Courses
HISP 103 Elementary Spanish
Designed for students with minimal experience in Spanish or another Romance language and for highly self-motivated students who wish to begin Spanish, the course introduces essential constructions and vocabulary. The course emphasizes oral proficiency and the development of reading and writing skills while fostering a cross-cultural understanding of the Spanish-speaking world with authentic texts and media. Not open to juniors or seniors.
HISP 201 Intermediate Spanish I
Designed to increase students’ vocabulary and improve foundational skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The course provides a thorough review of grammar acquired at the elementary level and expands that knowledge. The course emphasizes conversational proficiency, expository writing, and knowledge of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. Prerequisite(s): HISP 103 or through placement exam.
HISP 202 Intermediate Spanish II
Intensive practice in reading, composition, and conversation, as well as attention to selected grammar problems. The course focuses on discussion through visual presentations and selections of literature, art, and culture of the Spanish-speaking world. Prerequisite(s): HISP 201 or through placement exam.
HISP 205 Advanced Spanish
This course develops advanced skill in reading and writing as well as oral fluency and aural acuity through classroom activities and written assignments based on literary and nonliterary texts and audiovisual media. It introduces analytical and interpretative strategies necessary to engage and decode the breadth and variety of cultural productions originating in the Spanish-speaking world. Not open to students returning from off-campus study in a Spanish-speaking country. Not open to seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 202 or through placement exam.
HISP 210 Writing Spanish
This course teaches skills useful for writing in upper-level courses, the senior thesis, or the senior portfolio. Students develop the ability to be flexible and versatile writers in Spanish in a variety of forms of academic writing (narrative, descriptive, expositive, argumentative) and learn the importance of the writing process (drafting, revision, rewriting, editing). The course expands students’ understanding of research and writing as tools for creating and communicating knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world by encouraging them to use Spanish to ask, research, and answer questions of significance and importance. Prerequisite(s): HISP 205. Not open to seniors.
HISP 211 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Analysis
In this course students learn the basic tools, concepts, and terminology of textual analysis. They become familiar with recent critical approaches to the study of modern Spanish and Spanish American literary and cultural work. Prerequisite(s): HISP 205 or 210. Not open to seniors.
HISP 222 Short Narrative in the Spanish-speaking World
This course considers the development, functions, and varieties of short narrative in the Spanish-speaking world. Students examine the thematic content of stories in light of sociohistorical contexts, and explore the evolution of the elements and language of story-telling in terms of categories of literary periodization. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211. Not open to seniors.
HISP 223 Drama and Performance in the Spanish-speaking World
This course studies twentieth- and twenty-first-century works by playwrights and performers from the Spanish-speaking world and the contexts in which they are written, produced, and staged. From avant-garde drama to political action, queer performance, live art, dance, cultural tourism, and the spectacles of the commercial theater, students explore a range of drama and performance theories and practices, and the specific ways Hispanic writers and artists use traditional and alternative spaces as venue for engaging issues of social and aesthetic concern. Prerequisite(s): HISP 205. Prerequisite(s) which may be taken concurrently: HISP 210 or 211.
HISP 224 Protest and Justice
At different times and in different countries, many writers, filmmakers, and other artists from the Spanish-speaking world have felt compelled to create works that confront various types of social injustice. These range from the effects of imperialism to political repression, and often address issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class. In this course students analyze these “texts” within their respective social, political, and historical contexts. Prerequisites(s): HISP 210 or 211. Not open to seniors.
HISP 226 Race and Nation in the Ibero/American World
This course examines Spanish and Latin American literatures and other cultural productions at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. It studies not only the delight and the dangers inherent in representations of sexuality, but also how definitions of race and gender form dominant ideas about sexual practices in the Spanish-speaking world. Students become familiar with patterns, shifts, and ruptures in discourses about these issues across different sociopolitical contexts, and apply specific theories and conceptual tools for reading and understanding the myriad complexities of Latin American and Spanish identities. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 210 or 211. Not open to seniors.
