Courses

AFST B204 #BlackLivesMatterEverywhere

Spring 2025

#BlackLivesMatterEverywhere: Ethnographies & Theories on the African Diaspora is a interdisciplinary course closely examines political, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual mobilizations for Black Lives on local, global and hemispheric levels. We will engage an array of materials ranging from literature, history, oral histories, folklore, dance, music, popular culture, social media, ethnography, and film/documentaries. By centering the political and intellectual labor of Black women and LGBTQ folks at the forefront of the movements for Black Lives, we unapologetically excavate how #BlackLivesMatterEverywhere has a long and rich genealogy in the African diaspora. Lastly, students will be immersed in Black queer feminist theorizations on diaspora, political movements, and the multiplicities of Blackness.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; General Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Museum Studies.

Back to top

AFST B206 Black Latinx Americas: Movements, Politics, & Cultures

Not offered 2024-25

This interdisciplinary course examines the extensive and diverse histories, social movements, political mobilization and cultures of Black people (Afrodescendientes) in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the course will begin in the slavery era, most of our scholarly-activist attention will focus on the histories of peoples of African descent in Latin America after emancipation to the present. Some topics we will explore include: the particularities of slavery in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution and its impact on articulations of race and nation in the region, debates on "racial democracy," the relationship between gender, class, race, and empire, and recent attempts to write Afro-Latin American histories from "transnational" and "diaspora" perspectives. We will engage the works of historians, activists, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, and political theorists who have been key contributors to the rich knowledge production on Black Latin America.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; General Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Museum Studies.

Back to top

AFST B300 Black Women's Studies

Fall 2024

Black Feminist Studies, which emerged in the 1970s as a corrective to both Black Studies and Women's Studies, probes the silences, erasures, distortions, and complexities surrounding the experiences of peoples of African descent wherever they live. The early scholarship was comparable to the painstaking excavation projects of an archaeologist digging for hidden treasures. A small group of mainly black feminist scholars have been responsible for reconstructing the androcentric African American literary tradition by establishing the importance of black women's literature going back to the nineteenth century. In this interdisciplinary seminar, students closely examine the historical, critical and theoretical perspectives that led to the development of Black Feminist theory/praxis. The course will draw from the 19th century to the present, but will focus on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on "western" and global feminisms. Central to our exploration will be the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice, and of race, to gender, class, and sexuality. We will conclude the course with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory.

Writing Intensive

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

ANTH B216 Transnational Movements Across the Americas

Not offered 2024-25

Globalization has enabled the movement of people, the trade of goods, and the exchange of culture and ideas but it has also created unprecedented problems such as inequality, exploitation, and environmental crisis. However, the networks formed by globalization have also created exciting opportunities for activists to organize across borders, tackle issues of global concern, and develop creative solutions. This course will introduce students to the study of transnational social movements with a focus on the Americas. We will make use of ethnographic case studies, documentary film, and an interdisciplinary social science literature to examine transnational movements on a variety of themes such as: human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, the environment, biodiversity conservation, climate justice, the alter-globalization movement, and the rights of nature. Students will learn about the historical context of transnationalism, theories of social movement and collective action, the study of networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the strategies mobilized by transnational actors to advocate on issues of social and environmental justice. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and up; or first years who have taken Anth 102

Back to top

ANTH B346 Human Rights and Citizenship in Global Perspective

Not offered 2024-25

This course examines the history of "decolonization." In the 20th century, the global world order transformed from one organized around empires and imperial domination to one of nation-states, self-determination, and human rights. In three parts, this course will explore the history of colonization and imperialism; examine the historical significance and legacy of anti-colonial struggles, global decolonization in the 20th century, and the movement for human rights; as well as investigate the significance of these legacies to contemporary struggles over nationalism, migration, racial justice and citizenship.

Back to top

CITY B229 Topics in Comparative Urbanism

Section 001 (Spring 2024): Colonial & Post Colonial Reflections
Section 001 (Spring 2025): Post-Conflict Urbanism
Section 002 (Spring 2025): Post-Conflict Urbanism

Spring 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: Cities are more than the backdrops against which conflict and inter-group violence proceed. Indeed, in places marked by deep ethnoreligious divisions, cities are also the stakes of war itself. Just as control over streets, buildings, and infrastructure symbolizes power and resistance, so, too, are post-conflict municipal power sharing and emergent forms of post-conflict urban life the keys to long-term peacemaking. In this writing-intensive course, we will examine the physical and social scars of urban violence in cities marked by ethnopolitical contestation as well as the plans for reconstruction, the negotiation of public space and memorial, the design and spatiality of infrastructure, and the reconfiguration of governance and daily life in three post-conflict cities: Belfast, Kigali, and Johannesburg. Students will draw on the lessons learned to approach the question of our fourth case study, Jerusalem, with a sense of hope for a future than cannot but include peacebuilding at the urban scale.

Current topic description: Cities are more than the backdrops against which conflict and inter-group violence proceed. Indeed, in places marked by deep ethnoreligious divisions, cities are also the stakes of war itself. Just as control over streets, buildings, and infrastructure symbolizes power and resistance, so, too, are post-conflict municipal power sharing and emergent forms of post-conflict urban life the keys to long-term peacemaking. In this writing-intensive course, we will examine the physical and social scars of urban violence in cities marked by ethnopolitical contestation as well as the plans for reconstruction, the negotiation of public space and memorial, the design and spatiality of infrastructure, and the reconfiguration of governance and daily life in three post-conflict cities: Belfast, Kigali, and Johannesburg. Students will draw on the lessons learned to approach the question of our fourth case study, Jerusalem, with a sense of hope for a future than cannot but include peacebuilding at the urban scale.

