Spanish & Latin American Cultures

SPAN UN1101 Elementary Spanish I. 4 points.

Prerequisites: a score of 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. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

SPAN UN1102 Elementary Spanish II. 4 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN1101 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, writing and cultural knowledge as a continuation of SPAN UN1101. The principal 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.  All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

SPAN UN1120 COMPREHENSIVE BEGINNING SPAN. 4.00 points.

Intensive, fast-paced elementary Spanish course for multilingual learners who have had little to no formal education in Spanish. Replaces the sequence SPAN UN1101-SPAN UN1102. Prerequisites: Take the Department's Language Placement Examination. (It is only for diagnostic purposes, to assess your language learning skills, not your knowledge of Spanish). If you score approximately 330 OR MORE, you may qualify for this course if: - you have had little to no formal education in Spanish, AND - you identify with ONE of the following language learner profiles: Learners of Spanish as a 3rd language: fluent in a language other than English Informal learners of Spanish: English speakers who have “picked up” Spanish by interacting with Spanish speakers in informal settings “Receptive” Spanish heritage learners: English dominant, but you understand Spanish spoken by family and community members (The exam is only an initial assessment for diagnostic purposes. Your score might be high, even if you have never studied Spanish in a formal setting). You do not need my permission to register*. I will further assess your level during the Change of Program period. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if you are unsure about your placement in this course. *Students who do not have the necessary proficiency level may not remain in this course. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade

SPAN UN2101 Intermediate Spanish I. 4 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN1102 or SPAN UN1120 or 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 UN1102 or SPAN UN1120. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

SPAN UN2102 Intermediate Spanish II. 4 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN2101 or a score of 450-625 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 UN2101. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

SPAN UN2108 Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students. 4 points.

Prerequisites: heritage knowledge of Spanish. Students intending to register for this course must take the department's on-line Placement Examination. You should take this course if your recommended placement on this test is SPAN UN2102 (a score of 450-624). If you place below SPAN UN2102 you should follow the placement recommendation received with your test results. If you place above SPAN UN2102, you should choose between SPAN UN3300 and SPAN UN4900. If in doubt, please consult with the Director of the Language Programs.

Designed for native and non-native Spanish-speaking students who have oral fluency beyond the intermediate level but have had no formal language training.

SPAN UN2120 Comprehensive Intermediate Spanish. 4 points.

Prerequisites: This course is an intensive and fast-paced coverage of both SPAN UN2101 and SPAN UN2102. Students MUST demonstrate a strong foundation in Spanish and meet the following REQUIREMENTS: a score ABOVE 480 on the Department's Placement Examination; or A- or higher in SPAN UN1120. If you fulfill the above requirements, you do not need the instructor's permission to register. HOWEVER, the instructor will additionally assess student proficiency during the Change of Program Period. Students who do not have the necessary proficiency level may not remain in this course. Replaces the sequence SPAN UN2101-SPAN UN2102. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

SPAN UN3265 LATIN AMER LIT (IN TRANSLATN). 3.00 points.

Study of contemporary Latin American narrative; its origins and apotheosis. Readings include Machado de Assis, Borges, Garcia Marquez, Puig, and others

SPAN UN3300 Advanced Language through Content [in Spanish]. 3 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN2102 or AP score of 4 or 5; or SAT score.

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 (Please consult the Directory of Classes for the topic of each section.) This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies. Formerly SPAN W3200 and SPAN BC3004. If you have taken either of these courses before you cannot take SPAN UN3300. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

SPAN UN3349 Hispanic Cultures I: Islamic Spain through the Colonial Period. 3 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Prerequisites: L" course: enrollment limited to 15 students. Completion of language requirement, third-year language sequence (W3300).

Provides students with 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, covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the Americas.

SPAN UN3350 Hispanic Cultures II: Enlightenment to the Present. 3 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

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), neoliberalism, globalization, 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, documents, and works of art. Class discussions will seek to situate the works studied within the political and cultural currents and debates of the time. All primary materials, class discussion, and assignments are in Spanish. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.

