Animal Lives: The Environmental Humanities in Medieval and Early Modern Literature from Spain

Scholars have increasingly recognized the importance of the humanities, particularly literary studies, in addressing the environmental crisis.  Golden Age Literature (Spanish 5362) joins the environmental humanities by focusing on literature from medieval and early modern Spain. It pays special attention to how the study of literature gives students tools to better understand and empathize with the lives of real, individual animals.

Course counts toward Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Reiter

Meixiu

LING 5322 introduces students to the fundamentals of second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) teaching, with an emphasis on the following: (a) general principles of instructed language learning; (b) developing interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational communications; (c) L2 vocabulary and grammar instruction; (d) oral and written corrective feedback; (e) curriculum design; and (f) assessment practices. Through a combination of peer discussion, critical evaluations of teaching practices/materials, and hands-on experience in designing instructional materials, students will develop a professional portfolio that consists of a set of materials representing their teaching practices as second/foreign language teachers. This course will be conducted in English.

Monday,
4:00-6:50

Wednesday,
3:30-6:20

A close look at the history of the academic discipline of Geography in Spain since the nineteenth century reveals that the ‘regenerationist' discourses of modernization that gave voice to a national and nationalist geographical project were backed by an ideology that simultaneously pushed for socioeconomic restructuring and cultural revival in ways that were closely connected to ideas about territory, land and landscape. Since the 1960s, the subdiscipline of Cultural Geography began to draw on key concepts from Cultural and Urban Studies, Philosophy, Critical Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Feminism and Queer Theory in an attempt to get beyond the many forms of environmental determinism that have run through the broader discipline of Geography, in Spain and elsewhere. After an overview of the basic premises of Cultural Geography as a discipline and a consideration of a number of place-based cultural theories important in Spain since 1898, we will look at how literature and film have oftentimes opened the door to more productive, inclusive, and non-essentialist discussions about space and place. 

This course will be divided into three thematic segments: 1) the rural; 2) the urban; and 3) the significant weakening of the rural / urban divide in the age of the Anthropocene. The coursework will culminate with the turning in of a final research paper that has been overseen by the professor throughout the semester. Close attention will be paid to developing basic research and writing skills and how to present one's research. The reading / viewing list will be finalized after the course registration period is over, (before Winter Break) and after Professor Larson and the enrolled students can discuss their research and writing goals for the semester. 

Thursday,
3:30-6:20

Monday,
4:00-6:50

Tuesday,
3:00-5:50

CMLL 5305

Fundamentals of Research & Scholarship Academic Communication in Language Studies

ONLINE

McChesney 

This course helps graduate students in language studies develop the skills essential to becoming more effective communicators in the academic world.  The course consists of two parts. In the first half of the semester, the students will analyze texts in their respective disciplines, perform small writing tasks and discuss different aspects of the texts. Activities will be based on the course book Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (Swales & Feak) and on published articles the students bring from their respective fields. These assignments will help students better understand, identify, and analyze the rhetorical situations of academic texts in their disciplines, and also become familiar with the conventions of specific genres in language studies, such as commentaries, abstracts, summaries, critiques and annotated bibliographies. Additional topics will include practical strategies for organizing and developing thoughts, writing concisely in an academic style, proofreading, and avoiding plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. In the second half of the course, the students will use these techniques to draft a research proposal with feedback from other class members and the instructor. Students will be able to tailor the opportunities provided by the course to their own area of language studies.

SPAN 5340

Spanish Language and Linguistics

Tuesday, 
3:00-5:50

TBA 

This course is a requirement for MA and PhD students beginning the Spanish graduate program in Fall 2023. 

Methods of Literary (and Cultural Studies) Criticism is meant to 1) familiarize students with the vocabulary, basic concepts, and common uses of a range of theoretical approaches in Luso-Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies; 2) deploy some of these concepts in our own readings of written and visual cultural forms, and; 3) enable students to begin to define their own identity as cultural critics and scholars and to begin to express that identity in their research and teaching. This course will be conducted primarily in Spanish, although a number of the secondary readings will be in English.

This class focuses on Decolonial Theory. We will pay special attention to theorists who deal with race and gender issues in Latin America. The preliminary reading list includes: 

• Gustavo Esteva: A Critique of Development and other essays
  Rita Segato: The Critique of Coloniality: Eight Essays
• Jacob Gorender: Colonial Slavery: An Abridged Translation
• Manuel  Zapata Olivella: Changó, Decolonizing the African Diaspora

The readings will be available in Spanish or Portuguese, and English, depending on the interests, and qualifications of the students.

Scholars and activists claim that today's status of women in Latin America stems from a colonial legacy of gender and sexual repression. Yet, the position of women and men in any society is a social construct, rather than a fixed state. From the time when native, African and European peoples met in the era of conquest, cultural ideas about appropriate behavior for men and women played a critical role in the negotiation of social and political life. Despite the attempts of the colonial ruling elite to prescribe gender roles, most people resisted elite notions of gender propriety and instead created their own codes of conduct. This course examines the sources, methodologies and theoretical approaches that shape the studies of gender in Colonial Spanish America. The readings represent ethnic, racial and class-based distinctions among women, and emphasize the importance of using diverse approaches to read women's experiences in literary and historical accounts. Students will read and discuss both primary and secondary sources to understand how gender is conceived and written.

Note: The course will have a paleography training component for those students interested in reading and researching historical documents from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and have reading proficiency in the Spanish language. Students that would like to pursue the Spanish Paleography training must register for the Spanish graduate credits.

Tuesday,
4:00 - 6:50

This seminar studies the Mexican novel in its encounters with global capitalism and neoliberalization. Focusing on two corpora of contemporary Mexican literature, Onda and Crack, we will examine the capabilities of the novel form to periodize transition, crisis, unevenness, scarcity, and adjustment. We will consider how, in the aftermath of 1968, Onda and Crack novels offer two different solutions to the problem posed by the foreclosure of national development and the advent of globalization. What does the formal tension between realist and modernist elements in these novels tell us about their uniquely peripheral instantiation of world-systemic processes? How do these novels scale the relational structures of global capitalism? How do the formal patterns of the Mexican novel make capitalism's uneven and combined development available for conceptualization? 

Sem in Hispanic Linguistics: Understanding the Heritage speaker: Theoretical and pedagogical perspectives 

SPAN 5370

Dialogues in Latinx Studies

TBA

Anderson