HISP 228 Screen and Media
This course examines the complex relationship between literature and screen media in terms of 1) the representative possibilities and limits each offer for the exploration and projection of relevant social, political, and cultural issues and 2) the processes, through study of different theoretical and aesthetic approaches, creators use to adapt works from one mode to the other. Through the analysis of literary and audiovisual productions from Latin America, Spain, and the United States, students engage the theoretical, technical, and practical debates among institutions, producers, and consumers that emerge in the process of transposing discourse across media forms. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211. Not open to seniors.
HISP 231 Readings in Spanish Literature
What are the points of convergence and divergence between Spain and Europe? How has Spain articulated itself as European? How and by what motives has Spain emphasized its differences vis-à-vis Europe? In this course, students consider these questions by reading representative literary works by Spanish writers from all periods in light of the European context in which they were crafted. Students pay special attention to how broad, sweeping historical processes that stand as markers of European identity, such as wars, revolutions, and cultural and philosophical movements, are reflected in Spanish literature. Central themes include religion and expansion, modern monarchies and the making of the “people,” the invention of the nation and the ideal citizen, and postcolonial disorders. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211. Not open to seniors.
HISP 302 Minor Subjects: Childhood and Adolescence in Latin American Film and Literature
In recent years, film and literature from across the globe have been increasingly interested in childhood experiences and perspectives. Contesting popular beliefs that childhood is an innocent and apolitical experience, Latin American film and literature have depicted the child figure both as a complex, agentic character and as a site of tension for issues of race, class, gender, and national politics. This course conceptualizes global theories on childhood studies in conversation with the historical, political, and social realities with which authors and filmmakers engage through stories of childhood experiences. Only open to juniors and seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 211. Recommended background: HISP 224.
HISP 303 Phillippine Literature in Spanish
This course interrogates the status of the Spanish language and literature written in Spanish in the Philippines from 1873 to 1945. Through the study of foundational works by the late nineteenth-century Ilustrados, it explores how Spanish came to be a vehicle for movements of resistance and rebellion against 400 years of Spain’s colonial domination of the archipelago. In novels, poetry, and essays by writers of the so-called Golden Age, it examines how Spanish persisted under the U.S. colonial occupation (1898-1945) to contest the imposition of English and Anglophone culture, and to cultivate a sense of Filipino nationhood alongside literary revivals of indigenous languages such as Tagalog, Cebuano, and Chavacano. Readings include works by Pedro Paterno, José Rizal, Jesús Balmori, Adelina Gurrea and María Paz Mendoza, among others. Only open to juniors and seniors. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course beyond 211. Recommended background: HISP 230 and 231.
HISP 304 Poesía de resistencia: From Antipatriarchy to Anti-imperialism
The course explores antipatriarchy and anti-imperialist poetry written by women in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spanish America. It grounds its exploration on historical writers such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Micaela Lastenia Larriva, who wrote against the gender paradigm brought to the Américas by the Spanish. It closely examines the work of Rosario Castellanos and Domitila Barrios Chúngara and the transition from antipatriarchy to anti-U.S. imperialism, and the presence of poetry as a weapon in defense of civil liberties. Special attention is given to contemporary poetry written by indigenous and Afro-descendant women of the Spanish-speaking Américas. Prerequisite(s): HISP 211.
HISP 305 Law and Justice in Contemporary Spanish Cinema
How do contemporary Spanish films approach complex issues of law, justice, and ethics? What critiques of societal problems and injustices are portrayed in cinema? Are there universal themes around justice, or is the cultural context key? This seminar, conducted in Spanish, examines the intersections of law, justice, society, and film in present-day Spain. Through discussing acclaimed films by Spanish directors from the 1950s to the present, we analyze how legal and ethical questions are raised, debated, and dramatized artistically in the contemporary era. Examining scenes, symbolism, and character arcs, we ask: How are universal themes localized through Spanish culture? How do filmmakers put unique lenses on societal challenges? How might cinema influence public discourse on rights and reforms? Students can expect dynamic debates analyzing films and clips through critical frameworks around law, justice, politics, class, and cross-cultural ethics.