Writing Intensive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Anthropology; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

ENGL B217 Narratives of Latinidad

Not offered 2024-25

This course explores how Latina/o writers fashion bicultural and transnational identities and narrate the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Latin America. We will focus on topics of shared concern among Latino groups such as struggles for social justice, the damaging effects of machismo and racial hierarchies, the politics of Spanglish, and the affective experience of migration. By analyzing a range of cultural production, including novels, poetry, testimonial narratives, films, activist art, and essays, we will unpack the complexity of Latinidad in the Americas.

Back to top

ENGL B237 Cultural Memory and State-Sanctioned Violence in Latinx Literature

Not offered 2024-25

This course examines how Latinx literature grapples with state-sanctioned violence, cultural memory, and struggles for justice in the Americas. Attending to the histories of dictatorship and civil war in Central and South America, we will focus on a range of genres-including novels, memoir, poetry, film, and murals-to explore how memory and the imagination can contest state-sanctioned violence, how torture and disappearances haunt the present, how hetereopatriarchal and white supremacist discourses are embedded in authoritarian regimes, and how U.S. imperialism has impacted undocumented migration. Throughout the course we will analyze the various creative techniques Latinx cultural producers use to resist violence and imagine justice.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

Back to top

ENGL B332 Early Modern Race, Empire and the Invention of the News

Fall 2024

"The News" - the idea that things are happening and everyone should know about it through easily accessible media - defines our highly networked lives today. Our relationship to news, however, is quite fraught: anxieties about the veracity of our sources and the supposed objectivity of writers abound. But "news", and the chief anxieties associated with the form, enjoy a long history. News is often associated with the birth of democracy, the nation, and the public sphere. "The news" has also played an often overlooked and greatly understudied role in the promulgation of theories of race, the expansion of empire, and the development of capitalism. This course offers a rethinking of the history of news beginning in the sixteenth century, revealing the genre's debts to travel writing, literary culture, and popular print (including ballads and pamphlets). While this course aims to chronicle the history of news, it also moves to tell the histories of colonialism from the masses of popular print that document, debate, and disseminate its histories. Among the questions this course will interrogate are: what is the relationship between early news and literature? How does empire catalyze information culture? How do early debates around race and colonialism shape the emergence of what we might recognize as news culture? Readings include Thomas More's Utopia, Bartholomew de las Casas' Brief History, Cortez's Five Letters, Hakluyt's Principal Voyages, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Tempest, Ben Jonson's masques and Staple of News, Aphra Behn's Widow Ranter, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and a selection of early modern pamphlets, ballads, and criticism.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

ENGL B339 Latina/o Culture and the Art of Migration

Not offered 2024-25

Gloria Anzaldúa has famously described the U.S.-Mexico border as an open wound and the border culture that arises from this fraught site as a third country. This course will explore how Chicana/os and Latina/os creatively represent different kinds of migrations across geo-political borders and between cultural traditions to forge transnational identities and communities. We will use cultural production as a lens for understanding how citizenship status, class, gender, race, and language shape the experiences of Latin American migrants and their Latina/o children. We will also analyze alternative metaphors and discourses of resistance that challenge anti-immigrant rhetoric and reimagine the place of undocumented migrants and Latina/os in contemporary U.S. society. Over the course of the semester, we will probe the role that literature, art, film, and music can play in the struggle for migrants' rights and minority civil rights, querying how the imagination and aesthetics can contribute to social justice. We will examine a number of different genres, as well as read and apply key theoretical texts on the borderlands and undocumented migration.

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

ENGL B382 Speculative Futures, Alternative Worlds

Not offered 2024-25

Just as colonization is an act of speculative fiction, imagining and violently imposing a different world, so too does decolonization rely on the power of imagination. This course will explore how Latinx, Black, Indigenous, and Asian American cultural producers deploy speculative fiction to interrogate white supremacy and imperialism and to imagine decolonial futures. We will analyze representations of racism, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, environmental destruction, and anti-immigrant discrimination in works by writers, filmmakers, and artists such as Octavia Butler, Sabrina Vourvoulias, N.K. Jemison, Ken Liu, Alex Rivera, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, as well as anthologies such as Walking the Clouds and Nets for Snaring the Sun. In doing so, we will probe the role that literature, film, and graphic narratives can play in decolonizing knowledge. Students will be also introduced to key theoretical concepts such as modernity/coloniality; ethnic futurisms (Afro-Futurism, Latinxfuturism, Indigenous Futurism, etc.); marvelous realism; survivance, and social death that will help them unpack the critical work accomplished by genre fiction and query the ways in which the aesthetic imagination can contribute to social justice.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

GNST B245 Introduction to Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies

Not offered 2024-25

A broad, interdisciplinary survey of themes uniting and dividing societies from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas. The class introduces the methods and interests of all departments in the concentration, posing problems of cultural continuity and change, globalization and struggles within dynamic histories, political economies, and creative expressions. Course is taught in English.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

Back to top

HIST B129 The Religious Conquest of the Americas

Not offered 2024-25

The course examines the complex aspects of the European missionization of indigenous people, and explores how two traditions of religious thought/practice came into conflict. Rather than a transposition of Christianity from Europe to the Americas, something new was created in the contested colonial space.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

HIST B200 The Atlantic World 1492-1800

Not offered 2024-25

The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the way in which peoples, goods, and ideas from Africa, Europe. and the Americas came together to form an interconnected Atlantic World system. The course is designed to chart the manner in which an integrated system was created in the Americas in the early modern period, rather than to treat the history of the Atlantic World as nothing more than an expanded version of North American, Caribbean, or Latin American history.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Anthropology; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Peace Justice and Human Rights.

