Course:

SPAN 110  Accelerated First Year Spanish

Professor:

John Burns  

CRN:

15537

Schedule/Location:

Mon Tue Wed Th    3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Olin Languages Center 208

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: Latin American/Iberian Studies

A first-year course designed for the student who has had some prior exposure to Spanish or who has excellent command of another Romance language. All the major topics in grammar will be covered, and the course will provide intensive practice in the four skills (speaking, comprehension, reading and writing). The course will provide a streamlined review of basic topics in grammar and provide more detail and exercises for advanced topics. The textbook will be supplemented with authentic video material from Spain and ‘Latin America. One additional hour per week of practice with the Spanish tutor and a substantial amount of work in the language resource center will also be required. The course will prepare the student for summer language programs abroad or Spanish 201 the following semester.

 

Course:

SPAN 201  Intermediate Spanish I

Professor:

Melanie Nicholson  

CRN:

15559

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs Fri   11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin Languages Center 210

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 18

Crosslists: Latin American/Iberian Studies

For students who have completed Spanish 106, 110, or the equivalent  (two or three solid years of high school Spanish). This course is designed to perfect the student’s command of all four language skills (speaking, aural comprehension, reading, and writing). This will be achieved through an intensive grammar review, conversational practice, reading of modern Spanish texts, writing simple compositions, and language lab work. Permission of the instructor required for students who have not completed Spanish 106 or 110 at Bard.

 

Course:

SPAN 202  Intermediate Spanish II

Professor:

Patricia Lopez-Gay  

CRN:

15541

Schedule/Location:

Mon Tue Wed     11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin Language Center 208

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 15

Crosslists: Latin American/Iberian Studies

This course continues refining the student’s mastery of the four basic skills in Spanish at a post-intermediate level. The textbook offers an integration of literature, culture, and film. Our study of both visual and written texts focuses on critical thinking, interpretation, speaking, and writing skills. Prerequisite: Spanish 201 or equivalent; permission of instructor required for those who have not completed 201 at Bard.

 

Course:

SPAN 237  Latin American Crime Fiction

Professor:

John Burns  

CRN:

15548

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin Languages Center 118

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: Latin American/Iberian Studies

This course will examine the tradition of crime fiction in Latin America. We will explore the ways in which these texts represent the law, justice, modernity, and the commodification of violence. To do so, we will read classic detective stories by Jorge Luis Borges before turning to iconic fictional detectives from the region. These include Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, an electrical engineer in Mexico City who became a detective by completing a correspondence course,  Ramón Díaz Eterovic´s Heredia, who solves crimes related to the Chilean dictatorship and sustains long conversations with his white cat Simenon, and Leonard Padura’s Mario Conde, who navigates the new realities of Havana as Cuba heads into the so-called Special Period of the 1990s. Additionally, we will consider notions of legality and illegality as portrayed in the work of Mayra Santos-Febres and explore the emergence of narcoliteratura through the work of writers such as Laura Restrepo and Élmer Mendoza. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisites: Spanish 202 or prior approval by instructor.

 

Course:

SPAN 240  Testimonies of Latin America: Perspectives from the Margins

Professor:

Nicole Caso  

CRN:

15538

Schedule/Location:

Mon   Thurs    1:30 PM – 2:50 PM Olin Languages Center 118

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit D+J Difference and Justice

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 22

Crosslists: Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

(Human Rights Core Course) This course provides the opportunity for students to engage critically with texts that serve as a public forum for voices often silenced in the past. Students will also learn about the broader context of the hemisphere’s history through the particular experiences of women from Bolivia, Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico, and the U.S.-Latino community, including Rigoberta Menchú, Domitila Barrios de Chungara, and Cherríe Moraga.  We will read testimonial accounts documenting the priorities and concerns of women who have been marginalized for reasons of poverty, ethnic difference, political ideologies, or sexual preference.  The semester will be devoted to analyzing the form in which their memories are represented textually, and to the discussion of the historical circumstances that have led to their marginalization.  Some of the central questions that will organize our discussions are: how to represent memories of violence and pain? What are the ultimate effects of mediations of the written word, translations to hegemonic languages, and the interventions of well-intentioned intellectuals?  How best to use writing as a mechanism to trace a space for dignity and “difference”?  We will integrate films that portray the issues and time-periods documented in the diaries and testimonial narratives to be read – including “Men With Guns”, “El Norte,” “Historia oficial,” and “Rojo amanecer.”  Conducted in English.

 

Course:

SPAN 301  Introduction to Spanish Literature in conversation with the Visual Arts

Professor:

Patricia Lopez-Gay  

CRN:

15539

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM – 11:30 AM Olin 306

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 15

Crosslists: Experimental Humanities; Latin American/Iberian Studies; Literature

This course explores some of the major literary works produced on the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the present day. Students will become familiar with the general contours of Spanish history as they study in depth a selected number of masterpieces, including works by Miguel de Cervantes, Calderón de la Barca, Teresa de Jesús, Cadalso, Larra, Galdós, Emilia PardoBazán, Unamuno, Lorca, and Carmen Laforet. The course will be organized around three thematic modules: Spanish culture’s engagement with notions of purity and pollution; the emergence and evolution of the first person singular in Spanish literature; and the representations of the country and the city, the center and the periphery. In each module we will undertake a survey of relevant literature occasionally put in conversation with the visual arts. Conducted in Spanish.

 

Course:

SPAN 306  Five Latin American Poets

Professor:

Melanie Nicholson 

CRN:

15540

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM – 4:50 PM Olin 310

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

Credits: 4

 

Class cap: 14

This course will examine the work of five twentieth-century Latin American poets:  Pablo Neruda (Chile), César Vallejo (Peru), Octavio Paz (Mexico), Nicolás Guillén (Cuba) and Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina).  Although students will be asked to read extensively within the obra of each of these writers, class time will be mainly spent in close analysis of selected texts.  Outside readings will help orient students to the historical, social, and political contexts in which these writers produced their work.  In this regard, we will attempt to answer these and other questions:  What occasioned the shift, in Neruda and Vallejo, from a vanguardist, hermetic poetry to a more accessible and socially-oriented poetry?  How are Eastern religious and philosophical orientations, particularly those of Buddhism, manifested in the work of Paz?  In what ways does the poetry of Guillén respond to racial and socio-political issues crucial to an understanding of Cuba’s history?  How can we apply contemporary discourses concerning gender and the representation of the body to the poetry of Pizarnik?  In addition to writing critical essays, students will be asked to memorize and recite short poems.  Optional assignments may   include original poems written in Spanish and translations of poems into English. Conducted in Spanish.