SPAN UN3558 LATIN AMERICAN FILM. 3 points.

This course aims to give students an introductory overview of some of the most salient issues surrounding contemporary Latin American film since the late 1960s. Starting with a selection of films from the experimental “new cinema” or “third cinema” of the 1960s, we will also study the contemporary production of international blockbuster movies in the 2000s, in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico. Topics to be covered include the relationship between cinema and underdevelopment; cinema and revolution; cinema and emancipation; documentary film and fiction; gender and sexuality; neoliberalism and the market; spectatorship and subjectivity.

SPAN BC3099 Independent Study. 3 points.

Independent study.

SPAN BC3148 Contra Franco Vivamos mejor? Literature and Popular Culture of the Spanish Dictatorship (1936-75). 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Examination of the literature and culture produced in Spain during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco: the interaction between culture allowed and sponsored by the regime, and the voices of resistance against repression and censorship.

SPAN BC3151 Spanish Film: Cinematic Representation of Spain. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Examination of Spanish film in both theoretical and historical terms. Considers political and ideological changes through the 20th century and their repercussions in cinematic representation. Topics include: surrealism and Bunuel's legacy; representations of Franco and the civil war; censorship and self-censorship; gender, sexualities, and national identities; film, literature relations.

SPAN BC3170 The Films of Luis Buñuel and the Spanish Literary Tradition. 3 points.

Prerequisites: At least one 300-level course in Spanish.
A journey through the works of the renowned Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and the literary movements from which he drew inspiration. We will establish a dialogue between his films and Spanish artistic trends such as surrealism, the picaresque, esperpento, and realism. Authors include García Lorca, Valle Inclán, Pérez Galdós. [In Spanish]

SPAN BC3180 Between Science Fiction and Climate Fiction: Imagining the Non-human in Latin America. 3 points.

This course explores the entanglement between traditional science fiction and the emerging genre of climate change fiction (popularly known as “cli-fi”) in Latin American literature. Traditionally, while science fiction imagines future scientific or technological advances and significant social or environmental changes, climate fiction deals more specifically with climate change and global warming. By focusing on the ideological and aesthetic implications of the human/non-human binary, this course will explore how the history of colonialism makes Latin America a unique laboratory of experimentation that combines these two genres. We will ask questions such as: How are phenomena such as climate change, post-humanism, animal, machine, artificial intelligence regionalized in Latin American fiction? How is the relationship between colonization and the extraction of natural resources fictionalized in twentieth-century literature? What are the different ways in which Latin American authors negotiate issues such as “development,” “progress,” and technological and capitalist expansion in their fiction? How do they imagine a future after climate change? How do climate change and technological development affect gender, racial, and class relations in Latin America? We will examine how specific literary fiction varies in response to the long-term history of capitalism, patriarchal domination, and the technological domination of nature in Latin America.

SPAN BC3264 The Boom: The Spanish American Novel, 1962-70. 3 points.

The writing that catapulted Latin America into the mainstream of world culture: Fuentes, Garcia Marquez, Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, Jose Donoso, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

SPAN BC3267 Transatlantic Travel Writing in Translation. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Since Columbus's diary the relationship between Europe and the New World has been fraught with the illusion and disappointment raised by European expectations. This course will read the Atlantic in both directions, listening to European travelers who go west and Spanish Americans who journey east to a new Old World.

SPAN BC3303 GAY MADRID: A PROGRAM ABROAD. 1 point.

SPAN BC3304 SPANISH SOCIOLINGUISTICS PROGRAM ABROAD IN ECUADOR. 1 point.

Not offered during 2021-22 academic year.

SPAN BC3361 Jorge Luis Borges in Context. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Language requirement, SPAN3300 and either SPAN3349 or 3350

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SPAN BC3376 Rethinking Spanish Translation. 3 points.