Back to top

HIST B212 Pirates, Travelers, and Natural Historians: 1492-1750

Not offered 2024-25

In the early modern period, conquistadors, missionaries, travelers, pirates, and natural historians wrote interesting texts in which they tried to integrate the New World into their existing frameworks of knowledge. This intellectual endeavor was an adjunct to the physical conquest of American space, and provides a framework though which we will explore the processes of imperial competition, state formation, and indigenous and African resistance to colonialism.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Environmental Studies; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

HIST B243 Topics: Atlantic Cultures

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Maroon Communities - New World

Fall 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: The course explores the process of self-emancipation by slaves in the early modern Atlantic World. What was the nature of the communities that free blacks forged? What were their relationships to the empires from which they freed themselves? How was race constructed in the early modern period? Did conceptions of race change over time?

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

HIST B265 Colonial Encounters in the Americas

Not offered 2024-25

The course explores the confrontations, conquests and accommodations that formed the "ground-level" experience of day-to-day colonialism throughout the Americas. The course is comparative in scope, examining events and structures in North, South and Central America, with particular attention paid to indigenous peoples and the nature of indigenous leadership in the colonial world of the 18th century.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

HIST B327 Topics in Early American History

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Indigenous Peoples

Fall 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: A seminar exploring indigenous societies and cultures of the Americas through interdisciplinary scholarship. The course's aim is to explore the evolution of several indigenous societies and cultures in order to frame Native peoples as actors on historical playing fields that were as rich, complex, and subject to change as those that the European intruders and their descendants later occupied.

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

HIST B371 Topics in Atlantic History: The Early Modern Pirate in Fact and Fiction

Fall 2024

This course will explore piracy in the Americas in the period 1550-1750. We will investigate the historical reality of pirates and what they did, and the manner in which pirates have entered the popular imagination through fiction and films. Pirates have been depicted as lovable rogues, anti-establishment rebels, and enlightened multiculturalists who were skilled in dealing with the indigenous and African peoples of the Americas. The course will examine the facts and the fictions surrounding these important historical actors.

Writing Intensive

Counts Toward: International Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

INST B210 Popular Uprisings in Global Perspective

Not offered 2024-25

In recent years, popular uprisings and protest movements have mobilized hundreds and thousands of people in different parts of the world to demand a radical overhauling of existing systems and changes in political leadership. These uprisings have raised a series of questions that will be the focus of this class. What are the catalysts, underlying causes and demands of these protest movements? What can we learn from the grassroots organizing that allowed these movements to gain momentum? All too often popular uprisings in the Global South in particular, are seen as representing the failures and limits of revolutionary action and politics rather than their potential and promise. What then, do recent popular uprisings reveal about the limitations and relevance of various theoretical approaches to explaining revolutionary phenomena and action? How might local scholars and activists analyzing the popular uprisings taking place in their countries, allow us to develop new vocabularies and frameworks for understanding popular protests and revolutionary action elsewhere? Students will explore these questions through a series of case studies including Sudan, Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, France, Ethiopia and India.

Back to top

INST B217 Social Movements, Power, and Resistance

Not offered 2024-25

This course will introduce students to the study of transnational social movements. Globalization has created unprecedented problems of inequality, exploitation, and environmental crisis however, its networks and logics by globalization have also created exciting opportunities for activists to organize across borders, tackle issues of global concern, and develop creative solutions. We will make use of ethnographic case studies, documentary film, and an interdisciplinary social science literature to examine transnational movements on a variety of themes such as: human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, the environment, biodiversity conservation, climate justice, the alter-globalization movement, and the rights of nature. Students will learn about the historical context of transnationalism, theories of social movement and collective action, the study of networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the strategies mobilized by transnational actors to advocate on issues of social and environmental justice.

Back to top

INST B220 Political Ecology and Environmental Justice

Spring 2025

This course is an introduction to the fields of Political Ecology and Environmental Justice. Through ethnographic accounts, documentary film, graphic novels, photography and other multimedia, students will be introduced to ethnographic case studies of environmental justice struggles, conflicts over resources, and the impacts of extractive industries on indigenous and other frontline communities across the Global South and North. How, we will ask, do environmental problems, such as climate change, pollution and toxicity, biodiversity loss and extinctions, and struggles over resource extraction intersect with questions of identity and inequality, such as race, ethnicity, nation, indigeneity, and gender? Students will make use of the theoretical and methodological tools offered by environmental justice and political ecology to critically examine: processes of globalization, development, and the racialized postcolonial geographies of resource extraction; the problem of environmental racism, and social movements for indigenous sovereignty and climate justice; and science and technology studies inquiries into the relations between humans and non-humans. Together, we will trace the historical roots, colonial logics, and contemporary effects of extractive capitalism and learn from the legacies of movements social and environmental justice in order to interrogate our own positionality within the global political ecology of resource extraction and consumption. Prerequisite: Intro to International Studies recommended as preparation

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Anthropology; Environmental Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

INST B301 Politics of Aid and Humanitarianism

Not offered 2024-25

This course explores the relationship between humanitarian aid, politics and the legacy of colonialism. Our goal will be to historicize and contextualize humanitarian policies and practices through specific case studies which can include, but will not be limited to: Haiti, Sudan, USA, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Palestine, Somalia, Brazil, Nicaragua and the Philippines. We will use these case studies to explore topics such as the militarization of aid and the politicization of emergency assistance. We will also be looking to non-traditional sources such as novels, films, NGO documents and congressional hearings to gain insight from the perspectives of those impacted by and/or shaping humanitarian policies and practices. Finally, we will examine the ways 'non-Western' actors and humanitarian organizations are reshaping the field of humanitarianism and relationships across the Global South more broadly.

Back to top

INST B308 Human Rights in a Global Perspective

Not offered 2024-25

In the 20th century, the global world order transformed from one organized around empires and imperial domination to one of nation-states, self-determination, and human rights. This course will examine contemporary struggles for human rights within the context of the history of colonization and decolonization, the legacy of anti-colonial struggles and the significance of these legacies to contemporary struggles over nationalism, migration, racial justice and citizenship.

