HISPANIC STUDIES

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

Not available to students qualified for SP 1018.

Overview

This is a highly intensive ab-initio course for students with little or no previous knowledge of Spanish. It introduces students to the fundamentals of Spanish grammar and usage, aiming to strike a balance between an analytical, reflective approach to learning and the development of basic communication skills. The course will involve three closely integrated classes per week to develop speaking, writing and listening skills, and a further hour to assist students towards the rapid acquisition of spoken Spanish.
3 one-hour seminars a week; one further tutorial a week.
1 two-hour written examination (50%) and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%), class tests (10%) and oral skills (10%). In order to pass the assessment overall, students must pass the written examination and present themselves for all elements of assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Higher or A level Spanish or equivalent. Not open to native speakers of Spanish.

Overview

The course aims to enable students to consolidate and extend their knowledge and understanding of Spanish. It provides a strong grammar base, and a variety of exercises designed to develop and improve performance in reading, writing, speaking and listening to the Spanish language. These core elements of the course will be complemented by the analysis of contemporary textual and audio-visual material, and small-group oral classes. Overall, the course aims to strike a balance between an analytical, reflective approach to language learning and the development of basic communicative fluency.
2 one-hour seminars a week; one further tutorial a week.
1 two-hour written examination (40%) and one oral examination (10%) and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%), class tests (10%) and oral skills (10%). A satisfactory level of performance in written and oral coursework will exempt candidates from the examination.

Credit Points

10

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

SP 1017 or SP 1018

Overview

This course is about Latin-American cultural history, from pre-conquest ‘America’ up to the twentieth century. The course explores key themes in Latin-American cultural experience as they are presented in film, fiction and visual representation.
2 one-hour lectures/seminars a week.
1 two-hour examination (50%) and continuous assessment (50%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

SP 1017

Overview

Please see SP 1017, of which this is a continuation.


3 one-hour seminars a week, one further tutorial a week.
1 two-hour written examination (50%) and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%), class tests (10%) and oral skills (10%). In order to pass the assessment overall, students must pass the written examination and present themselves for all elements of assessment.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

SP 1018. Not open to native speakers of Spanish.

Overview

Please see SP 1018, of which this is a continuation.
2 one-hour seminars a week; one further tutorial a week.
1 two-hour written examination (40%) and one oral examination (10%) and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%); class tests (10%) and oral skills (10%).

Credit Points

10

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriguez

Pre-requisites

None

Overview

This course examines key aspects of the history and culture of Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries. After an introduction to how the modern state of Spain came into existence, the focus will be on the most important social, economic, political and cultural developments that have taken place in the last two centuries.
2 one-hour lectures a week.
Continuous assessment (50%) and examination (50%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

None

Notes

This course is available only to Level 2 students following the Degree Programme in Two European Languages with Education.

Overview

This course builds upon language skills acquired in SP 1018 and SP 1518. The course aims to develop the five principles of reading, writing, speaking, listening and translating. These elements will be enhanced by the analysis of varied textual and audio-visual material and weekly small-group oral classes.
3 one-hour seminars per week.
Continuous assessment (70%), intercalated class tests (10%), oral skills (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

None

Notes

This course is available only to Level 2 students following the Degree Programme in Two European Languages with Teacher Education.

Overview

This is an intensive course designed to build on the language skills acquired in the first year ab initio courses. Particular attention is paid to the acquisition of vocabulary, analysis of textual material and translation skills.
3 one-hour seminars per week.
Continuous assessment (70%); intercalated class tests (10%); oral skills (20%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

SP1518. Not open to native speakers of Spanish.

Notes

Students with SP1517 Introductory Spanish 2 should register for SP2019 Level 2 Advanced Introductory Spanish Language.

Overview

This course is designed to consolidate and extend the language skills acquired in the first year courses (SP1018 and SP1518 Spanish Language 1 & 2). The course aims to develop students' skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening to Spanish, providing a strong grammar base, and a variety of exercises are designed to develop familiarity with different registers and varieties of Peninsular and Latin-American Spanish. These core elements of the course will be complemented by the analysis of audio-visual material, and small-group oral classes. Overall, the course aims to strike a balance between analytical, reflective approach to learning and the development of communicative fluency.
2 one-hour seminars a week; one further tutorial per week.
1 two-hour written examination (40%) and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%), oral exercises (20%), intercalated class text (10%). A satisfactory level of performance in written and oral course work will exempt candidates from examination.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

SP1517. Not open to native speakers of Spanish.