Through special attention to translation method and practice, this course aims to develop a solid foundation on which to build the full set of competences required to become thoughtful, alert, self-critical translator while extending and improving the students' competence of Spanish through complex translation tasks of a wide range of texts presented with a progressive overall structure and thematic organization. With a professional approach, it focuses on translation as a cross-cultural and crosslinguistic communicative activity that integrates areas such as interlanguage pragmatics, discourse analysis and transfer.

SPAN BC3375 Literary Translation. 3 points.

BC: Partial Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Language (LAN)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Language requirement SPAN330 and SPAN3349 or 3350

This course seeks to explore the techniques and skills required for the translation of literary text from Spanish to English.

SPAN BC3382 Languages in Contact: Sociolinguistic Aspects of U. S. Spanish. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Sociolinguistics studies the connections between language and social categories such as class, gender, and ethnicity. This course will address how social, geographic, cultural, and economic factors affect the different usages of Spanish among its millions of speakers.  Through theory and practice of various research tools including Ethnography of Communication and Discourse Analysis, students with explore topics such as English-Spanish contact in the US, code-switching, and Spanglish, as well as issues of identity, bilingualism, and endangered languages.

SPAN BC3388 Back to the Wall: Words Across Borders in Americas. 3 points.

Prerequisites: 3349 and 3350 and 3300

The tension between the local and different forms of internationalism has shaped the emergent modern cultures of Latin America beginning in the second half of the 19th century, as new nations imagined their place in an increasingly globalized capitalist modernity. In a pressing time which compels us to reimagine the role of borders and create new images of the world, our class will focus on cultural practices that have used translation as a critical tool in order to surpass uneven frontiers and forge new trans-national alliances. We will see how Latin American writers and artists have counted on translation in order to represent a different world in which to inscribe their work and intervene. In a contemporary context dominated by the centrality of images running amok amongst platforms and screens of all sizes, and which at times seems to have ceased to question the coloniality of English as a global lingua franca, our course will seek guidance in cultural practices that deploy the semi-opaque lens of language and translation in order to question the dominant spatial coordinates of globalization, and its fantasies of total translatability. How can some Latin American practices of translation help us undo the trapping division between the local and the global, the national and the cosmopolitan, the Here and the Elsewhere, to invoke the title of the film by Jean Luc Godard and its emphasis on the and? The class will favor an interdisciplinary approach that includes theoretical essays, canonical literary texts, pop cultural and countercultural artifacts, and works by visual and performance artists. 

SPAN BC3435 Language and Revolution. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Kant's Enlightenment motto, sapere aude, took on political significance for Spanish American revolutionaries who made their case in prose, pushing against the constraints of the essay. This course traces the genre's evolution from the transatlantic debate over political independence to the exuberant declarations of intellectual independence that would follow.

SPAN BC3440 Marriage and Adultery in 19th-Century Spanish Fiction. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Consideration of the conflicting interests of 19th-century society as represented through the themes of marriage and adultery: the desire for social stability vs. the potentially subversive drive for freedom and self-affirmation. The roles of women, class, culture, and religion emphasized in works by Galdos, Clarin, Caballero, and others.

SPAN BC3441 Angels and Seagulls: the Cultural Construction of Womanhood in Nineteenth Century Spain. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Reading of 19th-Century Spanish journalistic, medical, and legal texts, conduct manuals, and novels by both men and women, to assess how they come together in configuring new ideas of female identity and its social domains, as aristocratic rule is gradually being replaced by a new bourgeois order.

SPAN BC3442 The Bourgeois Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Spain. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Through both literary and popular print culture, examination of the new class in 19th century Spain produced by economic industrialization and political liberalism and how it ensured its hegemony. Negotiates its foundational issues - power, money, law, city life, education, aesthetics, virtue, marriage, sexuality, and style.

SPAN BC3443 Catalan Culture, from Regionalism to Nationalism (1886-1936). 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

In the nineteenth century, the failure of the Spanish State to find political alternatives to centralism, coupled with Catalonia's industrial and economic takeoff, led to the development of a strong regionalist sentiment, and eventually a nationalist movement. From this period and through the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, intellectuals became engaged in the creation of a cultural repertoire to ground and strengthen the claim to a Catalan nationality. In this course, we will examine both the burgeoning literature in dialogue with Spanish and European currents, and the establishment of other national traditions in the fields of art, language, music, urban planning/architecture, and sport.

