Eduardo Lago

This class is meant for students who have already taken some Spanish in the past but feel that they need to review the essentials of the grammatical system in order to secure a solid foundation. The seminar will operate on several levels: Rigorous, systematic work with morphology and syntax will be complemented by the acquisition of a solid body of vocabulary. A great range of practical exercises and integrated activities will serve the function of developing effective communicative skills centered on reading, listening, speaking, and writing. All of these linguistic practices will be smoothly integrated into a balanced program. The activities jointly conducted in class will be based on the use of authentic Spanish-language materials, including films, documentaries, video clips, episodes of TV series, podcasts, lyrics of songs, comic strips, adapted/graded short stories and novellas, excerpts of graphic novels, poems, newspaper articles, and brief essays on all aspects of culture. Two important features of this class are the class journal and the open syllabus. Students will keep a record of the different class activities in a detailed journal, also known as cuaderno de clase, or “el book.” Another important characteristic of this course is the nature of its syllabus, which is open—which means that it will be jointly created by all class members in coordination with me. Thus, students will suggest films, poems, songs, short stories, and other materials to be jointly explored by the class. Besides the collective activities shared with the rest of the class, students will work in small groups to develop small projects. Groups will consists of three or four students, and students will participate in three groups in order to create a more varied linguistic exchange. A third, optional section of the cuaderno will reflect the different activities done by students individually (additional films they choose to view, newspaper articles of their interest, songs…). In sum, Spanish will be present in your lives throughout the entire academic year. A strongly recommended practice will be the incorporation of habits such as reading newspapers in Spanish on a regular basis. At the end of the semester, each student will have produced their own libro de español, in which the entire trajectory of the class will be carefully recorded. In addition to all this, you will complete a conference project, which can be individual or collaborative (with one or more class members). The topics are infinite in their scope and possibilities. One of the things that has surprised me most when I taught this class in the past was the creativity and originality of the projects developed by my students. As a result, at the end of the year you will be surprised at how intense your progress will have been. And at that time, you will be reading your first full-length book in Spanish. You will begin as an advanced beginner, but you will end at a much more solid level—ready to conduct sophisticated work in this language on your own. The contents of the class activities that follow are indicative, apart from some structural guidelines related to grammar work. You will be expected to incorporate Spanish into your daily life and start thinking in this language. All students will also attend weekly, hour-long meetings, aimed at further developing communicative skills, in conversation sessions with the language assistant.

Once students have reached the linguistic command required to work at an advanced intermediate level, they are in an ideal position to begin to explore the numerous resources that can be found on the Internet. Instrumentally, we will focus on the multiple uses of Spanish to be found in the virtual world and make use of its many possibilities, such as blogs, newspapers, magazines, and other formats. We will identify the most relevant web pages from the Spanish-speaking world, extract the adequate information, and exploit it in class jointly, making the necessary adjustments. Access to authentic sources from all over the Spanish-speaking world will give us an excellent idea of the varieties of the language used in more than 20 countries. We will explore all forms of culture, paying special attention to audiovisual resources such as podcasts, films, interviews, documentaries, TV programs, and other formats—all of which will be incorporated into the course of study, either complete or in fragments depending on the level of difficulty. Art, film, music, photography, theatre, science, politics, comics, video games, gastronomy—all forms and manifestations of culture, high or low, will be the object of our attention, as long as their vehicle of expression is Spanish. We will minimize the use of printed matter, which will be mainly devoted to a more classical exploration of grammar. The class as a whole, as well as students on an individual basis, will be encouraged to locate different kinds of materials on the Internet. Weekly meetings in small groups with the language assistants will help to strengthen conversational skills.