Back to top

INST B315 Humans & Non-Humans

Not offered 2024-25

Anthropology is the study of humans, but the idea of the "human" always implies the category of the "non-human." Humanity is defined in its relation to "non-humans": ranging from tools and technology, to domesticated (and undomesticated) animals, to agricultural crops, our local ecologies, and the global environment. What does it mean to be human? What is the agency of non-humans in human worlds? Do forests think? Do dogs dream? What is the agency of a mountain? What are the rights of a river? What is the cultural significance of DNA? This course will trace Anthropological debates over the "human" and "non-human" in contexts ranging from Amerindian cosmology, to political ecology, and science and technology studies.

Back to top

LING B105 Language and Place

Not offered 2024-25

This project-based course focuses on hands-on research in a small group setting in order to collaboratively come to understand the relationship between a place and the languages of that place. In Spring 2022 the course will be part of a 360 and will focus on Nicaragua. Through seeking to understand the languages of Nicaragua, their histories and social dynamics, students will also learn basics of linguistics, especially historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Spanish language a plus, though not required.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

POLS B352 Peace Studies in International Politics

Fall 2024

This course explores the role and processes of peacemaking in international politics. It examines key theoretical and empirical debates on peace mobilizations, peace negotiations, peace agreements, and transitional justice. This course also considers gendered aspects, perspectives, and debates in each of these substantive research areas. While the geographical scope of the course is global, there will be a large focus on the 1998 Northern Ireland and the 2016 Colombian peace processes. This writing-intensive course prepares seniors for their thesis. It will require writing and peer review assignments throughout the semester, culminating in a 25-30-page paper at the end of the semester. Prerequisite: One intro POLS course or permission from instructor

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SOCL B225 Women in Society

Fall 2024

In 2015, the world's female population was 49.6 percent of the total global population of 7.3 billion. According to the United Nations, in absolute terms, there were 61,591,853 more men than women. Yet, at the global scale, 124 countries have more women than men. A great majority of these countries are located in what scholars have recently been referring to as the Global South - those countries known previously as developing countries. Although women outnumber their male counterparts in many Global South countries, however, these women endure difficulties that have worsened rather than improving. What social structures determine this gender inequality in general and that of women of color in particular? What are the main challenges women in the Global South face? How do these challenges differ based on nationality, class, ethnicity, skin color, gender identity, and other axes of oppression? What strategies have these women developed to cope with the wide variety of challenges they contend with on a daily basis? These are some of the major questions that we will explore together in this class. In this course, the Global South does not refer exclusively to a geographical location, but rather to a set of institutional structures that generate disadvantages for all individuals and particularly for women and other minorities, regardless their geographical location in the world. In other words, a significant segment of the Global North's population lives under the same precarious conditions that are commonly believed as exclusive to the Global South. Simultaneously, there is a Global North embedded in the Global South as well. In this context, we will see that the geographical division between the North and the South becomes futile when we seek to understand the dynamics of the "Western-centric/Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal modern/colonial world-system" (Grosfoguel, 2012). In the first part of the course, we will establish the theoretical foundations that will guide us throughout the rest of the semester. We will then turn to a wide variety of case studies where we will examine, for instance, the contemporary global division of labor, gendered violence in the form of feminicides, international migration, and global tourism. The course's final thematic section will be devoted to learning from the different feminisms (e.g. community feminism) emerging out of the Global South as well as the research done in that region and its contribution to the development of a broader gender studies scholarship. In particular, we will pay close attention to resistance, solidarity, and social movements led by women. Examples will be drawn from Latin America, the Caribbean, the US, Asia, and Africa.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SOCL B232 A Sociological Journey to Immigrant Communities in Philly

Not offered 2024-25

This course will use the lenses of sociology to critically and comparatively examine various immigrant communities living in greater Philadelphia. It will expose students to the complex historical, economic, political, and social factors influencing (im)migration, as well as how migrants and the children of immigrants develop their sense of belonging and their homemaking practices in the new host society. In this course, we will probe questions of belonging, identity, homemaking, citizenship, transnationalism, and ethnic entrepreneurship and how individuals, families, and communities are transformed locally and across borders through the process of migration. This course also seeks to interrogate how once in a new country, immigrant communities not only develop a sense of belonging but also how they reconfigure their own identities while they transform the social, physical, and cultural milieus of their new communities of arrival. To achieve these ends, this course will engage in a multidisciplinary approach consisting of materials drawn from such disciplines as cultural studies, anthropology, history, migration studies, and sociology to examine distinct immigrant communities that have arrived in Philadelphia over the past 100 years. Although this course will also cover the histories of migrant communities arriving in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a greater part of the course will focus on recent migrant communities, mainly from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean and arriving in the area of South Philadelphia. A special focus will be on the Mexican American migrant community that stands out among those newly arrived migrant communities.

Back to top

SOCL B235 Mexican-American Communities

Spring 2025

For its unique history, the number of migrants, and the two countries' proximity, Mexican migration to the United States represents an exceptional case in world migration. There is no other example of migration with more than 100 years of history. The copious presence of migrants concentrated in a host country, such as we have in the case of the 11.7 million Mexican migrants residing in the United States, along with another 15 million Mexican descendants, is unparalleled. The 1,933-mile-long border shared by the two countries makes it one of the longest boundary lines in the world and, unfortunately, also one of the most dangerous frontiers in the world today. We will examine the different economic, political, social and cultural forces that have shaped this centenarian migration influx and undertake a macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of analysis. At the macro-level of political economy, we will investigate the economic interdependency that has developed between Mexico and the U.S. over different economic development periods of these countries, particularly, the role the Mexican labor force has played to boosting and sustaining both the Mexican and the American economies. At the meso-level, we will examine different institutions both in Mexico and the U.S. that have determined the ways in which millions of Mexican migrate to this country. Last, but certainly not least, we will explore the impacts that both the macro-and meso-processes have had on the micro-level by considering the imperatives, aspirations, and dreams that have prompted millions of people to leave their homes and communities behind in search of better opportunities. This major life decision of migration brings with it a series of social transformations in family and community networks, this will look into the cultural impacts in both the sending and receiving migrant communities. In sum, we will come to understand how these three levels of analysis work together.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Praxis Program.

