Course Offerings

Spring 2026 

SPAN 5356: Theory of Flesh: Chicana Praxis

M 3:30-6:20pm
Dr. Britta Anderson

Chicana Feminisms blur the lines between theory, activism, art, and the body. In this seminar, we will occupy the spaces in between these domains and seek to fill in the gaps in the telling of the history of the Chicano Movement by centering the voices of Chicana women. Topics explored include testimony, disability, indigeneity, sexuality, the land, transnational relationships, and motherhood. Works studied include theoretical and literary readings and visual and performance art by Martha Cotera, Gloria Anzaldúa, Norma Cantú, Emma Pérez, Sandra Cisneros, Helena María Viramontes, Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, Yolanda López, Patssi Valdez, Alma López, and Xandra Ibarra.

SPAN 5370: Indigenous Intellectuals in the Colonial “Lettered Cities” 

T 3:30-6:20pm
Dr. Sara Guengerich

 Ángel Rama’s La ciudad letrada portrays the colonial city as both a physical and symbolic embodiment of imperial order, governed by a privileged class of letrados (lettered men) who wielded power through writing and education. Yet, recent studies highlight the key intellectual roles of indigenous peoples as writers, historians, and artists who shaped colonial and national cultures. This graduate course examines these overlooked contributions, arguing that colonialism and nation-building in Latin America were collaborative processes. Through different texts, it broadens Rama’s concept of the “lettered city” to include additional participants in knowledge creation and cultural transformation

SPAN 5376: Modernisms of the 20th Century

R 3:30-6:20pm
Dr. Andrew Reynolds

This class will explore Spanish America’s role in the development and maintenance of literary modernism throughout the 20th century. Authors will include Gabriela Mistral, Cesar Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, Nicolás Guillen, María Luisa Bombal, José María Arguedas, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Diamela Eltit.

SPAN 5384: Multimodality

T 3:30-6:20pm
Dr. Idoia Elola

This seminar examines how multimodality shapes the teaching and learning of second and heritage languages. We investigate meaning-making in speaking, reading, writing, translanguaging practices, classroom discourse, and classroom interaction by analyzing the coordination of visual, aural, gestural (including classroom gestures and embodied action), spatial, and digital modes, as well as the combination of languages in use. Guiding questions include: How can multimodality be researched within applied linguistics? What kinds of data are appropriate to collect, and which qualitative and quantitative methods best address multimodal phenomena? How do participants and teachers in engage multimodality? Which theoretical frameworks most effectively inform research and pedagogy in this area? What tasks elicit analyzable multimodal behavior? How is multimodality reshaping research agendas, article publication practices, and curricular design? Coursework includes designing and trialing multimodal activities for L2/HL classrooms and conducting a small field study with accompanying annotated analysis.

SPAN 5388: Spanish Phonetics & Phonology

M - 4-6:50pm
Dr. Brendan Regan

This course provides an overview of the phonological inventory of the Spanish language, the phonological processes involved in sound change, methodologies of phonological & phonetic analysis, a survey of the phonological variation that exists throughout the Spanish-speaking world, the phonetics and phonology of bilingualism, and finally, a review of theories of sound change. The course prepares students to conduct high quality research in phonetics and phonology as well as to be more pedagogically-informed instructors of Spanish so that one is capable of explaining how to produce sounds as well as teaching about diachronic and synchronic sociophonetic variation present in Spanish.

SPAN 5385: Language and Community

W 3:30-18:20pm
Dr. Paola Guerrero

[Description Not Available]

PORT 5341: Intensive Portuguese for Graduate Students I

F 9:30am-12:20pm
Dr. Bernd Reiter

This is a course for Spanish Speakers, or speakers who are fluent in another Latin Language. 

PORT 5355: Readings in Luso-Brazilian Literature

W 3:30-6:20pm
Dr. Bernd Reiter

We will focus on Brazilian Modernity and the Literature from and about the Brazilian Backlands (sertão).

Summer 2026

SPAN 5343: Studies in Spanish: The Poetics of Everyday Life                                                       

MW 10:00am - 11:50am, Online synchronous
Dr. Susan Larson

In Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes was one of the first philosophers of language to take mass culture seriously, applying methods of analysis that were formerly the preserve of high culture to the most mundane, banal and everyday-ness of mass-produced objects. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (2011) David Shields argues against the linear, the realist, the plotted, and the “true” in the name of the random, the fragmented, the collaged, and the “real.” This course takes these two provocations to heart to explore how literature and film in Spain account for, question and describe the everyday. 

Key questions we will work to answer include

• How have literature and film dealt with the banality, intimacy, and repetitions of everyday spaces during times of social and political upheaval?
• Why do contemporary Iberian artists seem to be returning to the poetics of everyday life?
• How do the writing and close reading of narratives of everyday life encourage us to develop and cultivate new understandings of our own everyday experiences?
• How can we transfer this knowledge of the poetics of everyday life into our own courses through first-person writing and other creative pedagogical exercises?

REQUIRED READING AND FILM VIEWING

--Mitologías. Roland Barthes. Trans. Hector Schmucler. Siglo XXI Editores, 1999. [1957] (theory)
--El cuatro de atrás, Carmen Martín Gaite (short novel, published in 1978)
--El verdugo (film, directed directed by Luis García Berlanga, 1963)
--Paseos con mi madre. Javier Pérez Andújar (short novel published in 2011)
--La trabajadora, Elvira Navarro (novel, published in 2014)
--A selection of academic articles that serve as models for how to critically engage with the topic.

Luis García Berlanga's 1963 film El verdugo.