SPAN BC3446 Venezuela: Robbery and Nature. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

This course will read Venezuela backwards in films, poems, novels and essays, from the present-tense struggle over the legacy of chavismo to the early days of independence.  The constant thread will be the conflict between development and nature with special attention to natural resources and eco-critical approaches.

SPAN BC3449 Memory and Violence: Film and Literature of Spanish Civil War. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Contemporary Spanish films serve as a point of departure for the study of the Civil War and Franco periods as both historical fact and myth. Includes an analysis of its representation in memoirs and literary works and its significance in light of Spain recent political transformation.

SPAN BC3453 Monstrous Identities in the Iberian Peninsula. 3 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN3300 and SPAN UN3349 and SPAN UN3350

The course will explore selected texts and images, from the Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula, that illustrate the presence of animals, the marvelous and the monstrous in Spanish literature and culture. Students will study the didactic role of the bestiaries in medieval culture. We will look into a variety of images present in the bestiaries, architecture and printed images of animals, monsters and the marvelous, and we will analyze them in their context. The course will also examine how from the thirteenth century on there was an increase in the practice of depicting the minorities (Jews and Muslims) in the Iberian Peninsula with animal and monstrous imagery. Furthermore, we will study how the presence of animal imagery and the monstrous and marvelous during the fifteenth in images and texts (both fictional and non-fictional) worked to construct an idea and ideal of Spain, and a nationalist ideology, through the implicit and sometimes explicit process of excluding groups who were perceived to be monstrous and threatening to that idea and ideal, including Jews, conversos, and Muslims. The course will focus in the close reading of selected excerpts from Calila e Dimna, Los milagros de Nuestra Señora, Libro de buen amor, Coplas del perro de Alva, Alborayque and miscellaneous selections, including legends, poetry and juridical literature. All pre-modern texts will be read in modernized Spanish versions. The selections of the primary texts will be supplemented with historical, cultural, and critical readings. 

SPAN BC3455 Empire and Technology in the Colonial World. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Exploration of the scientific and technological practices through which the Spanish Empire established and legitimated itself during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Chronicles and travel literature will show how knowledges such as cartography, metallurgy, and botany grounded technological expansion and its deployment of indigenous peoples and resources.

SPAN BC3456 Puerto Rico From Spanish Province to U.S Commonwealth: Colonial Experiences. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

This course analyzes how political conflicts and cultural attitudes emerged in Puerto Rico throughout colonial Spanish rule (1492-1898) reappear or influence developing thought after the transfer of sovereignty to the United States and through the 1952 creation of the Commonwealth, as manifested in legal, journalistic, literary, and other cultural works.

SPAN BC3457 Literatures of the Hispanophone Caribbean. 4 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Study of works from the Spanish-speaking islands of the Caribbean, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, in order to unravel the cultural traits, historical patterns, and politicoeconomic realities that these islands may or may not have in common.

SPAN BC3466 Rock Music and Literature in the Southern Cone. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

In this course we will explore different social and cultural aspects of the shifting and complex interrelations between rock and literature in the Southern Cone.  We will examine some representative novels, short stories, documentaries, secondary bibliography, and songs in the field.

SPAN BC3467 Literature of the Southern Cone: The Dialects of Fantasy and Reality. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350.

Examination of the literature of the Southern Cone: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile; the tension between fantastic literature and literary realism. Readings include Borges, Casares, Ocampo, Onetti, Donoso, and Roa Bastos.

SPAN BC3468 Literature of the Andes: Revolution and Identity. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350.

The region of the Andes (Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile) has produced great poets - Mistral, Neruda, and Vallejo - as well as extraordinary novelists, Donoso and Vargas Llosa. This course seeks to identify the essential traits of the region's literature and relate them to its tumultuous history.