Notes

Students with SP 1518 Spanish Language 2 should register for SP 2018 Level 2 Spanish Language 1.

Overview

This is an intensive course designed to consolidate and extend the language skills acquired in the first year ab initio courses (SP1017 and SP1517 Introductory Spanish 1 & 2). The course aims to develop students' skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening. The course provides a strong grammar base, and a variety of exercises are designed to develop communicative linguistic skills. Particular attention is paid to the acquisition of vocabulary, analysis of textual material and translation skills. These core elements of the course will be complemented by the analysis of audio-visual material, and small-group oral classes. Overall, the course aims to strike a balance between an analytical, reflective approach to learning and the development of communicative fluency.
3 one-hour seminars a week; one further tutorial per week.
1 two-hour written examination (40%) and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%), oral exercises (20%), intercalated class test (10%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

SP1517 or SP1518

Overview

This course looks at themes and issues raised by visual and written texts from Latin America. The texts will be related to their local and international contexts, and to their context of production and consumption.
3 one-hour seminars per week.
1 two-hour written examination (50%) and continuous assessment (50%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

None

Notes

This course is available only to Level 3 students following the Degree Programmes in Two European Languages with Teacher Education.

Overview

The course looks at themes and issues raised by visual and written texts from Latin America. The texts will be related to their local and international contexts, and to their context of production and consumption.
3 one-hour seminars per week.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

SP 2019 or SP 2018

Overview

This course is designed to consolidate and extend the language skills acquired in the second year courses (SP2019 Level 2 Advanced Introductory Spanish, and SP2018 Level 2 Spanish Language 1), and prepare students for residence abroad in a Spanish speaking country. The course aims to develop students' skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening to Spanish, continuing to provide a strong grammar base, and a variety of exercises are designed to develop further familiarity with different registers and varieties of Peninsular and Latin-American Spanish. These core elements of the course will be complemented by the analysis of audio-visual material, and small-group oral classes. Overall, the course aims to strike a balance between an analytical, reflective approach to learning and the development of communicative fluency.
2 one-hour seminars a week; one further tutorial per week.
1 two-hour written examination (40%); and continuous assessment: written exercises (30%), oral exercises (10%), intercalated tests (10%); oral skills (10%)

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

SP 1517 or SP 1518

Overview

The conflict and fragmentation that characterises modern Spanish history and culture means that the notion of Spanish identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and film is complex and plural. The course will focus on texts and films that present, or raise questions about various Spanish identities.
3 one-hour seminars per week.
1 two-hour written examination (50%) and continuous assessment (50%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

None

Notes

This course is available only to Level 2 students following the Degree Programmes in Two European Languages with Teacher Education.

Overview

The conflict and fragmentation that characterises modern Spanish history and culture means that the notion of Spanish identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and film is complex and plural. The course will focus on texts and films that present, or raise questions about various Spanish identities.
3 one-hour seminars per week.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Co-requisites

Available only to Honours candidates in European Studies.

Notes

This course is run over the full session.

Overview

Prose passages for translation from Spanish to English.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.

Co-requisites

Available only to Honours candidates in European Studies.

Overview

Prose passages for translation from Spanish to English.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

SP 2501 or 2518

Overview

This course will focus on current issues within Hispanic Studies, looking at critical debates and examining available methodologies and approaches to literary and other texts.
The course highlights the skills important for Honours students in Hispanic Studies, particularly critical reading and analytical or argumentative writing. Students will examine debates and traditions of interpretation, and will gain sense of the field of Hispanic Studies, and of the requirements of work at Honours level, from the evaluation of sources to marshalling of evidence and consideration of counter-arguments in a context of debate and controversy.
Specific themes may be taken from the peninsular Spanish and/or Latin-American contexts.
1 one and a half-hour seminar per week.
One midterm essay (30%), one final essay (40%) and continuous assessment: shorter writing assignments (30%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 Credit Points (including SP2501 or 2518).

Notes

This course is only available to those students taking the degree in Two European Languages with Teacher Education.

Overview

The dissertation is a piece of extended independent research (8-10,000 words long), structured as a critical evaluation, analysis or argument, about an aspect of Hispanic Studies that interests you. The topic is chosen by you, in conjunction with the dissertation Co-ordinator, and an individual Departmental supervisor. It is a chance for you to carry out in-depth study in Hispanic Studies outside the course programme, and to acquire and develop valuable research skills. The title of the dissertation must be approved in writing by the Dissertations Co-ordinator.
Continuous assessment: dissertation (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

SP 2501 or 2518. May be taken only by candidates for Honours in Hispanic Studies.