Back to top

SOCL B246 Sociology of Migration: A Cross-Cultural Overview of Contemporary Challenges

Not offered 2024-25

The twenty-first century began much as the twentieth century did for the United States with high levels of immigration. This has affected not only the nation, but the discipline of sociology. Just as early twentieth century Chicago School sociology focused on immigration and settlement issues, so too the first decade of the twenty-first century shows a flurry of sociological imagination devoted to immigration scholarship. This course will center on the key texts, issues, and approaches coming out of this renovated sociology of immigration, but we will also include approaches to the study of immigration from history, anthropology, and ethnic studies. While we will consider comparative and historical approaches, our focus will be on the late twentieth century through the present, and we will spend a good deal of time focusing on the longest running labor migration in the world, Mexican immigration to the U.S., as well as on Central American migrant communities in the U.S. Students with an interest in contemporary U.S. immigration will be exposed to a survey of key theoretical approaches and relevant issues in immigration studies in the social sciences. Current themes, such as globalization, transnationalism, gendered migration, immigrant labor markets, militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, U.S. migration policy, the new second generation and segmented assimilation, and citizenship will be included.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SOCL B289 Feminist Theory and Praxis: A Perspective from the Global S

Spring 2025

The Feminist Theory from the Global South course seeks to provide an in-depth exploration of feminist epistemology, decolonization thought, and the lived experiences of feminized bodies in the Global South. Specifically, feminist epistemologies, such as situated knowledge, reflexivity, and positionality, will be analyzed. The conceptual contributions from the epistemologies of decolonial and black feminisms from the Americas will be reviewed with greater emphasis. In addition, we will delve into the unique challenges and experiences faced by feminized bodies in the Global South, including issues of intersectionality, gender-based violence, artivism, and resistance and feminist-led social movements. By engaging with the work of feminist scholars and activists from a variety of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, we will aim to develop a nuanced understanding of the complex issues facing feminists in these contexts.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B120 Introducción al análisis literario

Fall 2024, Spring 2025

Readings from Spanish and Spanish-American works of various periods and genres (drama, poetry, short stories). Main focus on developing analytical skills with attention to improvement of grammar. This course is a requisite for the Spanish major. Prerequisite: SPAN 102, or placement. This course can satisfy the Writing Intensive (WI) requirement for the Spanish major. Critical Interpretation (CI). Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B208 Drama y sociedad en España

Not offered 2024-25

A study of the rich dramatic tradition of Spain from the Golden Age (16th and 17th centuries) to the 20th century within specific cultural and social contexts. The course considers a variety of plays as manifestations of specific sociopolitical issues and problems. Topics include theater as a site for fashioning a national identity; the dramatization of gender conflicts; and plays as vehicles of protest in repressive circumstances. Counts toward the Latin American, Latino and Iberian Peoples and Cultures Concentration. Prerequiste: SPAN B120; or another SPAN 200-level course. Critical Interpretation (CI). Inquiry into the Past (IP). Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B212 Representing Mexico: History, Politics, and Culture through Humor

Not offered 2024-25

This course will examine Mexican society through the lens of humor. Humorous production has a long history in Mexico, from the first Latin American novel, El Periquillo Sarniento by José Fernández de Lizardi, to the current representation of the "War on drugs". Hence, humor has served as a critical tool through which we can understand the country's reality-as it is perceived, imagined, and projected-, as well as its historical, social, and political implications. Through our readings and discussions, we will explore how humor has predominantly been used to question and delegitimize dominant discourses, but, at the same time, it has served to uphold the status quo in some of its representations. Likewise, our course materials will highlight how humor has served as a medium to advocate for greater democratizing practices, such as women's integration into the sociopolitical sphere. We will approach humor and its representation of Mexican society in a variety of formats such as: narrative, chronicle, essay, theater, film, political cartoon, and performance. Prerequisites: SPAN B120; or SPAN 200-level course or placement

Back to top

SPAN B220 Escritoras, brujas y otros herejes

Spring 2025

This course examines the evolution of gendered "otherness" through the diverse stories of women tried by the Inquisition in Spain, New Spain, Peru, and the Spanish Pacific. Throughout the Early Modern world, the Spanish Inquisition tried women of every social class and racial background for myriad charges of heresy, sexual misconduct, and witchcraft. In this course, students will gain a familiarity with major historical, cultural, and philosophical currents that shaped the Early Modern world while gaining critical skills required to engage the intricate primary sources that contain the stories of women who as believers, practitioners, writers, and artists, challenged ecclesiastical and colonial order throughout the transition to modernity. Students will engage women's writings that address themes of spirituality, religion, and doctrine from enclosure-from convents or imprisonment within the Inquisition's chambers. These writings include canonical authors and lesser-known authors such as Sor Juana and Santa Teresa of Ávila, Ursula de Jesús, María de Cazalla, and María de Jesús de Ágreda. Taught in Spanish.Prerequisite: panish 120 or SPAN 200-level course.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B231 El cuento y novela corta en España

Not offered 2024-25

Traces the development of the novella and short story in Spain, from its origins in the Middle Ages to our time. The writers will include Pardo Bazán, Cervantes, Clarín, Don Juan Manuel, Matute, Zayas, and a number of contemporary writers such as Mayoral and Montero. Our approach will include formal and thematic considerations, and attention will be given to sociopolitical and historical contexts. Prerequiste: SPAN B120; or another SPAN 200-level course.