SPAN BC3469 Pan-Americanism. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Explores the rich tradition of essays, poems, novels and films that define themselves with or against the notion of a shared American reality. Authors include Borges, Sarmiento, Mary Peabody Mann, Soledad Acosta de Samper and Marie Arana. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN BC3470 Latin(o) American Art in New York City: Critical Interventions, Institutions, and Creative Lives. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Considers the trajectory and intervention of Latin(o) American art in New York City's artistic landscape. We will map the relation between Latin(o) American art and key art institutions, study critical receptions, and look at some of the lives and works of Latin(o) American artists in NYC. 

SPAN BC3471 Mexico: From Barroco to Narco: Culture and Power in Mexico. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

The course surveys Mexican literature and culture from the 17th to the 21st century. It seeks to identify the voices that define Mexico over the centuries, beginning with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in Colonial New Spain and ending with Elmer Mendoza in the drug-cartel ridden Culiacán of our own days, Readings include poetry, essays, and novels, including such authors as Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, and Carlos Fuentes.

SPAN BC3475 Fictional Foundations: Puerto Rico and the Spanish Empire, 1808-1898. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Throughout the nineteenth century, Puerto Ricans were developing a sense of nationality, without an accompanying movement to achieve independence from Spain. This course examines this apparent contradiction, the hybrid sense of their own identity and nature that it generates among individuals who feel both Spanish and Puerto Rican, and its manifestation in literature and other cultural texts.

SPAN BC3476 Twentieth-Century Puerto Rican Literature. 3 points.

Not offered during 2021-22 academic year.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

A study of Puerto Rican authors (Ferre, Sanchez, Pedreira, Julia de Burgos, Gonzalez, Marques) and their interpretation of socio-historical development in Puerto Rico. The relationship of these texts to historical writing (e.g., Quintero Rivera), and the revisionist trend in Puerto Rican historiography.

SPAN BC3479 La Novela del Boom, 1962 - 1970. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Close reading of the novels that place Spanish America in the mainstream of worldwide literary production during the sixties. Authors include: Fuentes, Cortazar, Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa, Puig, and Donoso.

SPAN BC3480 Love and Eroticism in Contemporary Latin American Literature. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350.

Introduction to the artistic manifestations of love and eroticism and their relationship to social attitudes. Works by Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Neruda, Paz, Borges, Isabel Allende, Vargas Llosa, and Garcia Marquez.

SPAN BC3481 Contemporary Latin American Short Fiction. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Readings of short stories and novellas by established and emerging writers from Spanish America and Brazil. Defines the parameters of Latin American short fiction by exploring its various manifestations, fantastic literature, protest writing, satire, and realism. Among the authors to be studied will be: Machado de Assis, Borges, Garcia Marquez, Ana Lydia Vega, Clarice Lispector, Silvina Ocampo, and Jose Donoso.

SPAN BC3482 Film-Literature Relations in Modern Latin American Narrative. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Intertextual relations between film and literature. Authors and film makers include: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Laura Esquivel, Borges, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Vargas Llosa, and Fina Torres.

SPAN BC3510 Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Cultures. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Examines constructions of gender and sexuality in Latin American cultures. Through a close analysis of critical, literary, and visual texts, we explore contemporary notions of gender and sexuality, the socio-cultural processes that have historically shaped these, and some theoretical frameworks through which they have been understood.

SPAN BC3671 Spanish Literature from 1975: The Postmodern Discourse. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Close reading of some of the most significant works and trends of post-Franco Spain in the light of postmodern theories. Readings will include works by Martin-Gaite, Vazquez Montalban, Montserrat Roig, Lourdes Ortiz, J.J. Millas, Ana Rosetti, Paloma Pedrero, Antonio Gala, Almudena Grandes.

SPAN BC3675 The XXI Century Writer's Desk: Literature from an Author's Perspective. 3 points.

