Spring 2024
SPAN 397 – Spanish Horror and Fantasy Movies
Time: TR 9:05 AM – 10:20 AM
Instructor: Juan Udaondo Alegre
Description: This course will introduce students to diverse Spanish cultural expressions through gripping film genres. The class will allow participants to improve their ability to express themselves in Spanish through reflecting on, writing about, and discussing a broad selection of topics related to the movies. Through different in-class exercises, students (in pairs and in groups) will enrich their Spanish vocabulary and express opinions and arguments about many different topics related to horror and fantasy films and their different subgenres. Participants will also learn about the technology of film production along with fundamental concepts for film analysis (shots, angles, sound, lighting, etc.). When discussing the films, students are expected to connect their content and language with the social, cultural, and political context of Spain throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, because imaginary fears and monsters sometimes mirror real ones. Spain has regularly produced horror and fantasy films in recent years. A country with a wealth of folktales and a rich cultural context, Spanish cinema has also incorporated famous myths from foreign traditions into their lore, such as vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. Looking outward, some Spanish fantasy movies have achieved international success, and several directors (Collet-Serra, Amenábar, Bayona, Vigalondo, etc.) now work for the US film industry. Throughout the semester we will watch (and enjoy) examples from all of them. Students will watch most films at home, although some public screenings in the Pattee and Paterno library are planned as part of a small film series. During these screenings, students will lead a debate on the film with the audience. In this way, the course is designed to be suitable for all students interested in both Spanish and film culture.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – Living, Breathing Language
Time: TR 9:05 AM – 10:20 AM
Instructor: Joseph Bauman
Description: There are more than 7000 languages spoken in the world today. How did human language first develop and where did all those different languages come from? How are they all different? How are they similar? What happens when they die? This course will explore linguistic diversity and historical change through the lens of evolutionary biology. Using examples from Spanish and recent scientific evidence, we will learn how language can be metaphorically characterized as a living, growing, changing organism.
SPAN 497 – Spanglish: Myths and Facts
Time: MWF 1:25 PM – 2:15 PM
Instructor: Rena Torres Cacoullos
Description: Does Spanglish encapsulate true changes in Spanish due to contact with English, or does the label disparage groups of bilingual speakers? Does it take skill to mix languages? Three topics of this course are (1) grammatical convergence, confronting the idea that Spanish in the U.S. is influenced by English; (2) borrowing (loanwords), focusing on English nouns incorporated into Spanish, like mi dad; and (3) code-switching, discovering the rules for going back and forth between the two languages. In addressing these topics, we will learn about grammatical structures and social variation within Spanish. In the final project, students will choose a literary text or other creative work featuring code-switching and assess its authenticity by whether it follows the systematic patterns in bilingual communities. Materials: Gramática española: Varación Social, Kim Potowski & Naomi Shin, Routledge (2018) and articles/other sources on Canvas.
Fall 2023
SPAN 497 – Culture and Social Struggle in the Amazon
Time: TR 1:35 PM – 2:50 PM
Instructor: Sarah J. Townsend
Description: This course focuses on the culture and politics of the Amazon, a vast region of South America that comprises parts of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname,and French Guiana. As the current outcry over the fires in the Amazon show, the fate of the forest is key to current debates about the environment and the future of human beings around the world. But what about the people who actually live in the Amazon – whether in the forest or in one of its fast-growing cities? How have they responded over the centuries to colonization, the extraction of natural resources, and violent threats to their very existence? Throughout the semester we will read news reports, oral histories, and historical texts, and we will watch fictional films as well as documentaries created in and/or about the Amazon. Topics of discussion will include the fantasy of Eldorado, the rubber boom, the effects of hydroelectric dams, environmental activism, struggles for indigenous rights, indigenous women’s collectives, urbanization in the Amazon, popular music, and the role of media such as radio and film.
SPAN 497 – Understanding and Using Language Strategies
Time: TR 9:05 AM – 10:20 AM
Instructor: Lauren Halberstadt
Description: In this course, students will be linguists who explore the many techniques used to study language and apply understanding to their own usage practices with the goal of improving their Spanish and linguistic awareness in general. Students will explore research methodologies in a guided way to understand learning outcomes and put them to immediate use. The course will also examine modern technologies used for language learning and navigating bilingual contexts to critically examine measures of success. Students will select their own goal-driven outcomes for improving their language use and utilize the themes of the course to map pathways to understanding, adapting, and achieving their Spanish language goals.
Spring 2023
SPAN 497 – Historical Memory in Recent Spanish Film, Fiction, and Comics
Time: MoWeFr 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM
Instructor: Matthew Marr
Description: This course will examine the concept of historical memory in contemporary Spanish cinema, narrative, and comics. We will consider a stylistically diverse set of cultural productions which have played no small role in catalyzing and informing Spain’s belated, if now vigorous, public reckoning vis-à-vis the full traumas of the Civil War (1936-1939), the ensuing Franco dictatorship (1939-75), and the so-called “Pacto del Olvido” (the Pact of Forgetting) of the transition to democracy.