Literature defines the identity of cultures and nations perhaps more powerfully than anything else, bringing together peoples, races, and communities. This gives a special significance to the importance of translation. In a world where borders have become obsolete in many ways, approaching other cultures through their artistic manifestations is an essential necessity. Literature is one of these manifestations, as it defines societies and communities beyond the fluid notion of nationality, now in process of transformation worldwide. Geopolitically, all continents have an astonishing wealth of literatures; and in a global context, Europe—the subject of radical transformations in the last decades—is just one of them. The seat of ancient civilizations and empires that conquered the rest of the world, the Europe of today is dramatically different from what it once was. After the devastation brought by war and genocide and the collapse of formidable utopias, contemporary European reality is extraordinarily elusive and complex. Immigrants and refugees are at the base of the radical transformation being experienced on the continent. More than 40 languages are spoken in almost as many European countries nowadays, each of them represented by a vibrant body of literature produced, to a great extent, by men and women with deep cultural roots in distant places. The face of Old Europe has changed through a process that cannot be reversed and has become unrecognizable. In this course, we will study the literary manifestations of the new Europe, a multicultural, multiethnical, linguistically diverse, and immensely varied conglomerate of societies. Before we confront the vitality of the newer literary manifestations, we will study a number of canonical texts from the past. In our approach, we will pay special attention to Europe’s youngest generations of authors, with a special focus on women writers. We will examine sociopolitical displacements resulting from the impact of immigration and the incessant arrival of unwanted refugees. In group conference, we will pay attention to other cultural manifestations—mainly studying old and new forms of music and, very specially, film. Individual conference meetings will alternate biweekly with small-group conference meetings that will incorporate research methods, writing workshops for conference projects, field trips, and films, as well as the study of old and new forms of music complementing our texts.

In this course, we will examine fictional works from all over the Spanish-speaking world, as well as a small number of representative Luso-Brazilian texts originally written in Portuguese. We will begin our exploration by reading pioneering works by Fernando Pessoa (Portugal) and Emilia Pardo-Bazán (Spain). We will then proceed to study the legacy of foundational authors of the Latin American canon, including Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia), Juan Rulfo (Mexico), and María Luisa Bombal (Chile). As we read, we will analyze the sociopolitical and aesthetic implications of a number of concepts associated with the literatures of the Spanish-speaking Americas—such as the notion of “magical realism,” a term that needs careful deconstruction since it has profound connections with forms of fantasy practiced globally in different literary traditions. We will pay careful attention to the African and indigenous roots of the Latin American imagination as it blended with the legacy of European literature. Fiction written by women authors will constitute one of our main lines of investigation. In this context, we will study fictions by Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico), and Rosario Castellanos (México), among others. The essential goal of this course is to acquire and develop critical reading and writing skills. Active participation in class debates on the different literary texts under study will be an essential factor of the course work. Throughout the semester, you will be required to keep a handwritten journal in which you will record your trajectory in the class. Periodically, you will write short, formal reflections and analytical commentaries discussing aspects of the books read (frequency to be determined). We will meet in individual conferences on a weekly basis in the fall and biweekly in the spring. Each term, you will work on a specific project whose nature and scope will be discussed with me at the beginning of each term. At the end, you will produce a paper in the form of an essay (length to be determined). After a thorough examination of canonical texts in the fall, the spring semester will center on the study of recent Latin American literary works and their connections with fiction produced in other parts of the world.

The aim of this course is to enable students who took some Spanish in the past but have not used it in a while to develop the skills necessary to achieve effective levels of communication in Spanish. Before fully embarking in the usage of the language in an active, comprehensive way, we will conduct a thorough review of the grammatical system. Simultaneously, we will proceed to recover, consolidate, and expand a substantial basic vocabulary through a program of integrated readings and communicative activities, including the exploitation of audiovisual resources aimed at developing good aural/oral skills. The main goal of the class is to achieve effective communication in Spanish in a relatively short span of time. From the start, students will be in touch with authentic Spanish-language materials in the form of newspaper articles, films, songs, and poems, as well as short literary and non-literary texts. The viewing of films, documentaries, episodes of popular TV series, as well as the reading of blogs and digital publications will take place outside the seminar meetings, serving as the basis of class discussions and debates. Weekly conversation sessions with the language assistant are an integral part of the course.

