Advanced Spanish Seminar: A Spanish Horror House: Mystery, Aliens, and Conspiracies (SPA435)
Advanced Conversation – Café Español (SPA411)
This advanced course consists of the study of horror stories, mysteries, legends, unexplained events, and conspiracies of Spain and Latin America. This content will be explored through movies, documentaries, short stories, and newspaper articles. Students will naturally expand their working vocabulary, as well as improve their reading, speaking, listening, and writing skills. Students are expected to participate on a daily basis and to come to class prepared to discuss assigned topics. This course is strictly projectbased, and students will be required to use complex verb tenses in presentations, debates, and dialogues, as well as in written assignments. Horror stories by authors such as Emilia Pardo Bazán and Benito Pérez Galdós will be part of the curriculum. For the final project, students will create and solve a crime scene or make a horror movie.
This course is designed for Spanish students interested in advancing their oral proficiency toward fluency in the language. The goal of the course, conducted strictly in Spanish, is to improve the students’ listening and speaking skills in order to effectively communicate with native speakers in various settings. We will discuss topics such as personal relationships, mysteries/paranormal phenomena, immigration, and the media. Additionally, a movie will be played in class after every topic. Students will be expected to lead discussions, make frequent oral presentations, engage in role-play exercises, and debate in Spanish. Most assessments will be oral and will include some sort of personal interview or oral group assessment.
2 CU, 2nd semester, Spanish 3 or Culture and Conversation in the Spanish-Speaking World is a prerequisite, with permission of Mr. Pratt
2 CU, 1st semester, Spanish 3 or Culture and Conversation in the Spanish-Speaking World is a prerequisite, with permission of Mr. Pratt
Advanced Spanish Seminar: Telenovela (SPA436)
2 CU, 2nd semester, Spanish 3 or Culture and Conversation in the Spanish-Speaking World is a prerequisite, with permission of Mr. Pratt The telenovela has become a centerpiece of Latin American culture, with hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. In this advanced seminar course, students will explore the popular form of the telenovela by learning about its origins, formulations, archetypal characters, and cultural impact. This medium will be used as a lens through which to view the complex ways in which race, class, gender, socioeconomic status, and other elements of identity interact in Latin America. Students will also explore how the telenovela has created an intersection between television and other cultural fields such as literature, film, and theater. The course will culminate in a final project, for which students will write, produce, and film their own mini-telenovela. This advanced course will be conducted entirely in Spanish and is intended for students with a strong grasp of grammatical concepts as well as comfort with and a desire to continue working on their verbal and written expression and analysis.
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