HISP 308 Poetics of Gender and Memory in 21st-century Spanish and Spanish American Film
This course approaches questions of memory through the critical lens of gender in 21st-century Spanish and Spanish American film. 21st-century film in both Spain and Latin America has foregrounded social and cultural memory of historical phenomena, ranging from colonial expansion to mid-twentieth century dictatorships. Through analysis of film’s representations–both literal and figurative–of grappling with personal and collective memory, students consider the ways that film reveals both existing and alternative models for how memory is constructed and contested.
HISP 309 Visions of Freedom Before 1619 in the Iberian Black Atlantic
Black Africans affected the Atlantic culture immediately after 1492. Their words and deeds impacted the institutions of the time in Spain, Portugal, and their overseas empires in the early modern period. Black people transmitted the cultural practices of their African native lands through the Diaspora, but they also were protagonists of the European Renaissance wherever they lived. Palenques of cimarrones–settlements of self-liberated Blacks–dismantled slavery and helped Blacks build a new conception and practice of human freedom. Black men and women wrote and sang, and were represented in the literary works of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Inca Garcilaso, Guamán Poma de Ayala, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. This course will be taught in English.
HISP 315 Novelas Noir: Latin American Women Write Crime
The course examines a collection of crime narratives that address feminicide in Latin America. The course contrasts with the more recognizable function given to the genre in the region: the re-examination of history, specifically under dictatorships. The course explores the re-configurations/character(istics) of the sleuth, the nature of crime, the victim, the perpetrator, and the cultural obstacles to the truth. It pays particular attention to the representation of patriarchal institutions that obstruct finding the culprit: the Church, the Family, and Law. Various analytical approaches are used, including comparative approaches between north and south, research being done across the Atlantic, and the critical work being done from and about the noir novel in Latin America. An effort is made to not collapse all countries in the region under the common rubric, Latin America – reason for which writings from different countries are studied, and cultural differences are highlighted.
HISP 317 Screening Citizenship: Jewish Latin American Film
This course considers films from throughout Latin America made by Jewish directors. Students learn the history of Latin American film production as well as terms and skills necessary for audiovisual analysis. The course examines the ways in which film is used as a vehicle to explore and represent issues of identity, belonging, immigration, and assimilation that have long characterized Jewish experiences in Latin America. Moreover, the course focuses on filmmakers’ engagement with key social and political issues within their respective countries as well as on a regional or global scale. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211. Recommended background: HISP 228.
HISP 318 Next Year in Havana: Stories of the Jewish and Latinx Diaspora in the United States
This course considers literature authored by Jewish and Latinx-identifying authors writing from the United States and explores Jewishness as imagined by Latinx authors. Students examine the construction of intersecting Jewish and Latinx identities and experiences. Particular attention is paid to how Latinx ethnicities are constructed differentially throughout the Americas and how narratives of ethno-national identities (racial democracy in Brazil, Calibanism in Cuba, and the cosmic race in Mexico), particularly their spiritual implications, come into contact with both Jewishness as an ethnicity and Judaism as a religion. Taught in English. Recommended background: HISP 211 or a literature course in ethnic studies. Open only to juniors and seniors.
HISP 321 Afroambiente: Escritura negra y medio ambiente
This course studies the response of black writers and intellectuals of the Spanish-speaking world to issues related to the natural environment. In several countries, including Colombia, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and Equatorial Guinea, from colonial times to the present, modernity has brought serious challenges to notions of economic progress, human rights, and national sovereignty as well as individual and communal identity. Course materials include written texts from local newspapers and magazines as well as other sources of information such as websites that present issues related to the environment and the arts. All readings are in English. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course above 211. Only open to juniors and seniors.