Notes

This course is run over the full session. Assessed in the summer diet for SP 4003. One half-session of this course may be completed during residence abroad for students following Mode B Hispanic Studies programmes.

Overview

This course is topic-based, and aims to enable students to identify and use, accurately and fluently, a wide range of vocabulary and linguistic registers. Reading and writing skills are honed though the exploitation of a wide variety of literary, journalistic and other Spanish and Latin-American texts. Skills and techniques for beginning advanced translation into Spanish will be introduced. Aural and oral skills will be further developed through the linguistic exploitation of Spanish and Latin-American programmes and films, and other activities. Special attention will be paid to those advanced grammatical areas which are still likely to cause difficulty to students. The course curriculum reflects the emphasis placed on self-directed learning and private study at this level.
1 one-hour seminar a week; one further tutorial per week
3 three-hour written examinations (75%) and 1 oral examination (25%) (for those students not continuing to Senior Honours only see Note(s) above).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriquez

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or SP 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4072 (Post-Civil War Spanish Women’s Narrative A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The course explores texts by Spanish women writers from the 1940s to the 1990s. Detailed textual study will be combined with consideration of writing under dictatorship, of the boom in women’s writing in Spain, the relationships between gender and genre in Spanish women’s writing, and study of selected key issues in European and North-American feminist literary theory and criticism.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4073 (Reality and Fantasy in Modern Latin-American Literature B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate session thereafter.

Overview

‘Modernity’ in Latin-American literature is often associated with a crisis of faith in realism and even reality. In practice, modern Latin-American letters tend to reveal a tension between the desire to reflect or comment upon social or political reality, on one hand, and a tendency towards escapism, fantasy, ambiguity and uncertainty or scepticism about the nature of reality, on the other. This course will trace the emergence and development of modern literary writing in Latin America in terms of changing attitudes to the notion of reality.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: two essays (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4074 (‘Civilization and Barbarism’ in Latin-American Literature B). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

After Independence, Latin-American nations became embroiled in a crisis of identity whose principal manifestation was a struggle between the urban centres and the vast, unruly, interior regions. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s seminal and polemical work of 1845, Facundo, dealt with this struggle and was subtitled Civilización y barbarie. Since then, Latin-American identity has been seen and/or debated in terms of a clash between the so-called forces of civilization and barbarism – urban values of European cultivation, education, progress and centralism versus rural traditions of lawlessness, violence, social disorder and bossism. However, with time, the ‘Civilization-versus-Barbarism’ ethic was challenged and questioned, the terms of the debate often being reversed, with unthinking Europeanist centrism seen as threatening native, autochthonous and authentic cultural traditions. The literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was heavily marked by these concerns and indeed, they were to continue to underline much literature of the later twentieth century.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: two essays (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4077 (20th Century Mexico: Visual Perspectives B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course focuses on the interaction between literature and the visual arts in 20th Century Mexico. First, it will examine the impact of painting and photography on the literary renewal of Mexican writing. It will also consider the use of the rich artistic scene after the Mexican Revolution as narrative material in some recent Mexican novels, offering a narration of the nation from a visual perspective.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4079 (Being Indian in Mexico and Central America B). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course asks what it has meant to be Indian in Mexico and Central America. It looks at pre-Hispanic cultures and their legacy, the colonial category of “Indian” and its legacy, nationalist invocation of an “indigenous” past, the use of the category by subaltern movements such as the neo-Zapatistas, as well as literary, scholarly, and artistic representations of “indigenous culture” and its commodification for a global market.
1 two-hour seminar for 11 weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr S Bannatyne

Pre-requisites

SP 2501 or 2518. May be taken only by students not taking Honours in Hispanic Studies.

Notes

This course is run over the full session.

Overview

This course will be based on a series of topic areas aiming at covering as wide a range of vocabulary and linguistic registers as possible, with particular emphasis on those areas related to current affairs. Reading and writing skills will be developed through a series of contemporary written materials. Listening and speaking skills will be developed through the use of audio-visual material and different oral activities in class. Particular emphasis will be placed on those grammatical areas which are likely to cause difficulties to students.