Prerequisites: (SPAN 100A or SPAN 200) and SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – Studying Language through Texts: Introduction to Corpus Linguistics
Time: MoWeFr 11:15 AM – 12:05 PM
Instructor: Carlos Echeverría
Description: Corpus linguistics is the discipline that studies language using real texts – especially large, electronically available collections of texts, potentially including transcriptions of spoken language – as primary sources of data. Because of the emphasis it places on natural linguistic behavior, quantitative analysis, and the use of computer tools, corpus linguistics can be useful to professionals in a wide variety of fields besides linguistics: education, psychology, communication sciences and disorders, computer science, data science, etc. This course offers an introduction to the discipline from the perspective of Spanish and focusing on the use of freely available computer tools. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with the foundations and methods of corpus linguistics and will be able to build their own corpora and conduct basic corpus analyses
Prerequisites: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 – The Many Faces of Modern Hispanic Culture
Time: MoWeFr 1:25 PM – 2:15 PM
Instructor: Mary Barnard
Description: This course deals with multiple manifestations of Spanish and Hispanic-American contemporary culture in canonical and non-canonical poetic texts, works of art, and film. They will be analyzed within their social, political, and historical contexts. It will cover diverse topics, including the Spanish Civil War, the Cuban Revolution, Spanish colonialism in the Caribbean, neocolonialism, feminism, the culture of the gypsy, and slavery and its connections with the Atlantic slave trade during the Spanish conquest and its consequences for modern Caribbean poets. The course will include the political and social repercussions of Negritude and Negrismo in the literary production of Afro-Hispanic poets and their interconnections with Marxism and socialism. The poets we will study include Antonio Machado, Nicolás Guillén, Luis Palés Matos, Pablo Neruda, José Martí, Federico García Lorca, Delmira Agustini, Julia de Burgos, and Nancy Morejón. The course will cover artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. The films will include Diarios de Motocicleta (Walter Salles) and Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel).
Prerequisites: (SPAN 100A or SPAN 200) and SPAN 253W
Spring 2022
SPAN 497 – Bi(lingual) Curiosity: Identity and Language in the Spanish-speaking world
Time: MWF, 12:20-1:10 p.m.
Instructor: Ashley Pahis
Course Description: This course explores the many ways in which we as language users construct, maintain, and express ourselves through language both orally and physically. We as humans possess similar means by which to produce language. How, then, do we manipulate the ways in which we speak and act to express ourselves and make our voices heard? We will discuss topics such as the performative aspects of gender and the acoustic manifestations of sex, gender, and sexuality in Spanish and other languages, as well as more recent movements striving for more inclusive language.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 – Facts and Myths about learning Spanish
Time: TR, 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Manuel Pulido
Course Description: This course focuses on key aspects of the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. The course will address questions such as: Can watching Netflix help me learn Spanish? What type of practice, and how much, can help me learn Spanish? Does the native language change when we learn second languages? Is computer-based learning as effective as face-to-face learning? The course goes from theory to practice, and emphasizes hands-on experience based on examining data and experiments.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 – Representation, Reenactment, and Revolution in Latin America: 1910-present
Time: MWF, 2:30-3:20 p.m.
Instructor: Lily Ryan
Course Description: This course offers a multidisciplinary, multimedia approach that examines incidences of social upheaval that have taken place in Latin America throughout the last century. Using literature, photography, and cinema, it traces how state violence, natural disasters, and political instability have been represented in the Americas, while questioning the critical and geopolitical implications of these representations in the space that we consider to be “Latin America.” These works emanate from a variety of sources that include, but are not limited to, the autobiographical, the historical and the journalistic. We will look at how truth, authority, memory, and fiction give way to our historical understanding of each event. Rather than be all-encompassing, this course examines specific incidents of turmoil and change and combines a historical outlook with analyses of how these events have been represented. In doing so, it serves as a survey course for modern Latin American culture and as an introduction to media studies, as each week’s primary texts will be supplemented with secondary sources on media.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – The Many Faces of Early Modern and Modern Hispanic Culture.
Time: MWF,1:25-2:15 p.m.
Instructor: Mary Barnard
Course Description: This is an interactive course that examines works of literature and art within aesthetic, social, and political contexts in early modern (sixteenth century) and modern Spain. It will study early modern cross-cultural excursions into Africa, Italy, and the American colonies and modern topics dealing with the Spanish Civil War, feminism, and the culture of the Roma. Three films will be included, Tierra y libertad (Land and Freedom-director: Ken Loach; Diarios de motocicleta(director: Walter Salles), and Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog, director: Luis Buñuel, script by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí). Works of art by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Frida Kahlo will be included.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
Fall 2021
SPAN 297 – Multilingual and Intercultural Communication
Time: TR, 12:05-1:20 p.m.
Instructor: Lauren Halberstadt
Course Description: The Multilingual and Intercultural Communication (MIC) course focuses on linguistic strategies for succeeding in multilingual environments (e.g. dialect variation, second language acquisition strategies) as well as intercultural communication practices for navigating new environments (e.g. understanding cultural norms, skills for global leadership). The course will have an interdisciplinary focus on social science and the humanities. The mission of the course is to develop transferable skills, expand professional opportunities, and enhance intercultural communication in our students.