Back to top

SPAN B238 El giro visual en España(1960-2020): de la censura a Netflix

Not offered 2024-25

In 50 years, Spain went from living under the last dictatorship in Europe to becoming one of the late cultural capitalism benchmarks. This course explores the tensions between tradition and modernity or between authoritarianism and rupture in contemporary Spain's media and cultural consumption. We will pay special attention to the impact of technological changes in film, television, and new media -from Berlanga and Saura's movies in the 60s to the expansion of Spanish series on online platforms such as Netflix and HBO. Course will be taught in Spanish.

Back to top

SPAN B239 Escribir la naturaleza: Animales y plantas en la literatura latinoamericana

Not offered 2024-25

What role does literature play in this age of ecological crisis and natural disasters? How has literature often mediated the relationships between the human and the non-human? How does nature writings in Latin America reflect, problematize and criticize the intense "geological fault" of anthropocentrism? From the earliest days of the exploration and conquest of the American continent, the texts of the Europeans set a repertoire of obsessions in which looking at or imagining nature became a constant. Plants and animals, since then, became a recurring topic. Described first as wonders or horrors, with time they will be scientifically and politically loaded. By the 20th century, the fictionalization of plants and animals has been one of the central concerns of Latin American literature, opening, thus, a fertile ground for textual explorations from the perspective of ecocriticism. This course will analyze the place of plants and animals in Latin American literature: how they reveal the relationships between the human and the environment (the landscape and other non-human life forms). We will explore, then, the place of the zoological and botanical at the heart of some of the literary proposals of many different authors who invite us to think about the multiple tensions between human and non-human, nature and culture, ecology and aesthetics, science and literature.This course will be taught in Spanish.

Back to top

SPAN B241 Poetics of Social Justice: Minorities in Spain

Not offered 2024-25

This course, conducted in Spanish, is organized around political, cultural and social issues that concern ethnic minorities in Spain, particularly the Roma (gitanos) and the immigrants from Latin America and Africa. We will start by placing in its historical context the question of race and racism in Spain as a sociopolitical construct and a system of oppression. When studying the Roma people, we will discuss how flamenco art is a direct response to issues of discrimination and persecution, a means of resistance and a form of activism. At the same time that we will learn the basics of flamenco dance, we will consider the role of this art in areas such as religion, politics, and studies of race and gender. Our approach to immigration issues will consider topics of power relations, race, gender and class under new lenses such as decolonization, human rights and social justice. The readings in this course will include a diversity of original materials (plays, narrations, poetry, testimonies, newspaper articles, documentaries or films). Students will write reflections, analysis and responses on these texts, which will then be transformed into creative writing pieces such as dialogues, poems, short stories, blogs and other creative expressions, which will be shared with the class though presentations and performance.

Back to top

SPAN B243 Temas de la literatura hispana

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Desde "la oscura raiz del grito": afectos y emocio
Section 001 (Fall 2024): Imaginando los Andes

Fall 2024

This is a topic course. Topics vary. Prerequisite: SPAN B120; or another 200-level.

Current topic description: "When we talk about Latin American literature, we usually think about literary works written by "criollos" (people of full Spanish descent). However, every Latin American country has a rich cultural diversity, indigenous communities being one of the most important. Throughout history, indigenous, African, and European cultures and societies have been intermeshing and forming new cultural arrangements. A paradigmatic case is the so-called "Andean Literatures", a complex label that groups together different kinds of texts on indigenous cultures of the Andes mountains. In this course, we will study foundational fictions of the Andean traditions. These texts include chroniclers such as the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and canonical writers such as Adela Zamudio and José María Arguedas."

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B244 Latinoamérica en shuffle: desde el Popol Vuh hasta la cumbia

Not offered 2024-25

The sacred book of the Quiché nation (present-day Guatemala), the Popol Vuh (circa 1544), begins as follows: "This is the account of how all was in suspense, all calm, in silence; all motionless, still, and the expanse of the sky was empty" (Recinos 81). The soundtrack of the beginning of the world, for the Quiché people, was silence. Almost five centuries after the Popol Vuh was written, the soundtrack of the world for Ulises, the protagonist of the Mexican film Ÿa no estoy aquí" (Frías 2020), is made up of the slowed-down cumbias he listens to in his MP3 as he crosses the U.S.-Mexico border. Beginning with Popol Vuh, and ending with "Ya no estoy aquí," this class will examine the uses of sound, silence, noise, and music in Latin American literature, film, paintings, and performance. During class, we will spend time examining the creative uses of sound, and the following questions will guide our readings: What is the sound of social interactions such as protests, insults, speeches, jokes, and mockery? Is silence a tool for policing, or a tool for escaping? What is the relationship between sound and the representation of gender, race, and ethnicity? How does technology shape the way we listen? Is noise a frontier between the human and the non-human? At the end of the semester, students will choose between curating a thematic playlist in Spanish using Spotify, producing a podcast about a work of literature/film/performance not studied in the course, or adapting a work examined during the semester using the radionovela format. Prerequisites: SPAN B120.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B247 Gastropoeticas de la cultura latinoamericana

Spring 2025

From Casta paintings to the current boom of social media foodies, the cultural representation of food and eating has historically served to create discourses about race, gender, class, and status. Theoretically grounded in food studies, in this class, we will study how food and foodways have structured cultural productions across Latin America. We will begin analyzing how indigenous communities assigned political and religious value to staples like corn or potatoes, followed by the uses of food-abundant and scarce-in colonial narratives like Naufragios by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. As a consequence of colonial enclaves, we will also study how Afro-descendant communities used food to negotiate their status in slaving societies and how forced migration ecologically affected Latin America. We will continue our analysis through the production of cookbooks during the height of conventual life (16th-18th centuries), as evidenced in the work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. We will shift our attention to the 19th century, the rise of manuals about food placement and etiquette, and the construction of gender expectations through food consumption. We will end our examination of food cultures during the 20th and 21st centuries by examining the branding of Latin American cuisines as countries compete as sites for tourist consumption. Students will complete reflective journals, a personal cookbook zine, a field visit report to a local Latin American restaurant, and a final essay written in steps during the semester. As a Praxis course, students will be expected to complete 7-10 hours of community-engaged work with a local partner (TBD), ranging from a local food bank to organizations that work towards food security for Latinx communities.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx; Praxis Program.

