Catalogue 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Hispanic Studies Department
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Chair: Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, fall semester, Mihai Grünfeld, spring semester;
Professors: Andrew K. Bush, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Eva Woods Peiró;
Associate Professors: Michael C. Aronna, Mario Cesareob, Mihai Grünfeld, Nicolás Vivaldab;
Adjunct Instructor: Augusto Hacthoun, Howard Fink.
b On leave 2018/19, second semester
Study Away: Majors are expected to study, usually during the junior year, in a Spanish-speaking country. The department sponsors the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Madrid (academic year) study abroad program, open to all qualified students.
Advisers: The department.
Major
Correlate Sequence in Hispanic Studies
Hispanic Studies: I. Introductory
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HISP 105 - Elementary Spanish Language Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Fundamentals of the grammar and structure of the Spanish language with emphasis on oral skills and reading. Howard Fink.
Open to students with no previous instruction in Spanish.
Yearlong course 105-HISP 106 .
Four 50-minute periods; one hour of drill.
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HISP 106 - Elementary Spanish Language Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Fundamentals of the grammar and structure of the Spanish language with emphasis on oral skills and reading. Howard Fink, Augusto Hacthoun.
Open to students with no previous instruction in Spanish.
Yearlong course HISP 105 -106.
Four 50-minute periods; one hour of drill period.
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HISP 110 - Latin American and Spanish Literacy and Cultural Topics
1 unit(s)
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
Hispanic Studies: II. Intermediate
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HISP 205 - Intermediate Spanish Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
Intensive study and review of Spanish grammar at the second-year level with emphasis on oral practice and writing skills. Howard Fink, Nicolás Vivalda (a); Eva Woods Peiró (b).
Prerequisite(s): HISP 105 -HISP 106 or three years of high school Spanish.
Three 50-minute periods and one hour of conversation.
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HISP 206 - Reading and Writing about Hispanic Culture Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
1 unit(s)
Reading, writing and speaking skills are developed through study of cultural and literary texts and audiovisual materials.
Topic for 2018/19a or b:“A contracorriente”. Mapping Archipelagic Hispanic Culture and Literature. The cultural study of islands and archipelagoes asks us to take an oceanic approach—rather than continental—as the starting point for our cultural and literary analyses. From an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective that overlaps Island, Postcolonial, Hispanic and Archipelagic Studies, this course aims to understand the complex role of islands and archipelagos in colonial and neo-colonial Hispanic contexts, while decontinentalizing Hispanic culture production and going beyond the boundaries of traditional area studies.
Through a close reading of historic and modern literary and critical texts, contemporary art interventions, maps, photography and films, this course examines the impact of colonialism in three different Atlantic archipelagos and former colonies of Spain: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic; the African Islands of Equatorial Guinea, and the Canary Islands. By establishing connection in-between archipelagos that share colonial pasts and neocolonial presents we better understand the complex relationship between colonialism and desired insular spaces. We analyze topics such as displacement in its different forms exile, migration, travel, tourism, transoceanic insular imaginaries, and concepts such as slow violence, smallness, archipelagic thinking isolation and islandeness. Although the course mainly focuses on the Hispanic world and given the fluid nature of our subject of study, we establish a dialogic framework with intellectual and cultural productions from other islands around the Globe, such as Guam, Philippines or Hawai’i. This intercultural approach allows us different cultural materials, from works by well-known writers and artists to forgotten authors beyond the literary and artistic canon. Class participation is the center of this course, through conversation you demonstrate your engagement and intellectual growth during the semester. Together, we create a comfortable space amongst peers to speak with confidence about our knowledge and opinions and to respectfully hear those of others, and we encourage “a contracorriente” thought. Thenesoya Martín De la Nuez.