Learning objectives:
Develop and enhance intercultural communication skills
Improve language and language learning skills
Provide an understanding of global professional experiences in a range of fields through global leadership assignments
Give Spanish-, Italian-, and Portuguese-learning students opportunities to practice their languages as well as cooperate with each other to navigate cultures in languages which they do not yet speak
Teach students strategies for successful intercultural communication and global competency
Instill confidence in students to participate in international experiences, during their education and afterward in their careers
Prerequisite: SPAN 100
SPAN 497 – Lyric(s) Culture in Modern Spain & Latin America
Time: TR, 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Matthew Marr
Course Description: This course will examine the creative deployment of verse, song, and the lyrical across a diverse range of Spanish and Latin American cultural productions of the modern period, including film, fiction, performance, official propaganda, and social movements.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – The Spanish your teachers never told you about.
Time: MoWeFr, 1:25-2:15 p.m.
Instructor: Matthew Carlson
Course Description: Have you ever failed to understand someone because they didn’t use the word “whom” properly? There is often quite a difference between how one is “supposed to” use a language, and how the language is actually used in the world. Where does this difference come from? Why are some ways of speaking considered to be more correct, more logical, or more polite, and others are disdained, discouraged, or ridiculed? More importantly, how do these judgments spread, and what are their consequences? Our focus in this course will be on stigmatized varieties of Spanish. Through that focus, we will explore why languages vary and change, why some forms come to be considered wrong or just plain bad, who uses these forms and why, and how people come to be judged, profiled, and discriminated against on the basis of how they speak. A central aspect of this course will be the exploration of primary data, both to study how Spanish is spoken by different people in different places, and to discover what different people say about varieties of Spanish, and about those who use those varieties.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
Spring 2021
SPAN 497 (Section 1) – ABCs of Bilingualism: Acquisition, Brain, and Community
Time: MoWeFr, 10:10-11:00 a.m.
Instructor: Lauren Halberstadt
Course Description: Around the world, the ability to speak more than one language is the norm. However, bilingualism can take on many forms. Throughout the course, we will adapt a broad understanding of bilingualism and what it means to be a bilingual speaker. We will examine how multiple languages are learned, how the brain deals with multiple languages, and who are these bilingual speakers.
Course Objectives:
a. Develop an understanding of the theories surrounding the study of bilingualism.
b. Situate our understanding within the scope of specific communities.
c. Apply what we know about linguistics to new bilingual communities.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 (Section 2) – Modern Hispanic Short Story
Time: MoWeFr, 2:30-3:20 p.m.
Instructor: Matthew Marr
Course Description: This course will offer an in-depth study of the genre of the modern/contemporary short story as cultivated in Spanish by some of Spain and Latin America’s most vibrant narrative voices of the twentieth century through the present. Primary texts will include selections by, among others, Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, Rosario Castellanos, Rosario Ferré, Roberto Bolaño, Ana María Matute, Miguel Delibes, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías, Juan José Millás, and Javier Cercas. Special attention will be given to the mechanics of form and suspense, an evolving aesthetics of “the real,” engagement with social critique, and short narrative’s commentary on the (post)modern human condition. The cultural referents at play in each text will also be closely examined, as will transatlantic patterns of literary influence and cosmopolitanism (vs. regionalism) among the authors considered.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 (Section 3) – Cultural Trends in Contemporary Spain and Hispanic America
Time: MoWeFr, 12:20-1:10 p.m.
Instructor: Mary Barnard
Course Description: This course explores literary texts, art works, and films from twentieth-century Spain and Hispanic America and the cultural currents that subtend their production. It will study the Industrial Revolution and reactions by modernist writers; colonialism and neocolonialism; slavery and questions of race and hybridity; transatlantic crossing of people and ideas that nourish new ways of thinking and new ways of knowing; material culture, with discursive objects and artefacts serving as carriers of culture and bearers of identity; the African roots of Caribbean poetry; and the plight of minorities, women and gypsies, in Spanish society. Films by Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro González Iñárritu will be included.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 (Section 4) – La vida es sueño and Calderón de la Barca’s Theatre: Performing a Symbolic World
Time: TR, 12:05-1:20 p.m.
Instructor: Juan Udaondo Alegre
Course Description: De acuerdo con la mayoría de especialistas, La vida es sueño es la mejor obra de teatro de la literatura española del Siglo de Oro, de manera parecida a Hamlet entre las letras inglesas. Como podremos comprobar durante los primeros días de clase, en La vida es sueño la belleza de los versos no está reñida con la profundidad filosófica, la complejidad de los personajes y una trama casi perfecta; de hecho, todos ellos son rasgos que Calderón de la Barca desarrollaría en el resto de su producción, una significativa selección de la cual examinaremos durante el resto del cuatrimestre, incluyendo piezas como El alcalde de Zalamea, El médico de su honra, Amar después de la muerte, El gran teatro del mundo, El príncipe constante, etc. En el análisis de las obras, además de contextualizar y estudiar los temas principales se insistirá especialmente en dos cosas: en primer lugar, su condición de teatro en verso, y cómo Calderón hizo que su poesía reflejase todas las tendencias del Siglo de Oro, desde el Romancero a Góngora pasando por Garcilaso y Lope; en segundo lugar, que estamos leyendo obras escritas primero para ser representadas y después leídas. Por ello, en todas las clases abordaremos tanto el análisis del texto dramático (personajes, conflictos, acotaciones, etc.) como poético (incluyendo métrica, verso y recursos retórico-expresivos). Además, y teniendo en cuenta que las mejores compañías de teatro de España y Latinoamérica han apreciado y representado los textos de Calderón, durante las clases veremos fragmentos en escena de las obras que estamos leyendo, y discutiremos cómo los profesionales del teatro se han acercado al mundo simbólico y la variedad dramática de este autor.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 (Section 5) – Spanish for Business and International Trade II
Time: MoWeFr, 11:15 a.m.-12:05 p.m.
