2008 Guadalajara Course Descriptions
(Schedules, texts, and staffing are subject to change)
Linguistics
SPAN 6608M
Phonetics and Phonology: A Descriptive Approach
Núñez
This class offers a descriptive approach to the study of Spanish sounds and phonemes. It provides an analysis of the sound system of Spanish, including a look at the sound features of its principal dialects. The student will improve pronunciation through the analysis of phonetics (the discipline of sounds) and phonology (the abstract system of organizing sounds). Students will also learn how the phonetic system works descriptively and contrastively. There will be opportunities to practice stress, intonation, and rhythm. This class provides a solid grounding in Spanish phonetics and phonology, but also a systematic and workable program for aiding students to learn to speak Spanish with as authentic an accent as is within their capabilities. (1 Unit)
Required text: Núñez Méndez. E. 2005. Fundamentos de fonología y fonética (Munich: Lincom).
SPAN 6691M Teaching Spanish as a Second Language: Theory and Practice Nuñez
This class provides a modern and general vision of the most recent pedagogy research in teaching Spanish as a second language within the discipline of Applied Linguistics. Special emphasis is given to those methodological issues that the Spanish language presents when it comes to teaching language and grammar to English speakers. Students will have the opportunity to analyze current studies in the theory of language acquisition and, at the same time, will focus on specific language matters related to teaching Spanish. There will also be a review of the principal methodologies used for teaching foreign languages, together with morphological, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics factors intrinsically dependent on teaching and learning Spanish as a second language. (1 Unit)
This course is cross-listed with Professional Preparation for Teachers.
Required text: Dale A. Koike y Carol A. Klee, Lingüística aplicada: adquisición del español como segunda lengua (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2006).
SPAN 6684M Language Policies in the Hispanic World
Acevedo
This course will focus on how political decisions directly affect the values that a society imposes upon its language(s). Students will analyze the phenomenon of language change, in particular the “deliberate” changes that result from language planning, and the existence of different national language policies, legislating on official language. Students will address concepts such as linguistic values, prejudices, stereotypes about language, and its implications in society. Students will analyze case studies in five different Spanish contexts: Argentina, EEUU, Mexico, Perú, and Puerto Rico. (1 Unit)
This course is cross-listed with Culture.
Required text : Course pack for purchase in Mexico.
Culture
SPAN 6617M Culture of Mexico
Franco
This course examines the rich territory of contemporary Mexican culture. We will study the main cultural movements and tendencies of the plastic and visual arts (painting, photography) of the 20th century, including the Mexican Muralists. Students will have the opportunity to analyze the musical and artistic expressions that define “Mexican-ness” (popular songs, dance, and “corridos”). Other forms of popular culture will be also studied for their social and aesthetic relevance (crafts, “charreria”, movies, among others). (1 Unit)
Required text : Course pack for purchase in Mexico.
SPAN 6622M
Imaginary Cities and Real Cities: Urban Culture in Latin America Corona
This course explores Latin American urban culture through a series of themes, cities, histories, and cultural productions. It examines the causes, development and social consequences of the impressive demographic change that, in a matter of a few decades, has transformed eminently rural societies into urban societies. Latin America is still the region with the fastest rate of urbanization in the world. The resultant encounter of communities during the move, and the effect of changing socioeconomic scenarios, have been captured by different literary trends and genres (i.e., urban novel, the chronicle), films, and musical expressions (i.e., tangos, boleros, rock in Spanish, etc.) of which this course will include a selection. (1 Unit)
This course is cross-listed with Literature.
Required texts : 1) Clarice Lispector, La hora de la estrella; 2) J. E. Pacheco, Las batallas en el desierto; 3) Fernando Vallejo, La Virgen de los Sicarios; 4) Ricardo Piglia, La ciudad ausente; 5)Rama, Angel, La ciudad letrada 6) Mario Vargas Llosa, La ciudad y los perros; 7) Jose Luis Romero, La ciudad y las ideas.
SPAN 6655M Social and Political Documentary in Contemporary Mexico
Velazco
There is, at present, a new impulse in documentary cinema. Recently, Mexico has experienced a national cinematic revival due, to a large extent, to documentary films. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the thematic and stylistic variety in documentary films in Mexico, dealing with issues related to politics, gender, human rights, rebellions, and democratization. We will address a wide range of theoretical issues specific to the documentary form as well. (1 Unit)
Required text : Course pack for purchase in Mexico.
SPAN 6684M Language Policies in the Hispanic World.
This course is cross-listed with Linguistics .
SPAN 6657M
Latin American Testimonial Texts
This course is cross-listed with Literature.
SPAN 6736M Trans-Atlantic Feminisms Luiselli
This course is cross-listed with Literature.
Literature
SPAN 6653M
Jalisciense Narrative of the 20th-Century Gutiérrez Cham
The course will study the works of the most important writers from this state of Western Mexico (Jalisco, the state in which Guadalajara is located), that have had a profound influence in the literary panorama of the 20th-Century: Juan Rulfo, Agustín Yáñez, Juan José Arreola, and Mariano Azuela. We will study diverse literary aspects of their works using a variety of critical approaches, different aesthetics, and a sociocultural perspective, always considering the social and historical contexts in which these authors have elaborated their fictional worlds. The course will be complemented with visual texts (photographs), films, and recordings made by the authors. (1 Unit)
Required texts : 1) & 2) Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo and El llano en llamas; 3) & 4) Juan José Arreola, Confabulario and Estas páginas mías (antología); 5) & 6) Agustín Yáñez, Al filo del agua and Tres cuentos; 7) Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo.