3 one-hour classes per week.
1 three-hour written examination (50%), continuous assessment (30%), oral skills continuous assessment (10%), oral examination (10%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

SP 2501 or SP 2518 (Level 2 Spanish Language 2), may be taken only by Junior Honours Mode B candidates in Hispanic Studies while studying or working in a Spanish-speaking country.

Co-requisites

SP 3069

Notes

This course, open only to mode B Junior honours students of Hispanic Studies, fulfilling their residence requirements in a Spanish-speaking country, complements SP 3069.

Overview

An intensive programme of language exercises is designed to develop linguistic competence in a variety of registers, including formal and informal.
Required field work; regular submission of written and recorded material by correspondence.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4085 (Citizenship in Mexico and Central America B). It will be available in 2003/04 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course looks at principles and practices of citizenship across Mexico and Central America. It begins with pre-Hispanic modes of citizenship and then looks at the transplantation of European traditions of citizenship to colonial New Spain. It traces the rise of nationalism and the gap between the promise and the practice of national citizenship. It then looks at citizenship in diverse contexts of present-day Mexico and Central America, including among Latinos in the USA, and concludes by discussing the possible future of citizenship in the region.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 3 who have passed SP 2501 or 2518.

Overview

This course will study selected texts and genres produced before 1800 that have historically been considered important components of a Hispanic cultural tradition or canon. The notions of canon and tradition will be explored, and the course aims to provide a foundation for study of nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural production.
1 two-hour combined lecture and seminar per week.
Continuous assessment (100%) (two essays).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4568 (Questioning the Questioner: the work of Miguel de Unamuno B). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will focus on a selection of Unamuno’s narrative, drama and political writing in order to explore some of the characteristics of the often experimental and always challenging work of one of the major figures of early twentieth century Spanish literary, intellectual and political life.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriquez

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4569 (Representations of the Spanish Civil War B). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The course explores a variety of materials, both visual and textual, in order to explore a variety of representations on the Civil War. Detailed textual and visual study will be combined with consideration of the history of the war and the way it has been perceived and represented by both sides.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4570 (Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Latin-American Fiction B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

‘Modern’ Latin-American fiction, particularly the so-called phenomena of the ‘New Novel’ and the ‘Boom’ of the 1960s, has often been associated with a rejection of conventional realism and scepticism about the ability of literature to comprehend and portray reality. At the same time, literature and criticism have maintained and evolved an often explicitly political agenda of social observation, commentary or criticism. Much Latin-American fiction of the late 1960s onwards (sometimes referred to via the term ‘Post Boom’) seeks to break with the tendency to emphasize and embody the complex or chaotic nature of reality and aims to return to some form of direct socio-political commentary on reality. This is reflected in the increasing incorporation of elements from mass or popular culture into the framework of the ‘New Novel’. This course explores the nature and implications of these developments.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: two essays (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits. Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4571 (Film in Spain B). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will consider the development of cinema in Spain via a detailed examination of the films of five established directors. As well as looking at questions of style and technique, the course will focus on the role of film in a changing society.

1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: one essay (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4574 (Basque Arts: The Conflict of Belonging B). It will be available in 2004/5 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course focuses on Basque literature and visual arts from the 1898 period onwards. The course will study both traditions of writers writing in Spanish and those writing in Basque (for the purpose of this course read in Spanish). The Basque writing tradition in Spanish language will be studied from the critical framework for the “minor literature”; their problematic insertion into the Spanish canon will also be explored. The tensions between the local and global will be also studied in the visual media, from the interest in Basque art exclusively from the anthropological perspective, to the current global spectacle created by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4575 (Spanish Modernisms B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

Modernism is a complex set of responses to the accelerated and uneven modernisation of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe and the Americas. This course will examine the structures, ideologies and forms of modernism in early twentieth-century Spain, exploring ‘modernismo’, the ‘Generación del 98’ and the ‘Generación del 27’. There will be some exploration of the relation between these movements and wider European modernisms and avant-garde trends. Materials studied will include items from some of the following: narrative fiction, film and other visual culture, the polemic essay, poetry and architecture.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course my NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4576 (Basque Culture: Memory and Modernity B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course reflects a current and growing interest in the autochthonous in an increasingly global environment. It aims to reflect the plurality of cultures and the conflict between peripheral politics and central government in the Spanish peninsula. It will analyse the various definitions of nationalism that have offered specific constructions of the Basque nation throughout history. Moreover, it will explore realities and myths surrounding the Nationalist ideology. In order to teach this multifaceted phenomenon, the approach will be an interdisciplinary one, building on historical, political and cultural discourses within the field.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%) .