Instructor: Melanie Archangeli
Course Description: Spanish for Business and International Trade II, is a continuation of Span 420, Spanish for Business and International Trade. Thus, Spanish 420 is a prerequisite for Spanish 497-005. Participants will continue to broaden and deepen their ability to apply their Spanish skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking, and cultural knowledge) in a professional setting by using what they have learned in Spanish 420 to read, analyze, and discuss current articles and case studies related to business issues and companies in various Hispanic countries; examine the intersection of business and culture in the Spanish-speaking world; view current news/business videos in Spanish; and participate in other written and oral activities such as conducting a business meeting and presenting a project focused on their particular major.
Prerequisite: SPAN 420
Fall 2021
SPAN 297 – Multilingual and Intercultural Communication
Time: TR, 12:05-1:20 p.m.
Instructor: Lauren Halberstadt
Course Description: The Multilingual and Intercultural Communication (MIC) course focuses on linguistic strategies for succeeding in multilingual environments (e.g. dialect variation, second language acquisition strategies) as well as intercultural communication practices for navigating new environments (e.g. understanding cultural norms, skills for global leadership). The course will have an interdisciplinary focus on social science and the humanities. The mission of the course is to develop transferable skills, expand professional opportunities, and enhance intercultural communication in our students.
Learning objectives:
Develop and enhance intercultural communication skills
Improve language and language learning skills
Provide an understanding of global professional experiences in a range of fields through global leadership assignments
Give Spanish-, Italian-, and Portuguese-learning students opportunities to practice their languages as well as cooperate with each other to navigate cultures in languages which they do not yet speak
Teach students strategies for successful intercultural communication and global competency
Instill confidence in students to participate in international experiences, during their education and afterward in their careers
Prerequisite: SPAN 100
SPAN 497 – Lyric(s) Culture in Modern Spain & Latin America
Time: TR, 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Matthew Marr
Course Description: This course will examine the creative deployment of verse, song, and the lyrical across a diverse range of Spanish and Latin American cultural productions of the modern period, including film, fiction, performance, official propaganda, and social movements.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – The Spanish your teachers never told you about.
Time: MoWeFr, 1:25-2:15 p.m.
Instructor: Matthew Carlson
Course Description: Have you ever failed to understand someone because they didn’t use the word “whom” properly? There is often quite a difference between how one is “supposed to” use a language, and how the language is actually used in the world. Where does this difference come from? Why are some ways of speaking considered to be more correct, more logical, or more polite, and others are disdained, discouraged, or ridiculed? More importantly, how do these judgments spread, and what are their consequences? Our focus in this course will be on stigmatized varieties of Spanish. Through that focus, we will explore why languages vary and change, why some forms come to be considered wrong or just plain bad, who uses these forms and why, and how people come to be judged, profiled, and discriminated against on the basis of how they speak. A central aspect of this course will be the exploration of primary data, both to study how Spanish is spoken by different people in different places, and to discover what different people say about varieties of Spanish, and about those who use those varieties.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
Spring 2021
SPAN 497 (Section 1) – ABCs of Bilingualism: Acquisition, Brain, and Community
Time: MoWeFr, 10:10-11:00 a.m.
Instructor: Lauren Halberstadt
Course Description: Around the world, the ability to speak more than one language is the norm. However, bilingualism can take on many forms. Throughout the course, we will adapt a broad understanding of bilingualism and what it means to be a bilingual speaker. We will examine how multiple languages are learned, how the brain deals with multiple languages, and who are these bilingual speakers.
Course Objectives:
a. Develop an understanding of the theories surrounding the study of bilingualism.
b. Situate our understanding within the scope of specific communities.
c. Apply what we know about linguistics to new bilingual communities.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 (Section 2) – Modern Hispanic Short Story
Time: MoWeFr, 2:30-3:20 p.m.
Instructor: Matthew Marr
Course Description: This course will offer an in-depth study of the genre of the modern/contemporary short story as cultivated in Spanish by some of Spain and Latin America’s most vibrant narrative voices of the twentieth century through the present. Primary texts will include selections by, among others, Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, Rosario Castellanos, Rosario Ferré, Roberto Bolaño, Ana María Matute, Miguel Delibes, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías, Juan José Millás, and Javier Cercas. Special attention will be given to the mechanics of form and suspense, an evolving aesthetics of “the real,” engagement with social critique, and short narrative’s commentary on the (post)modern human condition. The cultural referents at play in each text will also be closely examined, as will transatlantic patterns of literary influence and cosmopolitanism (vs. regionalism) among the authors considered.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 (Section 3) – Cultural Trends in Contemporary Spain and Hispanic America
Time: MoWeFr, 12:20-1:10 p.m.
