Spanish

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. In this course, students acquire in-depth knowledge of Spanish women's literature and are able to use practical methodologies for the analysis and the interpretation of the literary text. In module one, students rediscover the figures of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851–1921), through her short stories, essays, and journalistic work, with particular attention to her commitment to women’s emancipation and her fight against gender violence; and Ángeles Vicente (1873–1918), through the novel Zezé (1909), a homoerotic novel situated between Bildungsroman and social critique at the turn of the century, from a feminist perspective. In module two, the course takes as a case study the Spanish democratic Transition, examined here from the perspective of feminist and trans struggles. To understand the unfinished evolution of the first post-Francoist Spain, literary, non-fiction, and cinematographic materials are examined.

This course develops a basic understanding of Spanish grammar and vocabulary, enhancing the four language skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and brings students' communicative competence to the CEFR A1 Level. Students explore the culture of Spain and Spanish America and engage in interactions in real communicative situations. The focus is on communication, and topics include the ability to ask and answer questions relating to personal characteristics, needs, and items; to recognize expressions of formal and informal social interaction; to request information in various settings (e.g. shopping, restaurants, weather, etc.); to describe objects, places, and events in the past or present; and to indicate preferences and personal taste, among others. This course facilitates the language acquisition process within an intensive immersion context and is instructed in Spanish through a hybrid grammar-intensive and communicative approach. 

This beginner level course puts students in direct contact with Spain, increasing their awareness of different cultural perspectives and introducing linguistic habits that form part of everyday communication. Topics include: basic vocabulary, conversational phrases, and grammatical structures, as well as hands-on interactive activities such as walking neighborhood tours, museum visits, and meetings with local representatives. 

The course is structured around the question of the formation of a so-called “Spanish literature” and its place in the republic of letters. In an exercise of situated criticism, from the Southern Cone, a panoramic and transversal view of Spanish literature is offered from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, with a special emphasis, on the one hand, on the topics that predominate in the self- and hetero-characterizations of what is recognized as “Spanish literature” and, on the other hand, in those texts that have been a milestone both in the peninsular literary scene and in the Hispanic cultures on the other side of the Atlantic.