HISP 325 Weaving Memory and Trauma: Contemporary Spanish American Novel
The contemporary Spanish American novel that engages historical political violence does so from an intimate, textured view of memory and trauma. The memory and experience are entwined within recognizable but revised forms of fiction to accommodate voices in tension, while a cohesive plot shapes and allows for the questioning of memory placement and the articulation of trauma. Contrary to the “gran novelas” of the twentieth century, the contemporary novel textures violence by integrating voices that question ideological pronouncements of the twentieth century. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course above 211. Recommended background: HISP 230.
HISP 327 Gendered Experiences in the Américas Borderlands
Students become acquainted with film, comics, music, fiction and nonfiction narratives that engage border tensions and issues of immigration in English and Spanish. Concepts such as sense of place, mobility, and permanence; histories of place; place of enunciation; transnational historical memory of migration; and transnational historical networks are utilized as critical lenses to analyze gendered experiences of migration. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course above HISP 211. Only open to juniors and seniors. Recommended background: HISP 230.
HISP 341 Lectura americana de Cervantes
A present-day reading in America of Don Quijote de La Mancha and other key texts of the Spanish and Spanish American Renaissance. This course examines themes of Islamophobia, white supremacy, conquest and empire, the slave trade, the quest for utopias, and the construction of historical narratives that shape the politics of the day. Students analyze myths and legends of the marvelous real such as the fountain of youth in Florida, the island of California, the return to the Golden Age, fabulous cities and unbelievable real ones (Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Cuzco) that are admired and destroyed, and a fake island in Louisiana called Barataria. Students consider issues that obsessed people in Cervantes’ time: the expulsion of Muslims, hatred of Jews, war, gender roles and women’s freedom, mental and physical disability, and changes to the environment in the form of windmills. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course above HISP 211. Recommended background: HISP 231. Only open to juniors and seniors.
HISP 344 Gendering Social Awareness in Contemporary Spain
In this course, students use gender as the main category of analysis, paying particular attention to its interconnectedness with power. Carefully examining texts written by women in contemporary Spain, students explore the deliberate use of gender as a lens through which to understand different forms of domination-economic, political, and social. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course above HISP 211. Recommended background: HISP 231. Only open to juniors and seniors.
HISP 347 Building Memory: Narratives of the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War is both an important historical landmark and the main theme of myriad literary and film narratives produced since the establishment of democracy in Spain. In this seminar, students consider the increasing popularity of fictional representations of this armed conflict, its political antecedent (Segunda República), and its consequence (el régimen de Francisco Franco). What is the role of these narratives? What do they say about the roots of Spanish democratic traditions? How do they negotiate conflict? What type of Spain do they propose? Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Spanish literature course.
HISP 360 Independent Study
Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes background research, a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study per semester.
HISP 368 Realismo
This course studies the emergence and evolution of the Realist novel in late-nineteenth-century Spain as an aesthetic response to the vast social, political and cultural changes wrought by the uneven processes of modernity. Special attention is given to how Spanish writers debated, embraced, and rejected the techniques of Realism and Naturalism cultivated elsewhere in Europe, and also how they sought to revive the Spanish Realist tradition by looking to works by Cervantes, Velázquez, and Goya. Readings include novels and essays by authors such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, Juan Valera, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Benito Pérez Galdós, and Caterina Albert, which are engaged in light of issues such as gender, class, nationalism, and religion. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level Hispanic studies course above HISP 211. Recommended background: HISP 231. Only open to juniors and seniors.
HISP 382 Latinx Film
This course introduces students to the field of Latinx studies through the lens of Latinx representations in United States film. By analyzing various films that feature Latinx characters, actors, and stories, students learn about the diversity of the Latinx population in the United States and develop an understanding of the key sociopolitical issues Latinx individuals face. Through the medium of film, themes such as immigration, gender, ethnicity and race, and the policing of Brown bodies gives students a more nuanced understanding of the largest growing minority population in the United States while also providing them the terms and skills necessary for audiovisual analysis. Taught in English. Cross-listed in American studies, Hispanic studies, and Latin American and Latinx studies. Only open to juniors and seniors. Recommended background: AM/AN 207, AMST 200, HISP 228, LL/PT 208, or RFSS 120.