Topic for 2018/19a: Dreaming and Displacement: Migration Cinema and Literature explores colonial and postcolonial migration, displacement and narratives of liberation through the close analysis of written and visual texts. Films: También la lluvia [Even the Rain]; Flores de otro mundo [Flowers of Another World];Amador; La jaula de oro [The Golden Dream]; 14 Kilometers; Chicos normales [Ordinary Boys]. Other texts include: Texts Columbus’ diaries; popular song lyrics; Y no se le tragó la tierra [And the Earth did not devour him]; Los niños perdidos [40 Questions]; Diario de un ilegal [Diary of an illegal traveler]. Taught in Spanish. Eva Woods Peiró.
Topic for 2018/19b: Reading, writing and speaking skills are developed through study of cultural and literary texts and audiovisual materials. Andrew Bush.
Topic for 2018/19b: Latin America: Past and Present. This course is an introduction to Latin American history and culture, while it develops reading, writing and speaking skills in Spanish. Through the study of cultural and literary texts (short stories, poetry and essays) and audiovisual material (music, fine arts and films) we cover the main Latin American historical periods and also discuss the Hispanic presence in the United States. Some of the texts studied are: Popol Vuh, Nicolás Echevarría’s Cabeza de Vaca, María Luisa Bemberg’s Yo la peor de todas and Camila, the murals of Diego Rivera, Nicolás Guillén’s afro-Cuban poetry, Violeta Parra’s protest song, Luisa Valenzuela’s short novel Cambio de armas and Luis Valdes’s Zoot Suit. Mihai Grünfeld and Lizabeth Paravisini Gebert.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 205 or four years of high school Spanish.
Two 75-minute periods and one hour of conversation.
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HISP 216 - Topics in Multidisciplinary Analysis Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
This course develops a set of methodological and theoretical tools for the investigation of cultural practices such as literature, popular and mass culture, social movements and institutions in Spanish-speaking countries.
Topic for 2018/19a: Reading, Writing and Thinking Fiction. This course explores a set of theoretical concepts (from philosophy, sociology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology and semiotics) to develop a set of interpretative tools through which we are reading Latin American short stories while engaging in creative and essay writing exercises in Spanish. Mario Cesareo.
Topic for 2018/19b: Latin American Culture through Music. This course explores the history, culture and geographies of Latin America through its musical traditions, with particular attention to modern theories of cultural interpretation. Materials for analysis include music videos, literary texts, film and art as we seek to piece together the social, anthropological and personal dimensions of the region’s music. In Spanish. Lizabeth Gebert-Paravisini.
Topic for 2018/19b: Approaches to Hispanic Literature. This course aims to introduce the student to Latin American literary and cultural texts while developing methodological and theoretical tools for their interpretation. The course is divided into four parts. The study of poetry, in the first part, is dedicated to examining notions of periods and literary movements. In our study of the short story, novel and drama readings (parts two and three) we consider appropriate analytical strategies for these genres highlighting the relationship between literature and national discourse, feminism, ideology, and colonial discourse. Finally, the fourth part is dedicated to cinema through which we examine various cultural aspects such as the theology of liberation, gender and revolution, and popular religiosity. An important part of the course is also dedicated to creative writing. Students are encouraged to write both poetry and short stories in Spanish, and the most successful ones are published in our literary journal, Puro Cuento. Mihai Grünfeld.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 206 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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HISP 219 - Advanced Grammar and Composition
1 unit(s)
This course offers an in-depth coverage of Spanish grammar with emphasis on reading and writing skills. A more traditional approach in grammar explanations is combined with the study of numerous examples and exercises based on everyday life. The objectives of this course are 1) to provide a thorough review of major topics of Spanish grammar—ser and estar, por and para, the preterit and the imperfect, sequence of tenses, conditional clauses, etc.; 2) to explore in-depth the different mechanics of writing in Spanish (punctuation, written accents, etc.); 3) to work on writing skills in Spanish through the use of various writing techniques and strategies—the art of writing narratives, dialogue, descriptions, letters, and reports; 4) to improve reading skills and knowledge of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions in Spanish; 5) to continue to increase cultural knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world. Through the use of the target language in class, this course also contributes to the general language acquisition process. Some translation work is required as well—contextualized passages in English translated into Spanish are used to illustrate a variety of grammatical principles. Nicolas Vivalda.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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HISP 225 - Creative Writing Workshop
1 unit(s)
This year’s workshop provides a space for the development of the student’s ability as a writer of fiction in Spanish. Writing projects could include short stories, drama, poetry and miscellany, depending on the student’s individual interests. Workshop members share, read and critique each other’s writing. We also engage some readings and exercises designed to enrich the student’s ability to give form, texture, and voice to their writing. Mario Cesareo.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 or HISP 219 or permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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HISP 226 - Medieval and Early Modern Spain Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
Studies in Spanish literary and cultural production from the time of the Reconquest to the end of the Hapsburg Empire.