Back to top

SPAN B252 Compassion, Indignation, and Anxiety in Latin American Film

Not offered 2024-25

Stereotypically, Latin Americans are viewed as "emotional people"--often a euphemism to mean irrational, impulsive, wildly heroic, fickle. This course takes this expression at face value to ask: Are there particular emotions that identify Latin Americans? And, conversely, do these "people" become such because they share certain emotions? Can we find a correlation between emotions and political trajectories? To answer these questions, we will explore three types of films that seem to have, at different times, taken hold of the Latin American imagination and feelings: melodramas (1950s-1960s), documentaries (1970s-1990s), and "low-key" comedies (since 2000s.) Course is taught in Spanish

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B307 Cervantes

Not offered 2024-25

A study of themes, structure, and style of Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quijote and its impact on world literature. In addition to a close reading of the text and a consideration of narrative theory, the course examines the impact of Don Quijote on the visual arts, music, film, and popular culture. Counts toward the Latin American, Latino and Iberian Peoples and Cultures Concentration. Prerequisite: at least one SPAN 200-level course. Course fulfills pre-1700 requirement and HC's pre-1898 requirement

Back to top

SPAN B309 La mujer en la literatura española del Siglo de Oro

Not offered 2024-25

A study of the depiction of women in the fiction, drama, and poetry of 16th- and 17th-century Spain. Topics include the construction of gender; the idealization and codification of women's bodies; the politics of feminine enclosure (convent, home, brothel, palace); and the performance of honor. The first half of the course will deal with representations of women by male authors (Calderón, Cervantes, Lope, Quevedo) and the second will be dedicated to women writers such as Teresa de Ávila, Ana Caro, Juana Inés de la Cruz, and María de Zayas. Prerequisite: at least one SPAN 200-level course. Course fulfills pre-1700 requirement and HC's pre-1898 requirement. Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies. Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies.

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B312 Latin American and Latino Art and the Question of the Masses

Not offered 2024-25

The course examines the ways in which Latin American and Latino texts (paintings, murals, sculptures, and some narratives) construct "minor," "featureless" and "anonymous" characters, thus demarcating how and which members of society can and cannot advance a plot, act independently and/or be agents of change. By focusing the attention on what is de-emphasized, we will explore how artistic works, through their form, are themselves political actors in the social life of Latin America, the US, and beyond. We will also consider the place of Latin American and Latino Art in the US imaginary and in institutions such as museums and galleries. Prerequisites: Course is taught in English and is open to all juniors or seniors who have taken at least one 200-level course in a literature department. Students seeking Spanish credit must have taken BMC Spanish 120 and at least one other Spanish course at a 200-level, or received permission from instructor. Course does not meet an Approach. Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies. Counts toward Museum Studies.

Back to top

SPAN B315 El futuro ya llegó: relatos del presente en América Latina

Not offered 2024-25

Taught in Spanish. In the 21st Century, "Here and now" is not what it used to be. There is no single "here" but instead multiple, coexisting realities (that of the cellphone, the street, the 'world'.) There's no clear present when the "now" is multiple. In this course we will explore 21st century Latin American shorts-stories, films, works of art, and novellas that synchronize with our contemporary circumstances---fictions and representations where realities alternate, identities flow, and the world appears oddly out of scale. As contemporaries, you will also be asked to write fictions about life "here and now." Throughout, we will keep two fundamental questions in mind: What is reality (here)? What is the contemporary (now)? Prerequisite: at least one SPAN 200-level course.

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B317 Poéticas de poder y deseo en el Siglo de Oro español

Not offered 2024-25

The poetry cultivated during the Renaissance and Baroque Spain was not an idle aesthetic practice. We discover in the rich poetic practice of the era preoccupations with historical, social and political themes, including discourses of power and empire, racial difference, and the representation of women as objects of desire. In addition, we will consider the self-fashioning and subjectivity of the lyric voice, theories of parody and imitation, and the feminine appropriation of the male poetic tradition. Although the course will deal primarily with the poetry of Spain, readings will include texts from Italy, France, England, and Mexico. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisites: at least one 200-level course.

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B324 Ideologías del Franquismo: arte, cultura, educación

Not offered 2024-25

This course offers a panoramic view of the building of Francoism as an ideology over the longest authoritarian regime in Western society during the 20th century (1939-1975). Through the study of its cultural, artistic, and mediatic expressions, as well as other national institutions such as education and religion, this course addresses the connections between cultural representations and the social, political, and economic experiences lived in Spain during that period. These representations will consist mainly of those produced during the Franco regime with comparisons to the contemporary era. Some of the issues we will focus on are the Spanish Civil War, international isolation and autarky, repression and exile, and censorship as a strategy of Francoist ideology, among many others. Prerequisite: At least one SPAN 200-level course

Back to top

SPAN B326 Voces trasplantadas: teoría y práctica de la traducción

Not offered 2024-25

Taught in Spanish. Translation has been argued to be both impossible and inevitable. Theoretically impossible, because no two languages are perfectly equivalent; practically inevitable, because cultures, and human beings, are constantly interpreting one another--and understanding themselves in the process. This course is an introduction to translation as a practice with linguistic, literary, and cultural implications. It is organized in three steps. We will begin by exploring the linguistic aspect of translation: the theories (and myths) about language difference and equivalence, and how they can be put into practice. Then we will focus on translating literary texts of different genres (from canonical epics to film, from poems to short stories and proverbs), and we will simultaneously examine how the various types of texts have spurred very different opinions about what is a good or bad translation, what is desirable, and what is not. Finally, we will trace the role of translation in cultural exchanges, as well as its defining presence in contemporary debates on "world literature." Prerequisite: At least one 200 level Spanish course.

