisites: SPAN 324, SPAN 340, SPAN 424, and two 400-level Hispanic literature courses.

SPAN 570: Studies in Hispanic Linguistics: Social & Dialectal Variation

"Introduction to the Sociolinguistics of Spanish"

Instructor: Antônio Simões

MW 3:30pm - 4:45pm

View Course Description (.pdf)

Course Description from Catalog: 

“SPAN 570 Spanish - Studies in Hispnc Linguistics: ( 3 / FP ) Fall 2026. Theoretical and applied analysis of one or more of the following components of the Spanish language: phonology/phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics. May be repeated for credit if content varies. Prerequisite: SPAN 424 and SPAN 428. Satisfies: Foreign Language Proficiency (FP)” 

This course is designed for both undergraduate and graduate students to delve into the nuances of Spanish grammar. Centered on our primary textbook and enhanced by AI-driven analysis, we will explore how language varies across regions, social groups, and socio-political contexts. By bridging the gap between foundational readings and contemporary technology, we will examine the evolution of prestigious and stigmatized forms of Spanish through both historical and modern lenses 

What to Expect: 

Engaging discussions: Active participation and thoughtful contributions from students are encouraged. Interactive presentations: Regular Powerpoint presentations with audio will help you enhance your spoken and written Spanish and develop self-repair skills for better language proficiency and confidence in public speaking. 

Unique Learning: 

SPAN 570 examines aspects of Spanish that are not typically addressed in other courses. For example, we will explore phenomena such as the use of vos instead of tú (voseo), leísmo and laísmo, the personal a, and nonstandard or dialectal forms such as truje instead of traje, among others that are often overlooked in traditional language courses.

SPAN 780: Intro to Hispanic Studies

"Ethics and the Analysis of Suffering"

Instructor: Patricia Manning

TuTh 02:30 PM - 03:45 PM

What are our ethical obligations as scholars when we study documents that have been produced under duress? How do we assess the reliability of confessions made during torture or under the threat of it? How do fictional characters manage these dilemmas? How does detective fiction handle interrogations? What are the implications of these choices? 

These are the questions that the course will explore.

Reading will include:

• Theoretical texts
• Inquisition records
• Fiction about the Inquisition
• Detective fiction
• Documents from Latin American dictatorships (Dirty War, Operation Condor, Pinochet)

The course satisfies one of the research skills and responsible scholarship requirements for the Ph.D., but all graduate students are welcome.

SPAN 801: Teaching Spanish in Institutions of Higher Learning

Instructor: Amy Rossomondo

M 4:00pm - 6:30pm

Required of all teaching assistants who teach beginning Spanish at the University of Kansas for the first time. Instruction in classroom procedures for first year Spanish, demonstration of teaching techniques, and survey of current methodology.
 

Course overview from syllabus:
We require incoming Spanish instructors to take SPAN 801 so that they will understand how we teach here at KU, and why we teach this way.  

The first part of the course is intended as a general overview of communicative, task-based language instruction and an introduction to processing instruction and how it can be applied the   Spanish courses that you are teaching. This overview will consist of exploring proven teaching methods and practices, as well as the theory and research that inform them. We will also dedicate portions of our class meetings to discussing and preparing for the course that you are teaching and other topics that are immediately applicable to your experience as an instructor in our program for the first time.

In the second part of the course we will turn our attention toward foreign language instruction beyond the introductory level. We will explore content-based instruction in a variety of manifestations, curricular design and measurement, critical pedagogies, the role of Open Educational Resources (OER) and technology in foreign language (FL) instruction, online instruction, as well as the relationship between language and culture and form and meaning from a pedagogical perspective.  

The final part of the course will be dedicated to applying this learning to the realization of an in-depth pedagogical project.  
SPAN 801 is also an opportunity for you to work closely with your fellow instructors and with me. The approach, assignments and projects for the seminar are designed to foster collaboration and reflection, both hallmarks of effective teaching and scholarship. We utilize the tools available in Canvas to facilitate this collaboration so that you gain hands-on experience with the available technology at KU; after this experience you should feel comfortable employing these tools in your own classes.

SPAN 940: Seminar in Transatlantic Literature and Culture

Policing Civilization in the Colonial Hispanic World

Instructor: Ninel Valderrama Negrón

T 4:00pm - 6:30pm

How do people learn to see “order” and “civilization”? Could order be recognize it in the rigid lines of a map? Or is it constructed through social practices and everyday interactions?

This seminar asks how social order was imagined, administered, and made visible in the Hispanic world through the concept of policía, understood not in its narrow modern sense, but as a broad civilizational logic that organized urban life, morality, hierarchy, and rule. Reading colonial texts and visual culture from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, students will examine how concepts such as conquest, colony, and pacification shaped the languages of domination. Particular attention will be given to the frontier, not simply as a territorial edge, but as a volatile zone of encounter where the categories of savagery and civilization were produced in relation to one another. Bringing together history, literary criticism, and visual studies, the seminar asks how texts, images, and archival forms taught subjects to see power as order. Working closely with original colonial sources, including period and manuscript editions, students will engage the rhetorical and material density of the archive while developing new tools for thinking about the afterlives of colonial governance.
 

PORT 611: Accelerated Basic Portuguese for Spanish Speakers I

Instructor: Ana Laura Marques

MW 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Contrastive phonological and morphological analysis of standard Spanish and the major dialect of Brazilian Portuguese, followed by a presentation of major grammatical and phonological stumbling blocks for Spanish speakers. Drills on grammar, syntax, and pronunciation emphasize those areas in which Brazilian Portuguese differs most significantly from Spanish. 

Prerequisite: Graduate student status in Spanish. Undergraduates in Spanish may be admitted with consent of instructor.