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4580 (Narrating Collective Pasts in the Hispanic World B). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

All societies give collective accounts of their collective pasts. However, these accounts differ in kind from one society to another, even across the Hispanic world. The first part of the course looks at different approaches to the study of such accounts. Students will learn to focus on the relation between two sets of events: the events that are narrated and the events of narrating themselves. The second part of the course compares and contrasts accounts of collective pasts across the Hispanic world. It focuses on history as one particular way of narrating a collective past.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4582 (Advanced Translation Skills B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course aims to extend and refine students’ practical translation skills from Spanish into English. It will also introduce students to selected key issues in translation studies and theory, and enable students to think critically about linguistic and cultural issues associated with translation from Spanish into English. Students will translate texts on a variety of topics using a variety of discourses, evaluating published translations, discussing, analysing and applying different translation theories and strategies, and will produce annotated translations.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (60%) and written examination (40%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4585 (Language and Culture in the Hispanic World B). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate thereafter.

Overview

This course examines the place of language in human society, using examples drawn mainly from Latin America. It begins by asking what makes language different from other resources for communication and what, then, is the significance of language for human society. It will then focus on the use of language in social life, asking how that use is related to other social activities. Some of the readings will be theoretical, others will be ethnographies of societies from Hispanic New Mexico to indigenous Amazonia.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriguez

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3 who have SP 2501 or SP 2518.

Notes

This course may not be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 4086 (The Films of Luis Buñuel B). It will be available in 2004/5 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will focus on a selection of films by the Spanish film-director Luis Buñuel in order to explore some of the features of the often experimental and always challenging work of one of the key directors of twentieth century cinema.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

Available only to Senior Honours students who have passed SP 2501 or 2518.

Overview

A dissertation of 8,000 - 10,000 words on a topic approved by the Dissertation Co-ordinator to be submitted by the beginning of Senior Honours.
Dissertation (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriguez

Pre-requisites

SP2501. May be taken only be candidates for Honours in Hispanic Studies.

Overview

Building on SP3069 Level 3 Spanish Language, this course is topic-based, and aims to enable students to identify and use, accurately and fluently, a further range of advanced lexical & syntactical features, and linguistic registers. Reading and writing skills are further honed though the exploitation of a wide variety of literary, journalistic and other Spanish and Latin-American texts. Skills and techniques for advanced translation from and into Spanish will be developed and extended from SP3069. Aural and oral skills will be further developed through the linguistic exploitation of Spanish and Latin-American programmes and films, and other activities. Special attention will be paid to further advanced grammatical areas which are still likely to cause difficulty to students. The course curriculum reflects the emphasis placed on self-directed learning and private study at this level.
1 one-hour seminar a week; one further tutorial per week.
3 three-hour written examinations (75%) and 1 oral examination (25%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriquez

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3072 (Contemporary Spanish Women’s Narrative A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The course explores texts by Spanish women writers from the 1940s to the late 1990s. Detailed textual study will be combined with consideration of writing under dictatorship, and the boom in women’s writing in a democratic Spain, the relationships between gender and genre in Spanish women’s writing, and study of selected key issues in European and North-American feminist literary theory and criticism. The course involves placing the selected texts written by women within a cultural, social, historical and political context, so that students will form a nuanced understanding of twentieth-century Spanish culture as well as focussing on the work of relevant writers.
1 two-hour seminar a week. One further two-hour workshop.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3073 (Reality and Fantasy in Modern Latin-American Literature A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate session thereafter.

Overview

‘Modernity’ in Latin-American literature is often associated with a crisis of faith in realism and even reality. In practice, modern Latin-American letters tend to reveal a tension between the desire to reflect or comment upon social or political reality, one one hand, and a tendency towards escapism, fantasy, ambiguity and uncertainty or scepticism about the nature of reality, on the other. This course will trace the emergence and development of modern literary writing in Latin-America in terms of changing attitudes to the notion of reality. The course involves placing the relevant literature in a wider, cultural, historical and political context, so that students will form a nuanced understanding of the topic in a more contextualised sense as well as focusing in detail on individual works.
1 two-hour seminar a week, with one further two-hour workshop to be arranged.
Continuous assessment: two essays (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3074 (‘Civilization and Barbarism’ in Latin-American Literature A.) It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

