Hispanic Studies
Hispanic Studies Courses
HISP 103 Elementary Spanish (1 Credit)
Designed for students with minimal experience in Spanish or another Romance language who wish to begin Spanish, this course introduces essential constructions and vocabulary. The class emphasizes oral proficiency and the development of reading and writing skills while fostering a cross-cultural understanding of the Spanish-speaking world through authentic texts and media. Appropriate placement through the department's Spanish Language Proficiency Assessment and Instructor Permission are required in order to maintain the integrity of this elementary-level course. Not open to juniors or seniors.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [CP]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: Sophomore, Junior, or Senior students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 201 Intermediate Spanish I (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [CP]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 202 Intermediate Spanish II (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [CP]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 205 Advanced Spanish (1 Credit)
This course develops advanced skills 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.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 210 Writing Spanish (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: [W2]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: Senior students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 222 Short Narrative in the Spanish-speaking World (1 Credit)
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. Not open to first years and seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [CP]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C032, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Senior students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 223 Drama and Performance in the Spanish-speaking World (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C032, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 224 Protest and Justice (1 Credit)
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. Not open to seniors. Prerequisites(s): HISP 210.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C008, GEC C016, GEC C032, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Senior students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 226 Race and Nation in the Ibero/American World (1 Credit)
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. Not open to seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP210.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C032, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: Senior students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 228 Screen and Media (1 Credit)
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. Not open to seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [CP]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C019, GEC C032
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Senior students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 232 Visions of Freedom Before 1619 in the Iberian Black Atlantic (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C038, GEC C041, GEC C059, GEC C066
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Instructor: Baltasar Fra-Molinero
HISP 304 Poesía de resistencia: From Antipatriarchy to Anti-imperialism (1 Credit)
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 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C032
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): LALS 304
Instructor: Claudia Aburto Guzman
HISP 305 Law and Justice in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (1 Credit)
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. Prerequisite: HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C032
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor: Cristina Morales Segura
HISP 308 Poéticas del género y la memoria (1 Credit)
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. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C032, GEC C072
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 315 Novelas Noir: Latin American Women Write Crime (1 Credit)
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. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C032
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 317 Screening Citizenship: Jewish Latin American Film (1 Credit)
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. Recommended background: HISP 228. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C032, GEC C038
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): LALS 317
Instructor: Stephanie Pridgeon
HISP 341 Lectura americana de Cervantes (1 Credit)
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. Recommended background: HISP 231. Only open to juniors and seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016, GEC C018, GEC C035, GEC C066
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): LALS 341
Instructor: Baltasar Fra-Molinero
HISP 347 Building Memory: Narratives of the Spanish Civil War (1 Credit)
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): HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C018, GEC C032, GEC C064
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor: Francisca Lopez
HISP 360 Independent Study (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C016
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 368 Realismo (1 Credit)
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. Recommended background: HISP 231. Only open to juniors and seniors. Prerequisite(s): HISP 210 or 211.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C018, GEC C032
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
Instructor: David George
HISP 457 Senior Thesis (1 Credit)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: [W3]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP 458 Senior Thesis (1 Credit)
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: [W3]
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: Not open to: First Year or Sophomore students
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP S21 La casa de Bernarda Alba en España y Nueva Orleáns (0.5 Credits)
Federico García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba was the last play he wrote before his assassination in August 1936 at the onset of the Spanish Civil War, the play tells the story of the fatal effects of patriarchy on women even when men are dead or not physically present. This course studies stagings and film versions of La casa de Bernarda Alba to analyze the intersection of gender, class, and sexuality under an oppressive power that results in feminine rebellion. Loosely based on Lorca’s play, Marcus Gardley’s The House That Will Not Stand (2014) is a comedy about free women of color in antebellum New Orleans, where the matriarch is the mistress of a powerful white man under the social custom of plaçage, a system of concubinage between free women of color and white men. Race, gender, power, wealth, class, and freedom in these two related plays become the object of a deconstructive analysis. The course will be taught in Spanish. Prerequisite(s): HISP 205 or above.
Modes of Inquiry: [AC], [HS]
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): AFR S21
Instructor: Baltasar Fra-Molinero
HISP S31 The Spain of Pedro Almodóvar (0.5 Credits)
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 Hispanic Studies or HISP 208.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): GEC C014, GEC C019
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None
HISP S50 Independent Study (0.5 Credits)
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.
Modes of Inquiry: None
Writing Credit: None
GEC(s): None
Department/Program Attribute(s): None
Class Restriction: None
Cross-listed Course(s): None