Prerequisites: (SPAN UN3349) and (SPAN UN3350)

In this course, acclaimed Spanish author Kirmen Uribe—currently engaged in writing a Barnard-set novel—will guide students in reading prose from the writer’s point of view: paying attention to experimentation with genre, voice, language, and the construction of the text’s audience. Discussions will also focus on writers’ imagination and creative process; their relationship to the publishing world; and their active position-taking in society. The course will focus especially on Iberian (Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque) and Latin American new voices in relation to global movements. Students will produce their choice of two of the following assignments: a video poem, a podcast, the beginning of a novel, a TED talk, or an academic/critical essay. Readings are in Spanish and English; class discussion and assignments will be in Spanish.

SPAN BC3830 Queer Quisqueya: Same-Sex Desire in Dominican Literature. 4 points.

Pre-requisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350). When LGBT literatures first became consolidated as a field of study in in Latin American literary studies in the 1990s, the Dominican Republic figured as a glaring absence. In the first two pioneering anthologies, Hispanisms and Homosexualities (Duke UP, 1998) and ¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings (Duke UP, 1995), an impressive one-third of essays was dedicated to the insular Hispanophone Caribbean, Cuba and Puerto Rico, but none to the Dominican Republic. This course contests the presumable absence of LGBT literature in the Dominican Republic by recovering little-known 20th century representations of same-sex desire and then tracing the growing body of Dominican LGBT literature in the 21st century. We analyze through which different representational strategies Dominican writers have successfully written non-heteronormative subjects into the Dominican national family and have challenged existing gender and sexual norms across time.

SPAN BC3850 ADVERTISING AS CULTURE IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY SPAIN. 3 points.

Advertising emerged in modern societies as they developed into bourgeois market economies. As a creative industry involving verbal/visual communication and technology, it is intertwined with cultural production in general, and many of its products can be seen as artistic in their own right. As it both caters to and creates a consumer public with needs and desires, it is intertwined with broad social and ideological currents, and can provide an angle for their historical analysis. This course posits analysis of a “discursive formation” that includes the language of advertising as well as literary, cinematographic, and other social languages engaging publicity as a vehicle for the study of modern/contemporary Spanish cultural history, from the birth of the modern constitutional monarchy (1812), through the Franco dictatorship (1939-75), and into the transition to present-day democracy. Topics will include the evolution and professionalization of Spanish advertising itself, advertising and aesthetics, early bourgeois reflection on art vs. commerce, the special role of women as both publicity and public, changing views on consumer culture, and marketing’s function in consolidating substate political identities.

SPAN BC3990 Senior Seminar: Crime and Culture in Modern Spain. 3 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN3300SPAN UN3349SPAN UN3350 Prerequisites: Course intended to be taken by all Spanish majors during the fall of their senior year. Third-year bridge course (UN3300), and introductory surveys (UN3349, UN3350).

Throughout the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, after the loss of most of its empire, Spain is engaged in reconceptualizing itself as a constitutional monarchy with updated political, economic, and social institutions. A cornerstone of this transformation is the development of a legal/juridical system dependent on newfangled notions like "normalcy,"  "delinquency," or "insanity," and in dialogue with other cultural systems like medicine, journalism, literature, and politics. Intellectuals in various fields worked to produce the new ideal citizen defined primarily by law, as well as its polar opposite, the deviant/delinquent. Our course will examine this chronological process in the peninsula, as well as its different functioning in the remaining colonial world (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines).

SPAN UN3991 SENIOR SEMINAR. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Seniors (major or concentrator status).
The course is a requirement for all the LAIC majors. In this seminar, students develop an individual research project and write an essay under the guidance of the course’s instructor and in dialogue with the other participants’ projects After an introductory theoretical and methodological section, and a research session at the library, the syllabus is entirely constructed on the students’ projects. Every participant is in charge of a weekly session. Essay outlines and drafts are discussed with the group throughout the semester. The final session is a public symposium with external respondents

SPAN BC4426 Queer Quisqueya: Same-Sex Desire in Dominican Literature. 4 points.