This course is designed for students who have taken Spanish before but need to review the essentials of grammar and develop effective communicative skills at a post-elementary level. The course will start with a thorough review of the basics of Spanish morphology and syntax. Vocabulary building will take place through an intensive program of readings that will include the study and analysis of poems, song lyrics, newspaper articles, short stories, and adapted novellas. The linguistic exploration of those materials will be complemented by the active exploitation of musical compositions, excerpts of scripts, and the viewing of films and selected episodes of TV series. All forms and manifestations of culture originated all over the Spanish–speaking world—fashion, art, film, music, photography, theatre, science, politics, comics, video games, gastronomy, etc.—will be the objects of our attention. These and other forms of cultural expression will be incorporated into the course of study, as long as Spanish is the vehicle of expression. The syllabus will be complemented by contributions from students, who will be encouraged to locate materials suitable to be jointly exploited by the class as a whole. Weekly conversation sessions with the language assistant are a fundamental part of this course. Students will complete guided conference projects in small groups and also have access to individual meetings to address specific grammar topics.

This seminar will operate on two distinct levels: 1) language work at an advanced level, and 2) an introduction to the literature(s) of the Spanish-speaking world via the study of relevant works by very recent authors. Initially, the emphasis will be on the study of grammar, syntax, and the acquisition of a solid body of vocabulary at a sophisticated level. During the first weeks of the fall semester, we will focus on the consolidation and integration of linguistic skills. While we do this, we will explore all forms of culture—making use of different kinds of audiovisual resources such as audio podcasts, interviews, documentaries, TV programs, and other formats. We will also start a program of thorough readings centered on a wide range of disciplines and fields. Art, film, music, photography, theatre, science, politics, comics, video games, gastronomy...all forms and manifestations of culture, high and low, will be the object of our attention as long as the vehicle of expression is Spanish. Students will be encouraged to contribute to the syllabus by locating on the Internet different kinds of Spanish-language materials. Once the theoretical comprehension of grammar—together with the mastery of linguistic skills and the acquisition of both a sophisticated reading capacity and a rich vocabulary—is secured, we will start to give priority to the study of literary works. That will constitute the center of classwork in the second part of the year. During the spring semester, the class will fully operate as a literature seminar: TSUNAMI: THE YOUNGEST GENERATION OF WOMEN WRITERS FROM THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD. Recently, the most representative authors writing in Spanish today gathered at FIL (Feria Internacional del Libro), which took place in Guadalajara, Mexico. FIL is the largest annual literary encounter celebrated in the Spanish-speaking world and, on a global scale, is only second to the Frankfurt Book Fair. During the encounter, writers from all latitudes joined around the most celebrated voices from the 24 countries who share Spanish as their vehicle of literary expression. In its most recent edition, one factor stood out: the formidable explosion of talent represented by the emergence of extremely young female voices hailing from all corners of Latin America and Spain. The magnitude and scale of this phenomenon is still to be adequately measured, but its impact on the culture marks the advent of an era that transcends national and linguistic boundaries. When, in the 1960s, the world at large discovered the extraordinary richness of Spanish-language literature in what was then labeled as el boom, the phenomenon was reduced to the representation of male voices. It was not so much that women writers did not exist; rather, they were ignored and silenced. In recent years, such neglect became untenable—the arc of erased voices had to come to light at one point. The process began in the last 10 years, and the explosion witnessed at the recent FIL was simply the acknowledgement of an undeniable state of affairs. Culturally and socially, what is happening now in the realm of Spanish-language literature is part of a phenomenon of significant global impact, whose connections across languages and the cultures that they represent require an in-depth exploration. During the last edition of FIL, an anthology of female writers, duly titled Tsunami (a sum of feminist voices), became one of the natural centers of discussion of the encounter. In this course, entirely taught in the original language (virtually none of the works that we will read are yet available in English), we will explore the new literary map of the Spanish-speaking world resulting from the appearance of radically new female voices. Some of the authors under study are: Samanta Schweblin, Clara Usón, Mariana Ojeda, Fernanda Trías, Guadalupe Nettel, Cristina Rivera Garza, Brenda Lozano, and Liliana Bloom.

