Danielle Dorvil

Through an array of authentic materials such as songs, short stories, short poems, and advertising campaigns, students will develop an appreciation of the Spanish-speaking world and its cultures. Throughout the year, we will use a communicative approach to further build on students’ knowledge and employment of Spanish grammar. This discussion-based seminar will follow a “flipped classroom” methodology, where students are first introduced to the materials at home and then come to class to delve deeper into these concepts. This course is intended for novice-level students with some prior exposure to the Spanish language. It is ideal for students who want a faster pace than Beginning Spanish (SPAN 3001) but have not yet acquired an intermediate-level grasp of the Spanish language. While there are no individual conferences with the instructor, weekly individual meetings with a Spanish language assistant, in addition to class sessions, will be required. 

Hidden in plain sight, conveniently co-opted for political and ideological reasons, or erased from historical and national literary textbooks, Afro-Latin American and Caribbean women have long endured a battle against an imposing silence. As an undeniable trace of their existence and agency, their writings reveal a creative intellect employed to partake in the conversations that their compatriots insisted on having without them. Aware of this dynamic, these women turned to literature to circulate their ideas and, in so doing, granted us a hemispheric conversation that complicates our understanding of women’s epistemology and positionality in Latin America and the Caribbean. This discussion-based seminar will delve into that dialogue. Throughout the semester, we will read and analyze enriching narratives originally written in Spanish by Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some of these writers will include Salomé Ureña Díaz, Virginia Brindis de Salas, Luz Argentina Chiriboga, María Teresa Ramírez, Mayra Santos-Febres, and Mariángel Gasca Posadas. Through these case studies, students will learn about “artivisim” and come up with adequate creative and scholarly responses. To advance their critical-thinking skills in this target language, students will further hone their communication and comprehension skills through advanced grammar review and weekly conversation sessions in small groups with the language assistant. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

This course will examine films produced in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 40 years that contributed to their nations’ collective memory, history, and cultural identity. Students will watch short and full-length feature films, ranging from melodrama to documentary and passing through thriller and romance. We will analyze how Luis Puenzo, Andrés Wood, and Mariano Barroso employed four areas of cinema to construct and visualize a collective memory after the atrocities resulting from the dictatorial regimes in Argentina, Chile, and the Dominican Republic, respectively. The course will also explore how cinema was utilized to recuperate and disseminate cultural identity and history in Peru, Honduras, and Puerto Rico. In this discussion-based seminar, students will learn a basic technical language to offer pointed criticism about films produced in Spanish in Latin America and the Caribbean. Students will also delve into the existing scholarship regarding memory, history, and nationalism to think critically about the narratives that they will encounter. Through advanced grammar review and weekly conversation sessions in small groups with the language assistant, students will further hone their communication skills in Spanish. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

What lessons can we draw from contemporary Latin American and Latinx films about Black subjects’ perceived and actual presence in these societies? How can the seventh art shape our perceptions and understanding of hegemonic ideologies about Blackness circulating in Latin American societies? In this seminar, we will critically reflect on these questions by analyzing films produced in the last two decades centering on the theme of Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx’s nuanced experiences. Alongside learning the vocabulary and developing tools for basic film analysis, we will discuss polemics around authorship in cinema. Through advanced grammar review and writing workshops, students will hone their communication, analytic, and essay-writing skills in Spanish. Films include Afroargentinos, Chocó, Pelo malo, Entre fuego y agua, and La soledad, among many others. Students will complete an individual project.

Since their conceptions, Latin American and Caribbean societies have been accompanied by the looming presence of disasters. Throughout the centuries, literature from this region has abounded with earthquakes, hurricanes, and other environmental devastations, indicating an enduring preoccupation regarding these catastrophes among its intellectuals and artists. Far from being natural and singular events, these tragedies rather reveal the legacies of key colonial systematic structures and some corresponding failures of nation-building projects. At the same time, these literary works render visible intellectual and artistic efforts made to learn from and remember past catastrophes, as well as to imagine sustainable, ecological futures. This discussion-based seminar will delve into this dialogue. Throughout the semester, we will read and analyze enriching narratives originally written by Latin American and Caribbean thinkers. Although our conversations will be held exclusively in Spanish, the texts will represent the linguistic varieties in this region of the world in translation. Our discussion of these texts will be enriched by fundamental theoretical contributions from critical disasters studies, ecocriticism, decolonial thought, and memory studies. Designed for students who have previously completed Intermediate/Advanced Spanish (SPAN 3873), the course also invites those who are interested in the topic to take the Spanish placement test and interview with the instructor to ensure that it is the correct level for them. Students will improve their close reading and critical thinking skills through reading and written assignments. This seminar will contain an individual conference project.