Instructor: Mary Barnard
Course Description: This course explores literary texts, art works, and films from twentieth-century Spain and Hispanic America and the cultural currents that subtend their production. It will study the Industrial Revolution and reactions by modernist writers; colonialism and neocolonialism; slavery and questions of race and hybridity; transatlantic crossing of people and ideas that nourish new ways of thinking and new ways of knowing; material culture, with discursive objects and artefacts serving as carriers of culture and bearers of identity; the African roots of Caribbean poetry; and the plight of minorities, women and gypsies, in Spanish society. Films by Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro González Iñárritu will be included.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 (Section 4) – La vida es sueño and Calderón de la Barca’s Theatre: Performing a Symbolic World
Time: TR, 12:05-1:20 p.m.
Instructor: Juan Udaondo Alegre
Course Description: De acuerdo con la mayoría de especialistas, La vida es sueño es la mejor obra de teatro de la literatura española del Siglo de Oro, de manera parecida a Hamlet entre las letras inglesas. Como podremos comprobar durante los primeros días de clase, en La vida es sueño la belleza de los versos no está reñida con la profundidad filosófica, la complejidad de los personajes y una trama casi perfecta; de hecho, todos ellos son rasgos que Calderón de la Barca desarrollaría en el resto de su producción, una significativa selección de la cual examinaremos durante el resto del cuatrimestre, incluyendo piezas como El alcalde de Zalamea, El médico de su honra, Amar después de la muerte, El gran teatro del mundo, El príncipe constante, etc. En el análisis de las obras, además de contextualizar y estudiar los temas principales se insistirá especialmente en dos cosas: en primer lugar, su condición de teatro en verso, y cómo Calderón hizo que su poesía reflejase todas las tendencias del Siglo de Oro, desde el Romancero a Góngora pasando por Garcilaso y Lope; en segundo lugar, que estamos leyendo obras escritas primero para ser representadas y después leídas. Por ello, en todas las clases abordaremos tanto el análisis del texto dramático (personajes, conflictos, acotaciones, etc.) como poético (incluyendo métrica, verso y recursos retórico-expresivos). Además, y teniendo en cuenta que las mejores compañías de teatro de España y Latinoamérica han apreciado y representado los textos de Calderón, durante las clases veremos fragmentos en escena de las obras que estamos leyendo, y discutiremos cómo los profesionales del teatro se han acercado al mundo simbólico y la variedad dramática de este autor.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 (Section 5) – Spanish for Business and International Trade II
Time: MoWeFr, 11:15 a.m.-12:05 p.m.
Instructor: Melanie Archangeli
Course Description: Spanish for Business and International Trade II, is a continuation of Span 420, Spanish for Business and International Trade. Thus, Spanish 420 is a prerequisite for Spanish 497-005. Participants will continue to broaden and deepen their ability to apply their Spanish skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking, and cultural knowledge) in a professional setting by using what they have learned in Spanish 420 to read, analyze, and discuss current articles and case studies related to business issues and companies in various Hispanic countries; examine the intersection of business and culture in the Spanish-speaking world; view current news/business videos in Spanish; and participate in other written and oral activities such as conducting a business meeting and presenting a project focused on their particular major.
Prerequisite: SPAN 420
Fall 2020
SPAN 497 – Facts and Myths about learning Spanish
Time: TR, 10:35-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Manuel Pulido
Course Description: This course focuses on key aspects of the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. The course will address questions such as: Can watching Netflix help me learn Spanish? What type of practice, and how much, can help me learn Spanish? Does the native language change when we learn second languages? Is computer-based learning as effective as face-to-face learning? The course goes from theory to practice, and emphasizes hands-on experience based on examining data and experiments.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
Spring 2020
SPAN 497 – Spanish in Contact with Other Languages
Instructor: Isabel Deibel
Course Description: This class provides a comprehensive historical, social and linguistic overview of Spanish in contact with other languages in its major contexts – in Spain, the United States, and Latin America.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
Spring 2019
SPAN 497 – A Thousand Faces
Instructor: María Izquierdo
Course Description: In this course, we will develop our capacity to observe our surroundings in new ways and use the written word to manipulate different types of readers. We will also consider the introduction of images, gifs, and videos into the production of some of the stories that we will create. We will write stories as short as 140 characters, participating in Twiteratura, and as long as 6 pages. Topics discussed may be controversial, absurd, or sensitive in nature, and we will learn to navigate them while offering and receiving constructive criticism in a respectful manner.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – Bilingualism in the U.S.: Acquisition, Cognition, & Community
Instructor: Dora LaCasse
Course Description: This course will focus on the study of bilingualism in the United States. We’ll discover how bilinguals acquire their languages, how they manage their two languages, and how they use them, as members of bilingual communities. We will take a cross-disciplinary view, exploring major questions from both corpus-based and laboratory approaches.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 – Don Quijote and Errant Subjects in a Global Context
Instructor: Elizabeth Lagresa-González
Course Description: This course examines Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s masterpiece Don Quijote de la Mancha, focusing on close readings and literary analysis of major themes such as reality/fiction, perspectivism/ ambiguity, and deeds/words, covering a range of topics from gender and race relations to economic crises, religious turmoil and social inequality. Special emphasis will be placed on examining the representation of “others,” within the context of the expulsion of Jewish and Moorish minorities. The course will consider “errant” subjects in its two dimensions: as those straying from the accepted course, unacceptable actions; and traveling in search of adventure, a wondering journey. By applying a cross-disciplinary approach, Cervantes’ work will be discussed in relation to the artistic and historical context of renaissance and baroque Spain, drawing upon the visual arts and J.H. Elliott’s Imperial Spain, while deconstructing the different kinds of fiction — pastoral, picaresque, the Moorish novel, the Italian novella, and the romance of chivalry — that inhabit this novel.