The aim of this course is to enable students without previous knowledge of the language to develop the skills necessary to achieve effective levels of communication in Spanish at a basic level. From the start, students will be in touch with authentic language materials in the form of films, TV series, video clips, documentaries, newspaper articles, and songs, as well as short stories and poems. In the regular class meetings, we will actively implement a wide range of techniques aimed at creating an atmosphere of dynamic oral exchange. The study of grammar will take place by combining the theoretical study of morphological and syntactic structures with the exploitation of everyday situations through the incorporation of a wide set of functional-contextual activities and resources. An important component of this class is group work. Students will participate in several collaborative projects with fellow members of the class throughout the semester. Weekly conversation sessions with the language assistant are an integral part of the course.

This course is designed for students who have taken Spanish before but need to review the essentials of grammar and develop effective communicative skills at a post-elementary level. The course will start with a thorough review of the basics of Spanish morphology and syntax. Vocabulary building will take place through an intensive program of readings that will include the study and analysis of poems, lyrics of songs, newspaper articles, short stories, and adapted novellas. The linguistic exploration of those materials will be complemented by the active exploitation of musical compositions, excerpts of scripts, and the viewing of films, as well as selected episodes of TV series. All forms and manifestations of culture originated all over the Spanish–speaking world—fashion, art, film, music, photography, theatre, science, politics, comics, video games, gastronomy, etc.—will be the objects of our attention. These and other forms of cultural expression will be incorporated into the course of study, as long as Spanish is their vehicle of expression. The syllabus will be complemented by contributions from students, who will be encouraged to locate materials suitable to be jointly exploited by the class as a whole. Weekly conversation sessions with the language assistant are a fundamental part of this course. Students will complete guided conference projects in small groups and also have access to individual meetings to address specific grammar topics.

This seminar will operate as an introduction to the literatures of the Spanish-speaking world, centered on the study of two of its mainstays: the formation of the poetic canon and the tradition of the short story. We will examine the development of both forms of literary expression concurrently, paying attention to the most-important moments in the literary history of Latin America and Spain. In our exploration, we will not proceed in strict chronological order but, rather, focus on pivotal phases that illustrate the amalgamation of cultures and idioms that converge in the crystallization of the rich body of literatures produced in the score of nations that share Spanish as their vehicle of cultural expression. The point of departure will be the rise of modernismo at the end of the 19th century, when the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío became the pilot of the language, moving its center of gravity to Latin America after establishing a direct connection with vital centers of European literature, like France. The second pivotal moment of our journey will take us to the 20th century with figures like César Vallejo, who broke all stereotypes of poetic creation, establishing an idiom whose influence continues to be felt today. Along with his poetic output, we will study that of poets as influential as Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Rosario Castellanos, Alejandra Pizarnik, Federico García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and José Lezama Lima, among other towering names. We will continue our exploration of the poetic traditions of Latin America and Spain by studying the fascinating relationship between the present time and crucial moments from the past, including early manifestations such as the ancient jarchas, Iberian compositions in vernacular romance preserved in Arabic characters, or the unsurpassable anonymous authors of the beautiful medieval ballads that constitute the Romancero, as well as authors of Jewish origin such as don Sem Tob. Another important moment of our trajectory will consist of an examination of the roots and ramifications of realismo mágico, a form of expression that once defined the literary expression of Latin America and later reformulated by subsequent generations of writers. The last phase of the journey will consist of an investigation of the most recent forms of poetic expression as they occur in new forms of communication, from social networks to all kinds of outlets derived from technological sources and platforms. In each of these phases, the study of the poetic canon will have its counterpart in an exploration of the sister genre of the short story.