After Independence, Latin-American nations became embroiled in a crisis of identity whose principal manifestation was a struggle between the urban centres and the vast, unruly interior regions. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s seminal and polemical work of 1845, Facundo, dealt with this struggle and was subtitled Civilización y barbarie. Since then, Latin- American identity has been seen and/or debated in terms of a clash between the so-called forces of civilization and barbarism – urban values of European cultivation, education, progress and centralism versus, rural traditions of lawlessness, violence, social disorder and bossism. However, with time, the ‘Civilization-versus-Barbarism’ ethic was challenged and questioned, the terms of the debate often being reversed, with unthinking Europeanist centrism seen as threatening native, autochthonous and authentic cultural traditions. The literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was heavily marked by these concerns and indeed, they were to continue to underline much literature of the later twentieth century. The course involves placing the relevant literature in a wider, cultural, historical and political context, so that students will form a nuanced understanding of the topic in a more contextualised sense as well as focusing in detail on individual works.
1 two-hour seminar a week, with one further two-hour workshop to be arranged.
Continuous assessment: two essays (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3077 (20th Century Mexico: Visual Perspectives A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course focuses on the interaction between literature and the visual arts in 20th Century Mexico. First, it will examine the impact of painting and photography on the literary renewal of Mexican writing. It will also consider the use of the rich artistic scene after the Mexican Revolution as narrative material in some recent Mexican novels, offering a narration of the nation from a visual perspective.
1 two-hour seminar per week.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3079 (Being Indian in Mexico and Central America A). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course asks what it has meant to be Indian in Mexico and Central America. It looks at pre-Hispanic cultures and their legacy, the colonial category of “Indian” and its legacy, nationalist invocation of an “indigenous” past, the use of the category by subaltern movements such as the no-Zapatistas, as well as literary, scholarly, and artistic representations of “indigenous culture” and its commodification for a global market.
1 two-hour seminar.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3085 (Citizenship in Mexico and Central America A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course looks at principles and practices of citizenship across Mexico and Central America. It begins with pre-Hispanic modes of citizenship and then looks at the transplantation of European traditions of citizenship to colonial New Spain. It traces the rise of nationalism and the gap between the promise and the practice of national citizenship. It then looks at citizenship in diverse contexts of present-day Mexico and Central America, including among Latinos in the USA, and concludes by discussing the possible future of citizenship in the region.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3568 (Questioning the Questioner: the work of Miguel de Unamuno A). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will focus on a selection of Unamuno’s narrative, drama and political writing in order to explore some of the characteristics of his often experimental and always challenging work. The course involves placing Unamuno’s work within some of its early twentieth-century cultural, historical and political contexts, so that students will form a nuanced understanding of early twentieth-century Spanish culture as well as focusing on the work of one writer.
1 two-hour seminar per week and one two-hour workshop to be arranged.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriguez

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3569 (Representations of the Spanish Civil War A). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

The course explores a variety of materials, both visual and textual, and visual study will be combined with consideration of the history of the war and the way it has been perceived and represented by both sides, so that the students will form a nuanced understanding of the historical, political and social contexts in which the war took place.
1 two-hour seminar per week and one two-hour workshop to be arranged.
Continuous assessment: two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3570 (Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Latin-American Literature A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

‘Modern’ Latin-American fiction, particularly the so-called phenomena of the ‘New Novel’ and the ‘Boom’ of the 1960s, has often been associated with a rejection of conventional realism and scepticism about the ability of literature to comprehend and portray reality. At the same time, literature and criticism have maintained and evolved an often explicitly political agenda of social observation, commentary or criticism. Much Latin-American fiction of the late 1960s onwards (sometimes referred to via the term ‘Post-Boom’) seeks to break with the tendency to emphasize and embody the complex or chaotic nature of reality and aims to return to some form of direct socio-political commentary on reality. This is reflected in the increasing incorporation of elements from mass or popular culture into the framework of the ‘New Novel’. This course explores the nature and implications of these developments. The course involves placing the relevant literature in a wider, cultural, historical and political context, so that students will form a nuanced understanding of the topic in a more contextualised sense as well as focusing in detail on individual works.
1 two-hour seminar a week, with one further two-hour workshop to be arranged.
Continuous assessment: two essays (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Professor P Swanson

