Spring 2002

GRADUATE COURSES IN SPANISH
SPRING 2002

(Course information subject to change)
(Cross-reference with Department Roster)

Spanish 609
Applied Linguistics and Teaching Methodology
Prof. Espòsito
T 2-4

An introduction to Spanish Applied Linguistics and to the various approaches to teaching Spanish to English-speaking students. We will cover basic linguistic concepts--phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics--within a contrastive / practical framework. We will also explore the history of foreign language teaching methodologies. Students will be required to visit and analyze classes at Penn as well as prepare and teach sample lesson plans..

Spanish 690
Modernismo / fin de siglo
Prof. Salessi
M 2-4

Through the study of the prose and poetry of Julián del Casal, José Asunción Silva, Rubén Darío, and José Enrique Rodó (as well as the work produced by lesser-known figures that contributed greatly to the popularization of the movement), the course will address Latin American "modernismo" not just as a literary practice but as an instrument of hemispheric definition in a tense and problematic relationship with contemporary European writing. We will explore the appropriation and manipulation of European cultural themes and practices in Latin America at the time of the continent's incorporation into the global liberal economy at the turn of the century, among them: literature and cosmopolitanism, museums, interiors, sexuality, gender and women in the job market or as objects d'art, the writer as collector and arbiter elegantiarum, degeneration, decadence and regeneration, politics and dandyism.

Spanish 698
Workshop in Scholarly Writing
Prof. Alonso
W 1-4

This course aims to develop awareness about what constitutes effective scholarly prose in Spanish. It proposes to hone the student's handling of writing as a vehicle for the expression of intellectual thought, but also to develop a consciousness of the rhetorical strategies that can be used to advance a critical argument effectively. Extensive writing exercises will be assigned; these will be followed by intense and multiple redactions of the work originally produced. The ultimate goal is to make students develop precision, correctness, and elegance in written Spanish. Students will also work on a class paper written previously, with a view to learning the process of transforming a short, limited expression of an argument into a publishable article.

Spanish 999
La cultura y el Estado franquista
Staff
F 1-3

This seminar proposes to analyze cultural representation in postwar Spain (1939-1975). We will focus on the relationship between culture and politics as it is articulated in the narrative and film of this period in order to examine and consider the construction of national identity and of ideological state apparatuses (Althusser's term) and their constituent exclusions and resistances during the Franco years. Some of the themes we will consider include: hegemony, censorship, resistance, domination, women's writing, national identity, and popular culture. Texts and films will be studied within a sociocultural context and will be accompanied by supplementary historical, cultural, and theoretical readings.