Danielle Dorvil

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.

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 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.

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.

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 authentical 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.