Attesting to its global reach, Don Quijote has been influential to thinkers from Lukács to Foucault to Bakhtin to Girard to the Frankfurt School, and to writers from Nabokov to Borges to Flaubert to García Márquez and beyond. No other book, with the exception of the Bible, has been translated to more languages, or undergone more editions and reprints. A herald of modernity, Cervantes’ novel casts a vast influence on both Western and Latin American literature.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – Modern Hispanic Short Story
Instructor: Matthew J. Marr
Course Description: This course will offer an in-depth study of the genre of the modern (and, in some instances, postmodern) short story as cultivated—in Spanish—by some of Spain and Latin America’s most vibrant narrative voices of twentieth century through the present. Primary texts will include selections by, among others, Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel García Márquez, Camilo José Cela, Ana María Matute, Miguel Delibes, Juan Goytisolo, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías, and Juan José Millás. Special attention will be given to the mechanics of form and suspense, as well as to an evolving aesthetics of “the real.” The cultural referents at play in each short story will also be closely examined, as will transatlantic patterns of literary influence and cosmopolitanism (vs. regionalism) among the authors considered.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497 – Playing with your mind: What linguists do to find out how humans learn and process language
Instructor: Giulia Togato
Course Description: Language is a vehicle that we use to express our personal and cultural norms and orientations. The whole essence of our thought as individuals is expressed through language. This course will explore the importance that language acquires in social interaction adopting a psycholinguistic approach. Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, comprehend, process and produce language. Accordingly, the course will offer the possibility to explore the cognitive processes underlying language use (both in comprehension and production: at the lexical, syntactic and discourse level); the main empirical methods psychologists use to approach and analyze language competence will be reviewed. Hence, the main goal of this course will be to understand how the brain makes way for language learning, both for native and non-native languages. The relationship between language, cognition and culture will also be analyzed. This course integrates traditional lecture classes and student-centered learning (i.e. lecture classes will always be matched with active exercises, both individual and collaborative).
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
Spring 2018
SPAN 297 – Spanish in the Digital Age: Culture, Language, and New Technologies
Instructor: Alejandro Ramírez-Arballo
Course Description: This course provides an opportunity to enhance acquisition of the fundamental elements of the Spanish language. Reading, writing and speaking skills are polished as students build on knowledge of the target culture through research, discussion and projects using the latest technology.
SPAN 497 – Being Bilingual in a Monolingual World
Instructor: Mike Johns
Course Description: Linguistic scholar Francois Grosjean once famously wrote that “the bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person”. But what does this mean, and what does it imply? This question will be at the center of the course, divided into three broad sections: the language science of bilingualism, where students will be introduced to recent topics on bilingual research; the social aspects of bilingualism, which focuses on the cultural and political discussions surrounding bilingualism; and the cognitive ramifications of bilingualism, centered around the “bilingual advantage”. Students will read articles and participate in class discussions, participate in a class debate on the “bilingual advantage”, and complete a final project on a topic of their choosing. The goal of this course is to broaden students’ understanding of the science of bilingualism and further their critical thinking and argumentation skills.
SPAN 497 – Latin(o) American Graphic Novel
Instructor: Marco A. Martínez
Course Description: This interdisciplinary seminar combines literary, visual, and historical approaches to study one of the most rapidly growing and increasingly influential forms of literature: the graphic novel. We will focus on the production made by Latin American and Latinx writers and visual artists, beginning in the late 1990s and continuing to the present day. Through reading, discussion, and presentations, students will develop the literary and visual vocabulary to analyze the conventions and possibilities of the graphic novel. Some of the topics we will be examining are national history, dystopian worlds, migration and racism, literary adaptations, and race, gender and sexuality conceptions. Class will be taught in Spanish.
SPAN 497 – No, all Latinos don’t sound the same: Sociolinguistic variation in US Spanish
Instructor: Grant Berry
Course Description: Has a relative confused Puerto Rico with Costa Rica? Do they think every Spanish speaker they hear is from Mexico? Can you tell the difference? Migrant and longstanding Spanish-speaking communities in the US are extremely diverse, and those diverse backgrounds are reflected in the way they use Spanish. Speakers from different geographic regions speak differently, of course, but individuals within the same community also have distinct ways of speaking from one another. This course will explore variations in the Spanish-speaking world as they are observed in Spanish speakers living in the US (e.g., Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia, Spanish speakers in the Southwest, Latinos in New York and Miami), focusing on linguistic variables in the sound system of Spanish (phonology). Geographic patterns of linguistic variation will be identified and examined, and we will explore social factors—age, sex, socioeconomic status, speech style—that influence how those linguistic variables are used in conversation. Although English will be the primary language used in class discussion, required readings will be in both Spanish and English. Advanced intermediate proficiency or higher is strongly recommended.
Spring 2017
SPAN 297 – Introduction to Latin American Visual Culture
Instructor: Marco A. Martínez
Course Description: Photographs, cartoons, graffiti, movies, cartels, graphic novels, advertisement, music videos, magazines, blogs, are some of the manifestations of the contemporary visual word. This course offers an introduction to the Latin American visual culture in its nearly infinite manifestations. Through careful looking, reading, writing, and discussions, students will be encouraged to think the visual word in the construction of the historical, political, social and subjective dimensions from the end of the 19th century to our times. Among the issues to be examined are: the function, production, and consumption of visual images in different cultures; the foreign gaze; war and propaganda (Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War), the margins of the city; sexuality and abjection; political power; and death and memory.
