Part of a series of seminars studying the parallel development of biological and architectural practices from the 18th c. to the present, this course focuses on recent ecological and environmental discourses through the writings of anthropologists, sociologists, material and environmental scientists, as well as architectural and literary critics. The seminar focuses on the effects of the diminishing distinction between the animate and the inanimate, the organic and the inorganic as well as the human and the non-human in the creation of living habitats and recreation of inequities within an environmentally challenged planet.

What kinds of art issues forth from need? Taking its name from Brazilian film director Glauber Rocha's 1965 manifesto, this course investigates how artists, writers, and theorists have sought to understand political, social, economic, and material limitations as generative conditions for aesthetic form. Moving between Latin American debates of the 1960s and 70s and the contemporary global moment, we examine such concepts as hunger, scarcity, imperfection, reproduction, and ecological justice though works by Cecilia Vicuña, Steve McQueen, Maria Thereza Alves, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Jumana Mana and others.

The demand to be yourself permeates many aspects of our culture. Identity has become a contemporary dogma of sorts. In this course, we will question this be-yourself mantra, and focus on what is most deeply human: attention and engagement with everything outside the self. Instead of identity, then, we will focus on impersonality, a concept explored and adopted by many artists, thinkers, and doctors to explain the point of their practice: becoming the other through fiction, observation, or empathy, and aiming towards something beyond the self's limited experience.

Beginning as early as Don Quixote, experiments with translation have long accompanied Hispanic literary innovation and, often, political subversion. In this course, we will consider Latin American and Latinx texts from across much of 20th and 21st centuries that engage translation as trope, form, or material rearrangements (including translation narratives, fake translations, mistranslations, transcreations, conceptual experiments) and those that rewrite established texts from the margins. We will read these materials alongside translation theory and criticism to tease out the aesthetics and politics of translation in each undertaking.

SPA 101 presents the basic structures and vocabulary of the Spanish language at elementary/low intermediate levels of proficiency. It is designed to develop students' linguistic, communicative, strategic, and intercultural competence in all three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational. Through multimedia and content-based material, the course fosters an appreciation of the rich culture of the Spanish-speaking world. The learners actively engage in activities that promote the exchange of real-world information. The custom-made digital textbook allows for immediate feedback and autonomous learning.

SPA 103 is an accelerated, intensive course that covers in one term the most relevant structures and vocabulary from SPA 101 and SPA 102. The course is designed for students who have previously studied Spanish at elementary levels. Language is embedded in the discussion of cultural and social issues of contemporary concern to develop speaking, listening, writing, and reading skills.

An intermediate language course that focuses on oral and written communication and the consolidation of listening and reading skills. In this course students will enhance their linguistic skills through the analysis and discussion of various types of texts (literature, film, visual culture, music, interviews, etc.) that focus on global and cross-cultural aspects of Spain and Latin America. In particular, the course will familiarize students with the concept of neocolonialism as a way to bridge language learning with the context in which cultural values and meanings are produced. SPA 105 prepares students for SPA 108.

An intermediate/advanced language course that consolidates and expands the skills acquired in beginner's Spanish. Students will continue to develop their ability to comprehend and communicate in Spanish while using the four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The course's linguistic goals are achieved in the context of examining the history, cultural production, practices, language, and current reality of the U.S. Latino community. Materials include oral, written and audiovisual texts. By the end of the course, students will be able to express more complex ideas, orally and in writing, with greater grammatical accuracy.

SPA 108 is an advanced language course that aims at strengthening and consolidating comprehension and production of oral and written Spanish while fostering cultural awareness and cross-cultural examination. Students will improve their linguistic proficiency while exploring the various mechanisms that affect how our identity is constructed, negotiated, and/or imposed. Particularly, the course will examine the ways in which gender and national identities develop and consolidate themselves by exploring cultural production (journalism, literature, cinema and the visual arts, etc.) in the Spanish speaking world and beyond.

An advanced Spanish-language course that focuses on medical and health topics in the Hispanic/Latino world. Students will learn and practice specific vocabulary and structures useful for conducting a medical interview in Spanish. Aspects of Latin American and Hispanic/Latino cultures in the health and medical fields are explored by means of examining authentic texts and through the contribution of guest speakers. The course includes a telecollaboration project with students from a Colombian medical school.

SPA 207 seeks to develop advanced language skills and raise cultural awareness by studying language in its contexts of use. An exciting selection of literary and cinematic productions from the Hispanic world provide the basis for critical discussion of cultural meanings and social relations, while offering the chance to explore difference registers and styles. SPA 207 students tackle original writing assignments that enhance their ability to express complex ideas in Spanish and hone their oral skills with debates, role-plays and projects that encourage independent learning and invite participation and collaboration.

A course designed to improve speaking abilities while learning about Hispanic cultures and cinema in context. The course aims to provide the students with lexical and grammatical tools to allow them to engage in formal and informal discussion on a variety of topics informed by the films provided. Additionally, there will be several writing exercises throughout the semester that will help students improve their writing abilities. By the end of the course, students should have a better command of all linguistic skills, especially listening comprehension, fluency and accuracy in their speech.

An introduction to modern Latin American cultures and artistic and literary traditions through a wide spectrum of materials. We will discuss relevant issues in Latin American cultural, political, and social history, including the legacies of colonialism, the African diaspora, national fictions, gender and racial politics. Materials include short stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Samanta Schweblin; poems by Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén and Mexican poet Sara Uribe; paintings by Mexican muralists; films by Santiago Mitre and Claudia Llosa; writings by Indigenous activist Ailton Krenak.