This seminar will focus on the analysis of some of the fundamental narrative works from the Spanish-speaking world, with a special emphasis on the novella and other forms of short fiction. In our approach, we will explore the multiple cultural and historical connections that have always linked the literary traditions of Latin America and Spain. Chronologically, the works under study will belong to several time periods. Our journey will start with the extraordinary explosion of narrative modes brought about by the authors of the so-called “boom” in the middle of the 20th century, when the contours of magical realism began to take shape and consolidate. Once we finish studying a number of masterpieces written in that mode, we will proceed to the next phase when new forms of expression emerged, studying the multiple connections of Spanish-language authors with world literature and culminating with the revolution brought about by women writers, whose transformation of the canon has crystallized in fascinating new forms of expression. We will finish the semester with an in-depth examination of the current state of affairs in the Spanish-language novel and its complex relationship with other literary traditions in a context of intense transnational, transatlantic, and transcontinental exchange. Works under study will include novellas and other forms of short fiction by María Luisa Bombal, Alejandra Pizarnik, Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Bolaño, César Aira, Alejandro Zambra, Guadalupe Nettel, Cristina Rivera Garza, Roberto Artl, Horacio Quiroga, and Felisberto Hernández, among others.

This seminar will operate as an introduction to the literatures of the Spanish-speaking world, centered on the study of two of its mainstays: the formation of the poetic canon and the tradition of the short story. We will examine the development of both forms of literary expression concurrently, paying attention to the most-important moments in the literary history of Latin America and Spain. In our exploration, we will not proceed in strict chronological order but, rather, focus on pivotal phases that illustrate the amalgamation of cultures and idioms that converge in the crystallization of the rich body of literatures produced in the score of nations that share Spanish as their vehicle of cultural expression. The point of departure will be the rise of modernismo at the end of the 19th century, when the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío became the pilot of the language, moving its center of gravity to Latin America after establishing a direct connection with vital centers of European literature, like France. The second pivotal moment of our journey will take us to the 20th century with figures like César Vallejo, who broke all stereotypes of poetic creation, establishing an idiom whose influence continues to be felt today. Along with his poetic output, we will study that of poets as influential as Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Rosario Castellanos, Alejandra Pizarnik, Federico García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and José Lezama Lima, among other towering names. We will continue our exploration of the poetic traditions of Latin America and Spain by studying the fascinating relationship between the present time and crucial moments from the past, including early manifestations such as the ancient jarchas, Iberian compositions in vernacular romance preserved in Arabic characters, or the unsurpassable anonymous authors of the beautiful medieval ballads that constitute the Romancero, as well as authors of Jewish origin such as don Sem Tob. Another important moment of our trajectory will consist of an examination of the roots and ramifications of realismo mágico, a form of expression that once defined the literary expression of Latin America and later reformulated by subsequent generations of writers. The last phase of the journey will consist of an investigation of the most recent forms of poetic expression as they occur in new forms of communication, from social networks to all kinds of outlets derived from technological sources and platforms. In each of these phases, the study of the poetic canon will have its counterpart in an exploration of the sister genre of the short story.

This course is meant for students who have a solid command of Spanish and are capable of conducting language work at an advanced level. The main purpose of the class is to develop and consolidate a reading capacity that will allow the in-depth study of literary texts in the original language and from all over the Spanish-speaking world. An important segment of the seminar will be devoted to the examination of the most relevant works inscribed in the tradition of so-called “magical realism,” exploring its roots in Africa and the Indigenous cultures of Latin America. This includes fiction by Rosario Castellanos, María Luisa Bombal, Gabriel García Márquez, Cristina Peri Rossi, Alejo Carpentier, and Lydia Cabrera, among others. We will then proceed to examine the connections between the fantastic as a genre and the complexities of politics, both historically and in the most recent literary manifestations. In the course of study, we will also cover fundamental moments of the Latin American poetic tradition from its origins to the present day. Women writers will be one of the main areas of literary analysis, as their productions have resulted in a radical reversal of the canon—as is also the case with LBGTQ+ and Afro-Caribbean authors.