In this seminar, we will analyze how Latin American women reflected on traditional gender roles, heteronormative standards, intricate racial systems, class dynamics, technology, and environment concerns in their literary and cinematographic works. Through advanced grammar review and writing workshops, students will hone their communication, analytic, and essay-writing skills in Spanish. Readings include texts by Aida Cartagena Portalatín, Cristina Cabral, Gabriela Mistral, and María Fernanda Ampuero; films include La ciénaga, El último verano de la Boyita, and Fever Dream, among many others. Students will complete an individual project.

This course offers an introduction to the Spanish-speaking world through its popular cultures. Throughout the year, students without previous knowledge of Spanish will be continuously exposed to an array of authentic materials to help them comprehend and communicate at a novice proficiency level. Students will learn and reflect on the history of the Spanish-speaking world through a combination of authentic materials, such as songs, poems, short stories, and short films. Students will also develop the necessary skills to navigate basic, everyday situations while also developing the corresponding cultural competency. In each unit, the communicative and vocabulary-building exercises encapsulated in goal-oriented tasks will encourage students to engage with the language at various register levels. Group conferences will provide an opportunity to expand what we have learned in the classroom and address any additional questions or concerns that students may have on the materials presented thus far. Moreover, the weekly conversation sessions with the language assistant are an integral part of the course and will help students hone the work that we do in the classroom.

This course is designed for students who have at least one year of Spanish at the college level or more in high school. Through extensive grammar review and engagement with authentic materials, students will broaden their vocabulary, hone their verbal and written communication, as well as improve their reading and analytical skills. We will discuss topics relevant to Latin American societies—such as health, education, migration, environmental concerns, gender and sexuality, race, historical memory, and technology—through poetry, short stories, documentaries, films, music, and legislation. We will carefully discuss the cultural productions of Samanta Schweblin, Andrés Wood, Valeria Luiselli, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sebastián Borensztein, and Cristina Cabral, among many others. In addition to class time, you will complete an individual conference project each semester and attend a conversation session every week with a language tutor.

What lessons can we draw from Latin American and Caribbean societies? How have their writers and artists employed their intellects and talents to educate both local and international audiences about the issues facing their societies? This yearlong, discussion-based seminar will delve into these questions. Designed for students who have previously taken Beginning Spanish (SPAN 3001) or Advanced Beginning Spanish (SPAN 3110), it also invites those who are interested in exploring these questions to take the Spanish placement test and interview with the instructor to ensure that this is the correct level for them. This course will follow a “flipped classroom” methodology where students are first introduced to the materials at home and then come to class to delve deeper into these concepts. Through extensive grammar review and engagement with authentic materials, students will broaden their vocabulary, hone their verbal and written communication skills, increase their cultural competency levels, as well as improve their close reading and critical analytical skills. We will discuss topics relevant to Latin American and Caribbean societies—such as health, education, migration, environmental concerns, gender and sexuality, race, historical memory, and technology—through poetry, short stories, podcast episodes, films, music, and legislation. We will carefully discuss the cultural productions of Samanta Schweblin, Daniel Alarcón, and Valeria Luiselli, among many others. In addition to class time, students will complete an individual conference project each semester and attend a conversation session every week with our language assistant.

Afro-Latin American subjects have had a long tradition of employing literature, newspapers, and films to participate in national and international debates, such as the push for a republic in Brazil and progress in the Dominican Republic at the end of the 19th century, the integration and celebration of Afrodescendent culture in Puerto Rico in the 1930s, and the implementation of Afrodescendent-conscious initiatives in contemporary Colombian society. While these outlets certainly served as a vehicle to disseminate their thoughts on a variety of topics, their materiality also attested to the undeniable existence and agency of these subjects in such nations. In this course, we will explore and evaluate cultural artifacts that have impacted intellectual and artistic discourses in Latin American societies from the 19th century to today. Through poems, short stories, novels, newspaper articles, and films by cultural thinkers including Maria Firmina dos Reis, Salomé Ureña, Manuel Zapata Olivella, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Marie Vieux-Chauvet, we will delve into the visions that these thinkers had for themselves and their respective societies. We will critically discuss their artistic and political achievements at both local and international levels to better situate their epistemology in the tradition of the African diaspora. Students will learn the principles of literary analysis and theory and employ them in written assignments and class discussions. We will ground our analysis of these cultural artifacts in their respective sociopolitical contexts. Another important aspect of this course is to facilitate students’ transition to college life. As a result, we will meet every other week in group conference to discuss topics related to this transition. The other weeks, students will meet individually with the professor to work on their conference projects. This course will be taught entirely in English.