Topic for 2018/19a: Jews, Muslims and Christians in Medieval Spain.Power homogenizes, and absolute power homogenizes absolutely. Such has been the keynote of cultural politics in Spain from the reign of the Reyes Católicos to the Franco dictatorship. But against the discourse of power stands the lived reality of cultural heterogeneity in the Iberian Peninsula. The great theoretical voice speaking for that heterogeneity has been Américo Castro, who opposed the centuries-old conflation of Catholicism and nationalism by insisting upon what we would now call the multicultural base of Spanish identity, namely the coexistence of Jews, Muslims and Christians in the medieval period. This course takes Castro’s theoretical position as the point of departure for the investigation of the tri-partite convivencia, considering both its moments of harmony and of confrontation. The selection of texts and their study are interdisciplinary in nature, including the fields of literature, history, religion and architecture. While concentrating on the period 711-1492, attention is also devoted to the medieval legacy in such later writers as Cervantes. Please note that although the original language of some of the texts is Hebrew or Arabic, Galician-Portuguese or Catalan, readings, class discussion and writing assignments are in Castilian Spanish. Andrew Bush.
Two 75-minute periods.
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HISP 227 - Colonial Latin America
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 227 ) Studies in Latin American literary and cultural production from the European invasion to the crisis of the colonial system.
Prerequisite(s): One course above HISP 206 .
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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HISP 228 - Modern Spain Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
Studies in Spanish literary and cultural production from the beginning of the Bourbon monarchy to the present.
2018/19b: After Muslims and Jews. The course approaches the cultural history of modern Spain in light of the homogenization of the nation-state through war, forced conversion and expulsion. Long after there were no Muslims and Jews living in Spain, the national imaginary continued to be haunted by its absent Others. The course takes up that legacy, focusing on the contrast with other European Orientalisms in the nineteenth century and the impact of the twentieth-century controversy in Spain about the thesis of national hybridity. Andrew Bush.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 .
Two 75-minute periods.
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HISP 229 - Postcolonial Latin America Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 229 ) Studies in Latin American literary and cultural production from the emergence of the nation states to the present. Thematically structured, the course delves into the social, political, and institutional processes undergone by Latin America as a result of its uneven incorporation into world capitalist development.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 or HISP 219 .
Two 75-minute periods.
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HISP 252 - Building Inclusive Communities in Latino-a-x Poughkeepsie Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 252 ) This course is intended for students who wish to learn from and support that process, notably connecting with local Latino-a-x high school students with the goal of helping empower them to be leaders in the process.
The course offers students a chance to engage with and learn more about the local Latino-a-x community, meet local community leaders, and learn about the most pressing issues impacting the community at the local, state, and national levels. This course also allows students to experience best practices when it comes to developing and sustaining an inclusive community – developing intimacy, exploring social identity and power, using effective communication and conflict resolution skills, and attending to the well-being of the individual members of the community – specifically in the context of Latino-a-x community.
Spanish-speaking and Latino-a-x students are encouraged to enroll, but all students are most welcome! Both English and Spanish are used, but always in a way that is inclusive and accessible to non-Spanish speakers. Eva Woods.
Second six-week course.
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HISP 290 - Field Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Individual projects or internships. The department.
Prerequisite(s): One unit of HISP 205 or above.
Special permission.
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HISP 298 - Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1.5 unit(s)
The department.