When LGBT literatures first became consolidated as a field of study in in Latin American literary studies in the 1990s, the Dominican Republic figured as a glaring absence. In the first two pioneering anthologies, Hispanisms and Homosexualities (Duke UP, 1998) and ¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings (Duke UP, 1995), an impressive one-third of essays was dedicated to the insular Hispanophone Caribbean, Cuba and Puerto Rico, but none to the Dominican Republic. This course contests the presumable absence of LGBT literature in the Dominican Republic by recovering little-known 20th century representations of same-sex desire and then tracing the growing body of Dominican LGBT literature in the 21st century. We analyze through which different representational strategies Dominican writers have successfully written non-heteronormative subjects into the Dominican national family and have challenged existing gender and sexual norms across time.

SPAN GU3990 SENIOR SEMINAR. 4 points.

This course is a requirement for all majors and is taken in the Fall semester of the Senior year; students may register for the Barnard or Columbia (3991) section. In this academic writing workshop students develop individual research projects under the guidance of the course’s instructor and in dialogue with the other participants’ projects. The final assignment of the senior seminar (6000 words) is the senior essay. It is written in Spanish.

SPAN GU4010 LANGUAGE CROSSING IN LATINX CARIBBEAN CULTURAL PRODUCTION. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Intermediate reading knowledge of Spanish

This course considers how language has traditionally shaped constructs of national identity in the Caribbean vis-à-vis the US. By focusing on language ‘crossings’ in Latinx Caribbean cultural production, we critically explore how various sorts of texts–narrative, drama, performance, poetry, animated TV series, and songs–contest conventional notions of mainstream American, US Latinx, and Caribbean discourses of politics and identities. Taking 20^th-century social and historical context into account, we will analyze those contemporary styles and uses of language that challenge monolingual and monolithic visions of national and ethnolinguistic identities, examining societal attitudes, cultural imaginaries, and popular assumptions about the Spanish language in the Greater Caribbean and the US.

SPAN GU4011 Conversation in Spanish: Practice and Analysis. 3 points.

This is a course in Spanish conversation. Students will study and practice features of social interaction in Spanish that are crucial to participate in the new culture. This means the course has two learning objectives: One is learning to engage in regular conversations in Spanish; the other is to understand how conversation works. We will cover conversational issues such as gesture, narratives, intonation, opening and closing interactions, turn taking, etc., both in linguistics and social terms. Practice and analysis will be connected: Every week we will consider an aspect of oral interaction in Spanish. We will study those features in naturally occurring conversations among native speakers and we will practice in actual conversations inside and outside the classroom, by means of role play, simulation, film making, debates and interviews. We will use topics of conversation to provide a meaningful environment for the conversation practice.

SPAN GU4417 POL OF REP:NATION, GENDER, RACE LAT AMER. 4 points.

What were the images capable of representing the Latin American nations that emerged during independence movements of the early 19th century?  This question, never before posed with such clarity, was latent in the countless images that sought to represent the political, social, and institutional value of the young republics.  The disappearance of an order - Colonial - and the emergence of another - Republican - involved both a vacuum and a conflict of representation...

SPAN GU4889 Great Latin American Artists (That Never Existed). 3.00 points.

This course studies the work of a number of Latin American artists that, despite their prolific and influential practices, never actually existed. Operating throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in various contexts and with very different purposes, these artists—often created collaboratively by real artists—constitute a productive gateway for understanding the preoccupations, interests, and explorations of different Latin American artistic and literary milieus. We will carefully explore the life and work of some of these fictional beings with two main objectives in mind. First, we will strive to recognize the processes by which they came into being, to understand their creations and effects as well as their interactions with their cultural, political, and artistic traditions. Second, we will use these cases as pretexts to discuss theoretical questions that pertain to the creation of the Other and the role of artistic practices in such an endeavor. Related discussions often see the creation of the Other as an instrument to materialize and prolong domination—do these fictional Latin American artists propose a different way to perform this construction? One that is not rooted in fear and discrimination, but is based on admiration, desire, and playful provocation? Could these cases help us understand the Other not as a negation of the Self but rather as its enhancement? Students will develop a semester-long project in which they will have the option to create their own fictional artist and a sample of their work or to critically study a similar case