SPAN 297 – Spanish in the Digital Age: Culture, Language, and New Technologies
Instructor: Alejandro Ramírez-Arballo
Course Description: This course provides an opportunity to enhance acquisition of the fundamental elements of the Spanish language. Reading, writing and speaking skills are polished as students build on knowledge of the target culture through research, discussion and projects using the latest technology.
SPAN 497 – How languages are learned
Instructor: Karen Miller
Course Description: What does it mean to be bilingual? (2) How does acquisition of a second language compare to acquisition of a first language? (3) How does bilingualism impact human cognition? (4) What are the social contexts that support language learning and language maintenance? (5) What are the various languages spoken in Spain and Latin America? By answering these questions, this course introduces students to bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking World.
SPAN 497 – Playing with your mind: What linguists do to find out how humans learn and process language
Instructor: Giulia Togato
Course Description: Language is a vehicle that we use to express our personal and cultural norms and orientations. The whole essence of our thought as individuals is expressed through language. This course will explore the importance that language acquires in social interaction adopting a psycholinguistic approach. Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, comprehend, process and produce language. Accordingly, the course will offer the possibility to explore the cognitive processes underlying language use (both in comprehension and production: at the lexical, syntactic and discourse level); the main empirical methods psychologists use to approach and analyze language competence will be reviewed. Hence, the main goal of this course will be to understand how the brain makes way for language learning, both for native and non-native languages. The relationship between language, cognition and culture will also be analyzed. This course integrates traditional lecture classes and student-centered learning (i.e. lecture classes will always be matched with active exercises, both individual and collaborative).
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497 – The ABCs of Bilingualism: Acquisition, Brain and Community
Instructor: Lauren Halberstadt
Course Description: Around the world, speaking more than one language is the norm. Have you ever considered what it takes to learn a second language? How the brain manages to juggle two languages in one mind? How communities work and live together while speaking two languages? This course will explore bilingualism, the ability to speak and understand two languages. We’ll discover how bilinguals acquire their languages and how they live with them through the lens of bilingual communities.
SPAN 497 – Voices from the Margin: The Poetry and Drama of Federico García Lorca
Instructor: Mary E. Barnard
Course Description: Poet, playwright, musician, and friend of artists, poets and bullfighters–privileged figures that were outcasts, figures on the margins of society. This course will focus on several of these figures in his poetry and drama, placing them within historical, political, and social contexts, including Lorca’s own controversial presence in the years leading to the Civil War (1936-39): the gypsy as rebel, brawling with his own kind and confronting his enemy, the Civil Guard, in the Romancero gitano; the woman who rebels against the tribal rituals and misguided codes of conduct of a provincial town in the rural tragedy La casa de Bernarda Alba; the black from Harlem in the surrealist Poeta en Nueva York; the noble, bloodied bullfighter in the elegiac Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías. To address questions of theater and drama in relation to social issues, the students will perform scenes (time permitting) La casa de Bernarda Alba and watch and discuss a film production of this play. The course will also include Lorca’s sketch art and musical scores, and the relation of his works to those of his artist friend Salvador Dalí. The course will include a film about Lorca’s life and works, including his mysterious death at the hands of the Nationalists, The Spirit of Lorca (Michael Dibb, 1986).
Fall 2016
SPAN 397 – Modern Spanish Short Story
Course Description: This course will examine the genre of the Spanish short story from the mid-nineteenth century through the post-Franco years of the Transition to democracy and beyond, focusing on such topics as: an evolving aesthetics of “the real,” the mechanics/stylistics of short narrative fiction in the Peninsular context, voices and perspectives from Spain’s cultural margins, conceptions of national identity, the metafictional mode, the subgenre of the fantastic, and a longstanding tradition of humor and social critique.
SPAN 497 – Spanish Social-Issue Cinema
Instructor: Matthew J. Marr
Course Description: Since the 1990s, a growing number of filmmakers in Spain have gravitated toward projects concerned with socially charged topics: domestic abuse, terrorism, national memory/amnesia, rural depopulation, immigration, economic malaise, secularization, assisted suicide, disability, etc. In doing so, directors have carved out a heretofore underdeveloped space in a national cinema which, until 1975, saw authoritarian censorship under Franco force directors’ hands with respect to critical openness—and where in the 1980s a flair for art-house experimentation (fueled by the fresh air of democracy) often left real-world issues checked at the cinema door. Yet, just as themes inseparable from a nuanced understanding of contemporary Spanish society have recently moved to the fore of its cinema, so too has the macrogenre of social-issue film diversified in stylistic terms. This course will explore Spanish social-issue cinema through a close analysis of several feature films, documentaries, shorts, frequent theoretical readings, and assignments designed to develop students’ skills as critical viewers.
Fall 2015
SPAN 197A/NURS 197A – Conversational Spanish for Health Care Providers
Course Description: A conversational Spanish speaking course designed to prepare students interested in a health care field to communicate with Spanish speaking patients.