Back to top

SPAN B330 La novela de formación femenina en América Latina

Spring 2025

Perhaps the most successful novelistic genre is the Bildungsroman or "coming-of-age": novels that follow the development of a person from youth to adulthood, from inexperienced to mature. But what happens when these protagonists are women, often facing the hurdles of societies that impede or limit growth and choice? Since the 19th Century, Latin American female authors have explored the struggles of "growth" and the various models of womanhood available in their societies. In this course, we will read a total of six Latin American Bilgunsromane of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century written by women authors from various countries. We will look at normative definitions and expectations of coming-of-age novels and how these authors created new options for themselves, for their characters, and for their readers.

Writing Intensive

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B333 La invención de América: Escrituras europeas del Nuevo Mundo

Not offered 2024-25

Beginning in 1492, Spanish explorers, soldiers, and friars visited, noted, and imagined what they initially would call the New World. According to Alfonso Reyes, America was for Europe, rather than a sudden and new reality, a complete poetic invention. The astonished -pleased, marveled, horrified- writings of newly arrived Spaniards drew not only the real components of a vast and very different world from the European one, but also the fictional components: everything obscure, remote, or misunderstood that experience or the senses could not grasp, and the powers of imagination would. This course seeks to explore some of the key texts of the "invention of America" (Reyes) in the first centuries of the Conquest and Colonization. Our goal is to analyze how "the imperial eye" (Pratt) looked at and noted the American lands -its men and women, its cultures and wealth- projecting on them its oldest fears, fantasies, ambitions, and hopes: America was also "a new Europe", says Ángel Rosenblat, with all the political, literary and epistemic weight that such an idea implies. We will work with fragments of stories, chronicles, and poems on the following thematic axes: the first contacts, a rich and abundant nature (pearls, gold, silver, fish, fruits, spices, wood), the great Mesoamerican cultures, the Andean "empire", the extreme south and the eternal horizon, the interior lands and their immense rivers and mountains, the "bestiary of the Indies", the American myths (El Dorado, the Amazons) and some of the great and tragic historical native American figures as they were perceived and written by the Spaniards. Prerequisite: At least one SPAN 200 level course

Back to top

SPAN B336 Afro-Diasporic Networks in Latin America

Not offered 2024-25

This interdisciplinary seminar will center the artistic and intellectual production of Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx thinkers across the Americas from 1492 to the present day. The class will be divided into four thematic units: Time, Space, Memory, and the Body. In each thematic unit, we will first read about how Black thinkers have theorized those concepts, and then we will analyze primary texts that dialogue directly with said theme. For example, during the Space unit, we will read the work of Afro-Brazilian geographer Milton Santos. Then we will read the novel by Afro-Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella Chambacú corral de negros (1963), paying particular attention to issues of space. Course is taught in Spanish.

Writing Attentive

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B338 El derecho a vivir en paz: activismos en español

Fall 2024

This advanced Spanish course is designed to help students reach advanced proficiency levels by engaging with case studies from law, social work, activism, and literature from Latin American and Latinx communities. Through community partners, students will engage with the multi-tasking requirement inherent to law and social work organizations that advocate for social justice. Our class will be divided into six different units, centering and problematizing the possibilities of advocacy: human rights, Latinx communities, Indigenous communities, Afro-descendant communities, women/femme/feminisms, and LGTBQI communities. We will read and listen to advocates from each of those communities and analyze how advocacy intersects with various forms of identity, political power, and artistic expression. This class has a service-learning component in addition to the work in the classroom, so you will need to complete at least 10 hours of work with a local partner. Your work with the local organization will be essential for you to start theorizing about advocacy through your own experiences. Prerequisite: SPAN B120 or SPAN 200-level course

Course does not meet an Approach

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx; Praxis Program.

Back to top

SPAN B348 Ficciones de la confesión en la literatura española

Fall 2024

Viewing the form of confession as a vehicle for both truth and fiction, this course engages the embedded politics of Early Modern confessional production to examine notions of agency, exploitation, and representation in a diverse selection of confessional works. As a textual conceit, confession ties together a broad array of narrative forms: autobiography, eye-witness accounts, medieval narrative poetry, hagiography, colonial chronicles, picaresque novels, mystical writings, theological treatises, testimonials, novels, and Inquisitorial archives. In this course students will hear the stories of pirates, non-gender-conforming surgeons, nuns, Inca kings, enslaved women and more. Through these testimonies, students will gain familiarity with the foundational history, literature, and theory related to the study of early modernity. Prerequisite: SPAN 120 or one 200-level course.

Writing Attentive

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top

SPAN B349 La imaginación rural y medioambiental en España

Spring 2025

How do contemporary writers, artists, and filmmakers engage aesthetically with a damaged national landscape? What are the ongoing effects, within a climate change scenario, of the Franco regime's fascist policies, such as intensive eucalyptus plantations and the construction of hydraulic structures that dammed half of the river flows, making Spain the first country in Europe in terms of reservoirs? Why doesn't the 1978 democratic Constitution include the word "landscape"? What metaphors have been used to both represent, reshape, and caricaturize, from an urban perspective, the rural communities in Spain including both the national rural bumpkin and the migrant laborers? These are some of the questions that will be explored in this course, which focuses on rural migrations, class and race conflicts, fascist and capitalistic extractivism, historical memory, and our current socio-ecological crisis. Throughout films, novels, and land art (by Spanish, Galician, Catalan and Basque authors) we will examine the historical continuities and discontinuities of environmental cultures in Spain from the end of the 19th century, when the rural exodus began, to the present day when the transformation of rural areas into renewable energy hubs exacerbates Spain's urban-rural divide. Prerequisite: one SPAN 200-level course.

Writing Attentive

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Latin American Iberian Latinx.

Back to top