Pre-requisites

240 credits. Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3571 (Film in Spain A). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will consider the development of cinema in Spain via a detailed examination of the films of five established directors. As well as looking at questions of style and technique, the course will focus on the role of film in a changing society. The course involves placing the relevant literature in a wider, cultural, historical and political context, so that students will form a nuanced understanding of the topic in a more contextualised sense as well as focusing in detail on individual works.
1 two-hour seminar a week and one two-hour workshop to be arranged.
Continuous assessment: one essay (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3574 (Basque Arts: The Conflict of Belonging A). It will be available in 2004/5 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course focuses on Basque literature and visual arts from the 1898 period onwards. The course will study both traditions of writers writing in Spanish and those writing in Basque (for the purpose of this course read in Spanish). The Basque writing tradition in Spanish language will be studied from the critical framework of the “minor literature”; their problematic insertion into the Spanish canon will also be explored. The tensions between the local and global will be also studied in the visual media, from the interest in Basque art exclusively from the anthropological perspective to the current global spectacle created by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
1 two-hour seminar per week.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3575 (Spanish Modernisms A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

Modernism is a complex set of responses to the accelerated and uneven modernisation of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe and the Americas. This course will examine the structures, ideologies and forms of modernism in early twentieth-century Spain, exploring ‘modernismo’, the ‘Generación del 98’ and the ‘Generación del 27’. Contextualising these movements in relation to wider European modernisms and avantgarde trends will be an important part of the course. Material studied will include items from some of the following: narrative fiction, film and other visual culture, the polemic essay, poetry and architecture.
1 two-hour seminar per week, one further two-hour workshop.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr N Arruti

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3576 (Basque Culture: Memory and Modernity A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course reflects a current and growing interest in the autochthonous in an increasingly global environment. It aims to reflect the plurality of cultures and the conflict between peripheral politics and central government in the Spanish peninsula. It will analyse the various definitions of nationalism that have offered specific constructions of the Basque nation throughout history. Moreover, it will explore realities and myths surrounding Nationalist ideology. In order to teach this multifaced phenomenon, the approach will be an interdisciplinary one, building on historical, political and cultural discourses within the field.

1 two-hour seminar per week.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3580 (Narrating Collective Pasts in the Hispanic World A). It will be available in 2002/03 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

All societies give collective accounts of their collective pasts. However, these accounts differ in kind from one society to another, even across the Hispanic world. The first part of the course looks at different approaches to the study of such accounts. Students will learn to focus on the relation between two sets of events: the events that are narrated and the events of narrating themselves. The second part of the course compares and contrasts accounts of collective pasts across the Hispanic world. It focuses on history as one particular way or narrating a collective past.
1 two-hour seminar.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Biggane

Pre-requisites

240 credits (including SP 2501 or 2518). Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3582 (Advanced Translation Skills A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course aims to extend and refine students’ practical translation skills from Spanish into English. It will also introduce students to selected key issues in translation suties and theory, and able students to think critically about linguistic and cultural issues associated with translation from Spanish into English. Students will translate texts on a variety of topics and with a variety of discourses, evaluating published translations, discussing, analysing and applying different translation theories and strategies. Awareness of theoretical and strategic issues will be important at this level, and the students will be expected to submit a critical self-reflective commentary to supplement one assignment project.
1 two-hour seminar a week, one further workshop.
Continuous assessment (60%) and written examination (40%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr T Stack

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3585 (Language and Culture in the Hispanic World A). It will be available in 2003/4 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course examines the place of language in human society, using examples drawn mainly from Latin America. It begins by asking what makes language different from other resources for communication and what, then, is the significance of language for human society. It will then focus on the use of language in social life, asking how that use is related to other social activities. Some of the readings will be theoretical, others will be ethnographies of societies from Hispanic New Mexico to indigenous Amazonia.
1 two-hour seminar for eleven weeks.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr J Rodriguez

Pre-requisites

Normally only available to students in Programme Year 3, who have SP 2501 or SP 2518.

Notes

This course may NOT be included as part of a graduating curriculum with SP 3086 (The Films of Luis Buñuel A). It will be available in 2002/3 and in alternate sessions thereafter.

Overview

This course will focus on a selection of films by the Spanish film-director Luis Buñuel in order to explore some of the features of the often experimental and always challenging work of one of the key directors of twentieth century cinema. In addition, emphasis will be placed on enabling students to develop their understanding and application of critical theory and film theory when examining Buñuel’s films.
1 two-hour seminar a week.
Continuous assessment (100%): two essays and an oral presentation.