Hispanic Studies

First-Year Seminars (FYS) constitute a common and academically significant experience in a student’s first year at Converse. All incoming first-year students are required to take a 3- or 4-credit hour FYS course in the fall semester, choosing from a variety of discipline specific topics. Each FYS carries the corresponding departmental prefix, but with a common course number.  Each FYS carries the corresponding departmental prefix but with a common course number. Special emphasis is given to cultivating critical thinking, effective speaking, and writing skills. 

First-Year Seminars (FYS) constitute a common and academically significant experience in a student’s first year at Converse. All incoming first-year students are required to take a 3- or 4-credit hour FYS course in the fall semester, choosing from a variety of discipline specific topics. Each FYS carries the corresponding departmental prefix, but with a common course number.  Each FYS carries the corresponding departmental prefix but with a common course number. Special emphasis is given to cultivating critical thinking, effective speaking, and writing skills. 

Students will study the target language and enroll in a foreign study program or participate in a Converse designed program, studying the language and discussing important topics on culture and contemporary life. Grades in the course will be determined either by the native language teacher or by a Converse professor, based on class participation, tests and graded assignments. Offered during Summer Terms, contingent upon sufficient enrollment. 

A study of Spanish literature through the centuries in its historical, artistic, and philosophical context. Class held in Spanish with opportunity for oral, written, reading, and comprehension skill building. Centuries and readings will vary. 

An introduction to the main movements, authors, and works of Spanish American literature from Modernism to the present. Class held in Spanish with opportunity for oral, written, reading, and comprehension skill building. 

A thematic and textual study of Cervantes’s masterpiece, Don Quijote. Discuss Cervantes’s work through narrative elements explored by other authors of the Baroque period and through modern critical approaches. The novel will be read in its entirety and the course will be conducted in Spanish. 

Themes and aesthetic trends in film and literature of Spain. Readings, viewings, lectures, and discussions will examine the social, historical and political forces shaping Spain’s contemporary cultural production. This course is conducted in Spanish. 

Latin American literature of the last fifty years. Emphasis will be placed on artistic and historical events and on the novels and plays by the writers of the literary “boom,” including masterpieces by Nobel Prize winners. Class held in Spanish with opportunity for oral, written, reading, and comprehension skill building. 

Latin American literature of the last fifty years. Emphasis will be placed on the poems and short stories by the writers of the literary “boom,” including masterpieces by Nobel Prize winners. Class held in Spanish with opportunity for oral, written, reading, and comprehension skill building. 

Latino American theatre has an extensive history, dating back to long before the conquest of the Americas by Europeans. Throughout the centuries, indigenous memory, Spanish Catholicism and political upheaval have intermixed to create a potent combination, leading to the breadth of theatre we know today. But not all Latin American theatre has its roots in these heady streams—fun and frivolous works have their place too. We will explore the serious and sublime, the silly and crowd-pleasing—the theatre of Contemporary Latino America. 

This course aims to provide students with the fundamental knowledge to understand migration in the Mediterranean area through the Afro-Hispanophone (Equatorial Guinea and Moroccan) perspective. Specifically, it jointly considers two contemporary processes occurring between Africa and Europe: the circulation of cultures across the globe and the border-crossing of migrant subjects. Through the study of a broad variety of texts including novels, poems, theater and art produced by Equatorial Guinea and Moroccan authors (artists and writers), the course is specifically designed to link people and places, and to investigate the cultural impact and interrelations between these two continents. 

This interdisciplinary seminar explores a special topic in the language, culture, and literature of Spain and the Latino Americas. Particular emphasis is placed on the transnational and multicultural contexts of Hispanic cultural studies. Topics may include transatlantic/border studies, gender studies, sexuality, mass media, and colonialism. This seminar may be repeated as long as the course topic is different. 

This course aims to provide students with the fundamental knowledge to understand the African Migration in the Mediterranean with a specific focus on Spain. Through the study of a broad variety of scholarly articles, movies and documentaries we will address questions regarding borders, identity, political and ethical issues that migration poses. The selection of texts and audio-visual materials encourages students to explore the phenomena of migration under the perspective of migrant subjects and to link it with other geographies. It will help us to think how social images about Africa were constructed through a Eurocentric lens between the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. Classes will be taught in English and will include lectures, discussions, audio-visual material, students’ presentations and a final research project.

Latinos, Latina/os, Latinx, Chicanos, Boricuas, Nuyoricans, Cubanos, Dominicanos, Salvadoreños, Hispanics. US Latinos go by many different identities and now number more than 50 million—the largest minority group in the country. In this class we look at Latinx cultural production from literature to theory to television, broken down into thematic units including historical contexts, immigrant stories, transnational identities, feminisms, queer identities and Latinos in entertainment. Class held in English. 

Latin America has a rich cinematic tradition, spanning from 1898 to the present day. The course offers a close analysis of select feature films from Latin America, studied as both an aesthetic practice and a medium of cultural history. Special emphasis is placed on developing techniques for critical visual literacy. Taught in Spanish.
 

Students will study the target language and enroll in a foreign study program or participate in a Converse designed program, studying the language and discussing important topics on culture and contemporary life. Grades in the course will be determined either by the native language teacher or by a Converse professor, based on class participation, tests and graded assignments. Offered during Summer Terms, contingent upon sufficient enrollment.

A study of more complex grammatical structures and vocabulary usage. Class held primarily in Spanish with emphasis on integrating the material into appropriate oral and written context.