This course explores the vast linguistic diversity of the Americas: native languages, pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, and other languages in North, Central, and South America, including the Caribbean. We will examine historical and current issues of multilingualism to understand the relationship between language, identity, and social mobility. We will discuss how languages played a central role in colonization and nation-building processes, and how language policies contribute to linguistic loss and revitalization. This course has no prerequisites and is intended for students interested in learning more about languages in the Americas.

Flotsam. Jetsam. Hunger. Nudity. Lone survivors washed ashore. What can tales of shipwreck tell us about the cultures, societies and technologies that produce them? We read narratives and watch films of disaster and survival from the sixteenth century to the present, with an eye to how these texts can challenge or reinforce the myths that empires and nation-states tell about themselves and others.

How are ideas of belonging to the body politic defined in Spain, Latin America, and in Spanish-speaking communities in the United States? Who is "Latin American," "Latinx," "Boricua," "Chino," "Moor," "Indian," etc.? Who constructs these terms and why? Who do they include/exclude? Why do we need these identity markers in the first place? Our course will engage these questions by surveying and analyzing literary, historical, and visual productions from the time of the foundation of the Spanish empire to the present time in the Spanish-speaking world.

This course examines the paradoxical position of Spanish in the United States. The course aims to place the issues and controversies related to linguistic subordination and the maintenance of Spanish in the broader context of Latino communities and their social and historical position in the United States. In addition, it tries to equip students with critical resources to address topics such as the relationship between language and identity, political debates around Spanish and English, and bilingualism and the processes of racialization of linguistic minorities.

SPA 307 helps you become an expert reader and writer in Spanish. By engaging with a variety of textual genres, you will learn to recognize the relationship between the form of a text and the intention of its author, identify literal and implicit meanings, and understand them within the culture in which they are produced. We engage in literacy exercises to explore a variety of topics and issues within the Spanish-speaking world, such as urban sociology, political activism, migration, and mobility. By the end of the semester, you will bring together form and function to read and write sophisticated pieces. This course is taught in Spanish.

The Caribbean has been at the center of modernity and globalization since the 15th century, when European, African, and Asian migrants joined indigenous inhabitants in a violent crucible that produced new cultures, landscapes, rhythms, and political imaginations. This course begins with classic reflections on the Caribbean before centering on recent literature and art from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Recent works address issues such as debt, migration, climate change, gender, music, and the afterlives of slavery in the region.

This seminar has been designed to assist SPO concentrators in the production of their fall JP. With such end, the seminar will be conducted as a writing workshop. The emphasis of the first part of the seminar will be on introducing students to the approaches, critical concepts and tools utilized in cultural studies in the Luso-Hispanic and Latinx world. In the second part of the seminar, students will be expected to write and share their JP-in-progress, as well as comment on their peers' ongoing work. By the end of the semester, students should have completed about eighty percent of their independent work.

Familiar and unfamiliar beings, under the guise of gods, ancestors or vampire-like creatures, dominate representations of conquest and invasion. Drawing on texts by indigenous and Spanish authors alike, we examine the reception of these mythic beings and their place in historical narratives of the conquest of Mexico, the American Southwest, and the Andes.

This course will explore the theory and practice of translation, focusing on English-to-Spanish translation. Through readings, class discussions, workshops, and conversations with guest speakers, students will explore the main theoretical approaches to translation and the most common linguistic and cultural issues of different text types. At the end of the course, you will be familiar with some fundamental debates on translation, acquire Spanish translation skills, become conscious of your translation approaches and procedures, and be ready to undertake a large translation project.

When the name of Miguel de Cervantes is mentioned, readers tend to think of the character Don Quijote -most often his idealism or madness. But far beyond that, the radically new work that is Don Quijote - along with several of Cervantes - other creations -offer unorthodox and challenging perspectives on race, ethnicity, gender, class, and human nature. His theater, his highly experimental Exemplary Stories, and the Persiles all offer Mediterranean dramas of exiles, slaves, captives, renegades and male and female protagonists in the confrontation of identity and the hegemonic categories of the Spanish empire.

Film is comprised of multiple surfaces: the screen, the actors, the structure of the darkroom, the mobile devices of the audiovisual present, the bodies that vibrate around us, the actual strip of plastic that records the images... Critics have already broadly debated how film touches us politically and emotionally. This seminar formulates a different question: how do we touch film? In Latin America, the interaction between filmic skins is founded on the relationship between art and politics. We will consider how filmmakers debate the politics of the surface and how spectatorship poses a deeply political problem for the region.

Woolf once said, "It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly." We address and complicate the notion that women need a room of their own in order to write and create by examining the ways in which Latin American women and queer writers, artists, and filmmakers interrupt, deconstruct, reshape, and at times shake the patriarchal house of writing and the dominant gaze of film and art by performing gender in unexpected and ingenious fashions, feminizing and expanding the sites of symbolic production.

This course explores the enduring effects of the Muslim invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 711 - its impact during the nearly 800-year occupation, and to this day. Spain's unique 'hybrid realities' of moros and moriscos in a predominantly Christian society, of mudéjares and mozárabes in their variations over space and time are a focus of our readings and discussions. Maurophobia as well as maurophilia, aljamiado resistance, religious and occult associations, inquisitorial practices and representations of gendered others are among the topics analyzed in literary, historical, and theoretical contexts.

Peasant cultures in Spain were progressively dismantled as capitalism expanded in rural areas, in a sort of "internal colonization ", an epistemicide of peasant ways of sense-making. In our seminar we try to recover some of this "peasant imagination" through three lines: magic (traditions of ecstasy and ritual), narrative forms (especially the folk tale) and community organization structures. We also approach the concept of "peasant imagination" in another way, namely, referring to the contemporary desire of re-inventing the peasant world that is proliferating in Iberia and beyond.