HISP 390 Afro-Latinoamérica
The 500-year presence of Africans and their descendants in the Spanish-speaking world has produced a significant body of literature by Blacks and about Blacks. Spanish America was the main destination of the African diaspora. Writers of African descent attest to the struggle for freedom and the abolition of slavery as well as anti-colonialism. Their literature shows how the participation of Blacks in the wars of Latin American independence was a struggle for their emancipation. Afro-Hispanic writers in Spain, the Americas, and Africa use their art and ideas to address the postnational migrations of the twenty-first century, a diaspora that has not ceased. Recommended background: AFR 100. Only open to juniors and seniors.
HISP 457 Senior Thesis
A capstone project, which may take the form of a written research paper, literary or cultural analysis, translation project, creative project, or digital portfolio, designed in consultation with the faculty advisor. Students register for HISP 457 in the fall semester. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both HISP 457 and 458. A detailed outline and bibliography must be approved by the department.
HISP 458 Senior Thesis
A continuation of HISP 457. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both HISP 457 and 458.
HISP S14 Science, Public Health, and Humanistic Inquiry: Travel, Medicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile
This course explores the intersection of natural scientific and humanistic inquiries in the context of Chile’s public health system and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of biomedical science in Latin America is approached through the lens of travel as both a practice and metaphor for understanding encounters with other societies as a peril of infection and contagion. How scientific problem-solving produced anti-virus transmission protocols and vaccines and how interactions between travelers and host societies during a global pandemic expose conflicts of socioeconomic interests and human welfare provide the context and foundation for on-site examinations of the public health response and self-reflection in Chile. Students engage with local biomedical and public health researchers, healthcare providers, and cultural practitioners, and visit relevant cultural and historical sites to understand how scientific and humanistic modes of inquiry work in tandem. Recommended background: One course in chemistry or biology; one course in Hispanic studies or Latin American and Latinx studies.
HISP S50 Independent Study
Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a background research reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study during a Short Term.
HISP S51A Race and Nation in the Iberoamerican World
This course fosters a critical understanding of racial paradigms that have endured and morphed over centuries. The course is based on close readings of documents (essays, visual texts, and historical documents) that serve as the origins of racial and racialized discourse. Particular emphasis is placed on racial capitalism and the ways in which this paradigm undergirded the Spanish and Portuguese empires and continues to sustain the exploitation of Black and Brown bodies throughout the Iberoamerican world. The course takes account of how concepts such as “blood purity,” mestizaje, Indigeneity, and Blackness inform understandings of nationhood throughout the Iberoamerican world. Prerequisite(s): HISP 205 and 210 or 211. Recommended background: one 200-level or 300-level course in Hispanic studies or from abroad.
HISP s14 Science, Public Health, and Humanistic Inquiry: Travel, Medicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile
This course explores the intersection of natural scientific and humanistic inquiries in the context of Chile’s public health system and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of biomedical science in Latin America is approached through the lens of travel as both a practice and metaphor for understanding encounters with other societies as a peril of infection and contagion. How scientific problem-solving produced anti-virus transmission protocols and vaccines and how interactions between travelers and host societies during a global pandemic expose conflicts of socioeconomic interests and human welfare provide the context and foundation for on-site examinations of the public health response and self-reflection in Chile. Students engage with local biomedical and public health researchers, healthcare providers, and cultural practitioners, and visit relevant cultural and historical sites to understand how scientific and humanistic modes of inquiry work in tandem.
HISP s31 The Spain of Pedro Almodóvar
The films of Pedro Almodóvar consistently present a Spanish society in which the local and the global interconnect in complex ways. Through a hybrid genre that incorporates elements of comedy, melodrama, and thriller, Almodóvar offers a view of Spain in which individual and collective identities are permeable and continuously shaped and reshaped by global and local influences. Almodóvar’s films are the primary objects of analysis in this unit. Readings on the films’ historical and cultural contexts complement students’ understanding of Spain through Almodóvar’s work. Recommended background: Spanish 362. Prerequisite(s): one 200-level literature course in Spanish or Spanish 208.