Prerequisite(s): Two units of HISP 226 or above, and permission of the instructor.
Does not fulfill the requirement for 200-level work in the major or the correlate sequence.
Hispanic Studies: III. Advanced
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HISP 300 - Senior Thesis Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
The department.
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HISP 382 - Decolonizing Digital Culture Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 382 and MEDS 382 ) Digital media are ubiquitous. Through them we communicate, inform ourselves, organize our lives, watch one another, self-soothe and invent ourselves. Digital media are both central to struggles for social justice and at the same time, in the hands of corporate and state agents, weapons against these struggles. This course explores how the history, physical infrastructure, political economy and symbolic and affective meanings in media-scapes across Latin America, the Caribbean, Mexico and Spain are crucial for understanding digital culture and its impact on us. Topics studied include Indigenous digital culture; digital literacy; fake news; social media and social movements; gendered, racialized and classed identities in online communities; (dis)embodiment; the networked self; and border surveillance technologies. We analyze a range of media texts including novels, films, theoretical essays, manifestos, archives and multi-media born-digital content. Taught in Spanish. Eva Woods.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 and one course above 216.
One 2-hour period.
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HISP 387 - Latin American Seminar Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as LALS 387 ) A seminar offering in-depth study of topics related to the literary and cultural history of Latin America. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic changes.
Topic for 2018/19a: New Argentine Cinema. The seminar follows the appearance and development of the Argentine New Wave, from the mid-1990s to the present. These films have initiated a new direction in Argentine and Latin American film, as they try to find new narrative forms that symbolically articulate and transform the radical crises–cultural, national and economic–that neoliberalism and its aftermath brought to the Argentine landscape. In the process, new voices, ethnic communities, sexualities and social sensibilities emerge, questioning established ways of thinking and looking at the nation and its uneasy fragments. The emerging result has been a boom in production that publics and film festivals worldwide have recognized through accolade, prizes, worldwide distribution and critical praise. Films by auteurs such as Adrián Caetano, Martín Rejtman, Pablo Trapero, and Lucrecia Martel are discussed, bearing on themes such as the circulation of bodies and labor, nation, migration and globalization, memory and subjectivity, the eye vs. the gaze, the spheres and politics of social space, and the political unconscious of melodrama and allegory within the context of subalternity and the Third World. In Spanish. Mario Cesareo.
Topic for 2018/19b: Far Away and so close: Hispano-African and Transatlantic (Pen)Insular Literature”. Through the study of a wide range of literary texts and cultural materials such as poems, films, journals, travelogues and the press, this course helps us understand the complex configuration of 20th century Transatlantic Spanish Peninsular and Insular Literature, and Hispano-African Equatoguinean Literature in Spanish. With an Atlantic and postcolonial approach, against a continental viewpoint, course materials are questioned from a wider geopolitical framework that includes Latin America, Africa and Europe. Among the issues that are discussed are colonial power, Spanish-African imaginaries in Ceuta, Melilla and Morocco, definitions of Spanish national and peripheral identities, and Orientalism/Occidentalism. Thenesoya Martín De la Nuez.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 and one course above 216.
One 2-hour period.
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HISP 388 - Peninsular Seminar Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)
A seminar offering in-depth study of topics related to the literary and cultural history of Spain and the Hispanic Transatlantic. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic changes.
Topic for 2018/19a:Violence, Honor and Gender Construction in Golden Age Theater. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Spanish theatre became immensely popular, and moved from palace to public theatre and town square. In Spain and its colonies, theater plays began to depict a culture obsessed with honor, where a man resorted to violence when his or his wife’s honor was threatened through sexual disgrace. The seminar explores the character of this violence as a result of the strict application of the “honor code”, a complex social and rhetorical strategy whereby both men and women decided how to dispute issues of truth and reputation. Readings include selected plays by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca. Nicolás Vivalda.
Prerequisite(s): HISP 216 and one course above 216.
One 2-hour period.
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HISP 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
Special permission. Does not fulfill the requirement for 300-level work in the major or correlate sequence.
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