SPAN 297A – Spanish Through Art
Course Description: Spanish language and culture at the advanced level through art from Spain and Latin America. Review of the artists’ biographies and their works in light of the historical moment, significance, and culture.
SPAN 297B – Introduction to Latin America Visual Culture
Course Description: Photographs, cartoons, graffiti, movies, cartels, blogs, advertisement, music videos, newspaper, underground magazines, blogs, are some of the manifestations of the contemporary visual word. This course offers an introduction to the Latin American visual culture in its nearly infinite manifestations.
Prerequisite: SPAN 100
SPAN 497A – Ink and Gunpowder: Detention and Interpretation in Spanish and Spanish American Detective Short Stories
Course Description: The goal of this undergraduate course is to give students the theoretical grounding to analyze detective texts, and to introduce them to major trends in Spanish and Spanish-American detective fictions. By reading a collection of short stories, which adopt and adapt different elements of the genre (the criminal, the law, the motivation, the investigation, etc.) we will examine how several Spanish and Spanish American writers use the crime model as a pre- text and a pretext to undergo social criticism, self-inquiry and meta- fictional questionings that expand the scope of the classical whodunit.
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
SPAN 497B – How Languages are Learned
Course Description: (1) How do humans learn additional languages after they have learned their first language? (2) How does bilingual language development compare to monolingual language development? (3) Why do we find variability in rates and outcomes of second language acquisiton? (4) What does it take to acquire advanced language skills in a second language? By answering these questions, this course introduces students to the field of first, second, and bilingual language acquisition.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
SPAN 497C – Living Breathing Language
Course Description: There are nearly 7000 language spoken in the world today. Where did they come from? What makes them different? How are they similar? What happens when they die? This course will explore linguistic diversity, historical change and dialectal variation through the lens of evolutionary biology. Using examples from Spanish, both modern and historical, we will learn how language can be characterized as a living, growing, changing organism.
Prerequisite: SPAN 215
Summer 2015
SPAN 197A – Costa Rica: Pura Vida
Course Description: This course will prepare you to undertake travel to Costa Rica as a respectable representative of the United States and Penn State Altoona as well as a willing student of Spanish and international culture. Students will be fully engaged in Costa Rica culture in a very up-close and personal way, utilizing their Spanish skills in an engaging fashion on a daily basis. Excursion to Costa Rica will take place May 17-25.
SPAN 496A – Spanish in Technical Fields
Course Description: Study of words and phrases unique to petroleum engineering. Study of grammar including technical and research semantics and grammatical structure. Also, additional cultural component as student examines the how the presence of a pipeline industry has affected the local and national culture in Mexico.
SPAN 497A – Cuba and Jose Marti
Course Description: The writings and thoughts of Jose Marti have been foundational for Cuba’s literary, political, and cultural expressions and educational institutions before and after the Cuban Revolution (1959). This course will expose students to those writings and ideas from the point of view of post-revolutionary Cuba. Students will be able to compare what they learn in Cuba with other writings and ideas about Marti, related to Latin American in general, ideas on government, society, freedom and independence. During the two weeks in Cuba, Penn State students will be able to learn from different lectures and classes given by university professors and researchers on different aspects of Marti’s life and thoughts. They also will be able to participate in Cuba’s celebration, May 2015, of Marti’s 125th commemoration of his death (1895).
Prerequisite: SPAN 253W
Spring 2015
SPAN 197A – Costa Rica: Pura Vida
Course Description: This course will prepare you to undertake travel to Costa Rica as a respectable representative of the United States and Penn State Altoona as well as a willing student of Spanish and international culture. Students will be fully engaged in Costa Rica culture in a very up-close and personal way, utilizing their Spanish skills in an engaging fashion on a daily basis. Excursion to Costa Rica will take place May 17-25.
SPAN 496A – Bilingualism and Second Language
Course Description: Research on bilingualism and second language use through reading background literature and developing experimental stimuli and designs.
SPAN 497A – Contemporary Latin American Cinema
Course Description: This course explores Latin American cultures through the study of films of the past quarter of a century.
SPAN 497B – Women in the Contemporary Spanish-speaking World: Literature and Films
Course Description: This course explores the contributions of women throughout the Spanish- speaking world to contemporary literature and film, so as to deepen the understanding of its complex and rich cultures.
SPAN 497C – Avant-Garde Primitivisms
Course Description: In this course we will explore the ways in which the tension between the drive for futurity and the appeal of the “primitive” plays out in the visual art, poetry, prose, theater, and films of Latin American and European artists commonly regarded as “avant-garde.”
Prerequisite: SPAN 200 and SPAN 253W
SPAN 497D – How Languages are Learned
Course Description: (1) how do humans learn additional languages after they have learned their first langauge? (2) How does bilingual language development compare to monolingual language development? (3) Why do we find variability in rates and outcomes of second language acquisition? (4) What does it take to acquire advanced language skills in a second language? By answering these questions, this course introduces students to the field of first, second, and bilingual language acquisition.
Prerequisite: SPAN 200 and SPAN 215
SPAN 497E – The Social Life of Spanish Phonetics
Course Description: This course focuses on variation in Spanish phonetics and phonology causes by dialectal differences and other social factors (age, gender, socioeconomic status, identity). In this course you will also learn how to conduct your own research experiment to investigate the influence of these factors on pronunciation.
Prerequisite: SPAN 200 and SPAN 215