SPAN 6656M
Contemporary Latin American Poetry: A Survey and Translation Workshop Partnoy
This course is a survey of Latin American poetry with a strong focus on the translation of contemporary works from a variety of literary movements and national origins. Topics for class discussion will include the translator as writer, the politics of translation, and the challenges of translating and publishing Latin American poetry in English. Class participants will immerse themselves in the complex process of translating poetry. At the end of the course students should be able to identify both acceptable and inadequate poetry translations. They will produce an English translation of works by poets of the contemporary Latin American diaspora. (1 Unit)
Required texts: 1) S. Tapscott, Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry. A Bilingual Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); 2) Juan Gelman, Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems, ed. and trans. Joan Lindgren (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997); 3) Zulema Moret, Mujeres mirando al sur: Antolog í a de poetas sudamericanas en USA (Madrid: Ed. Torremozas, 2004); 4) Bilingual Dictionary.
SPAN 6657M
Latin American Testimonial Texts Partnoy
This course focuses on the analysis of unmediated contemporary testimonial texts from Latin America. Participants will study a diversity of textual forms generated by victims of contemporary genocides in the region. The course prepares students to read both text and context, and to be aware of the multiple mechanisms that authors use to construct a discourse of solidarity to move their readers to action. Other relevant issues for class discussion are the position of the editors, the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy, the debate around both truth and literary value of the texts, and the role of women as testimonial authors. (1 Unit)
This course is cross-listed with Culture.
Required texts: 1) Elizabeth Burgos and Rigoberta Menchú, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia; 3) & 4) María del Carmen Sillato, Huellas: Memorias de resistencia (Argentina 1974-1983) and Diálogos de amor contra el silencio.
SPAN 6685M
The Boom of Detective Fiction in Mexico and Spain
Corona
Hard-boiled novel, police novel, mystery novel, suspense novel, thriller--since the eighties, crime fiction, in its different conceptualizations and modalities, has experienced an editorial boom. Novels of great quality and original proposals have appeared throughout the Hispanic world, which renew plots and characters with an undeniable element of social criticism. If, in traditional literary criticism, crime fiction had been seen as a vehicle of reflection on the nature of truth and justice (in spite of being mostly regarded as a form of sub-literature), contemporary appropriations of the genre are increasingly studied as social symptoms in a context of erosion of the State. This course will examine a selection from two of the Hispanic countries where crime literature has achieved the most relevance –Mexico and Spain—to inquire into its signifying practices, its construction of cultural identities, and its interplay with a variety of literary traditions, systems of values, beliefs, and cultural practices. (1 Unit)
Required texts :1) Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Los mares del sur; 2) Rafael Bernal, El complot mongol; 3) Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia; 4) Elmer Mendoza, Un asesino solitario; 5) Eduardo Mendoza, El misterio de la cripta embrujada.
SPAN 6622M
Imaginary Cities and Real Cities: Urban Culture in Latin America
This course is cross-listed with Culture.
SPAN 6690M Contemporary Mexican Women Writers Luiselli
This course will analyze the work of four of Mexico’s most distinguished contemporary women writers: Rosario Castellanos, Elena Poniatowska, Sabina Berman and Coral Bracho. We will study Castellanos’ work as a novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist during the first two weeks of the course. Poniatowska (novelista and journalist), Berman (playwright), and Bracho (poet) will be discussed during subsequent weeks. In addition to the texts required for this course, students will read photocopied materials related to literary theory and criticism, as well as supplementary contextual information. The course will also include attendance at cultural events offered in the city of Guadalajara, related to the themes and issues discussed in class. (1 Unit)
Required texts : 1) & 2) Elena Poniatowska, Querido Diego, te abraza, Quiela (ERA) and De noche vienes (ERA); 3), 4) & 5) Rosario Castellanos: El eterno femenino (FCE), Balún Canán (FCE), and La muerte del tigre (FCE); 6) Sabina Berman, Feliz nuevo siglo, doktor Freud (Ed. El Milagro, CONACULTA); 7) & 8)Coral Bracho, Huellas de luz (CONACULTA) and La voluntad del ámbar (ERA).
SPAN 6736M Trans-Atlantic Feminisms
Luiselli
This course will involve analysis of the three most significant women writers of the Spanish Golden Age and the Spanish American colonial era: María de Zayas, Ana Caro, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. María de Zayas is considered “the first Spanish woman novelist,” and her narrative is notable for the naturalness with which, during the 17th -Century, she approaches themes of love with a sexual content. Ana Caro is more well known for theater. Her most famous work, Valor, agravio, y mujer, showcases the significance of Golden Age heroines. Finally, Sor Juana will be studied in terms of her contributions to the feminism of the so-called “comedias de capa y espada” of the 17th-Century. We will also study her play El divino Narciso, an ideologically daring work in which she discusses Mexican religion preceding the Spanish Conquest. Our analysis of these works will help us understand the enormous intellectual stature of this Mexican writer. Discussions will be supplemented by readings of photocopied material involving both theoretical-literary analysis and contextual information. (1 Unit)
This course is cross-listed with Culture.
Required texts : 1) Ana Caro, Valor, agravio y mujer (any available edition); 2) Maria de Zayas, La traición en la amistad; 3) Maria de Zayas, Tres novelas amorosas y tres desengaños amorosas (course pack for purchase in Mexico); 4) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas Volume 3 (Mexico: FCE).
Professional Preparation for Teachers
SPAN 6691M
Teaching Spanish as a Second Language: Theory and Practice
This course is cross listed with Linguistics