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Read article: Silvina Montrul named Marjorie Roberts Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences
Silvina Montrul named Marjorie Roberts Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences
On September 10, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences celebrated the investiture of Silvina Montrul as Marjorie Roberts Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences. The Marjorie Roberts Professorship in Liberal Arts &...
Read article: Prof. Mónica García Blizzard recipient of an International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention for her book
Prof. Mónica García Blizzard recipient of an International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention for her book
Prof. Mónica García Blizzard is the recipient of a 2024 International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention for her book, The White Indians of...
Read article: Prof. Mariselle Meléndez featured in LAS and campus-wide news
Prof. Mariselle Meléndez featured in LAS and campus-wide news
Prof. Mariselle Meléndez has been featured in a number of venues across campus, including an LAS story showcasing faculty in Humanities  (https://las.illinois...
Read article: Brady Hughes staff spotlight in LAS Dean's newsletter
Brady Hughes staff spotlight in LAS Dean's newsletter
Senior Academic Advisor, Brady Hughes, was featured in the most recent LAS Dean's newsletter in a staff spotlight piece that showcases not only his work with Spanish majors and minors but also his recent MA in musicology and his...
Read article: Ann Abbott recipient of OpEd/Public Voices Fellowship
Ann Abbott recipient of OpEd/Public Voices Fellowship
Director of Undergraduate Studies Ann Abbott was selected by the University of Illinois System for the 2024-25 cohort of OpEd/Public Voices Fellowship! It will provide her and 19 other faculty members...

Upcoming Events

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Beyond Bracero, Narcos and Latin Lovers: Latin American and Latinx Film

This course studies the relationships between Latinx and Latin American culture through film.

SPAN 248 - SPRING 2025

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Mexican National Cinema

This course explores how Mexican cinema (19th-21stC) has commented on and participated in major social and national processes such as the Mexican Revolution, the (re)construction of national identity, modernization, as well as the negotiation of changing conceptions of class, gender, and race.

SPAN 326-SPRING 2025

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Realisms in Latin American Cinema

This course will study the various forms of filmic realism that have influenced and surfaced within Latin American cinema including Soviet realism, Italian neorealism, cinema verité, among others.

SPAN 535-SPRING 2025

Picasso's Guernica horse

Strange Worlds

This course studies Spain's literature (18th C - present) that portray seemingly otherworldly, fantastic, and speculative experiences.

SPAN 312 - SPRING 2025

Solana

Against the Grain: A Fantastic Imagination in Spanish Literature and Visual Culture

This course considers the fantastic, grotesque, erotic, and diseased representations of spaces, the natural world, human bodies, cultural beliefs, and the human imagination in Spain's literature and visual culture of the 18th-19th C.

SPAN 463 - SPRING 2025

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Encuentros y Desencuentros: Latin America and Spain, 1898-2025

What have been the political and cultural relations between Spain and Latin America in recent years? From a transatlantic perspective, we will explore key issues in Hispanic culture today through the study of literature, film, art, and music.

SPAN 312 - SPRING 2025

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Global Spain: Between America, Europe, and the Mediterranean

In this course, we will explore the construction of the image of Spain for foreign consumption from the turn of the twentieth century to the present.

SPAN 320 - SPRING 2025

Recuperación de Bahía

Religious Conflict in the Making of Spain, 1500-1700

This course analyzes the creation of memory of religious conflicts in the Spanish Empire through literature of entertainment and their interaction with other political and commercial conflicts during the Early Modern period.

SPAN 310 - SPRING 2025

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Spanish & Entrepreneurship: Languages, Cultures & Communities

Learn the fundamentals of social entrepreneurship and identify opportunities for positive change.

SPAN 332 - SPRING 2025

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Africa in Colonial Latin America: Bodies, Experiences, and Colonial Negotiations

This course examines the dynamics of identity construction by and about black subjects in colonial Spanish America and its intrinsic relations to issues of race, gender, sexuality, spatiality, food and ecology.

SPAN 466 - SPRING 2025

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Las Otras Españas: Counter-hegemonic discourses in contemporary Spanish literature

This course serves as a panoramic introduction to Spanish literatures and cultures from the perspective of non-hegemonic discourses and subjects.

SPAN 465 - FALL 2024

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Global Spain: Between America, Europe, and the Mediterranean

In this course, we will explore the construction of the image of Spain for foreign consumption from the turn of the twentieth century to the present.

SPAN 320 - FALL 2024

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Spanish in the United States

In this course, we will explore the past, present, and future of the many different Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. The main objective is to develop critical and linguistic awareness of the relationship between language, individual, and society.

SPAN 308 - FALL 2024

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Greater Mexico and Migration on Screen

This course explores how cinema produced in the U.S. and Mexico, from the silent period to the contemporary moment has mediated and commented on the presence of Mexicans in what is today the U.S., as well at the migratory experience.

SPAN 295 - FALL 2024

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Race and Nation in Latin American Cinema

This course explores the role of cinema in constructing and mediating ideas about race throughout Latin America in the context of the region's national formations from the early 20th century through the 21st.

SPAN 468 - FALL 2024

Pedro Almodovar

All About Almodóvar: Melodrama, Mothers, Memory and Movidas in the Films of the (Most) Fabulous Spanish Auteur

Who is Pedro Almodóvar and why are his films synonymous with “Spanish” culture? How do his films narrate contemporary Spanish history, disrupt gender norms, challenge traditional Catholic values, irk politicians in both the Left and Right, uphold and deconstruct Hollywood film style, and generally reframe the way Spanish cinema is perceived globally?

SPAN 528 - FALL 2024

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Beginner Basque

This course provides students with basic communication skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in Basque and introduces students to Basque culture and history. This course counts towards the Spanish major and minor. T/TH 3:30-4:50 pm; 3072E Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building Instructor: Maialen Casquete de la Puente

BASQ 401 - FALL 2024

Rising art installation by Teresita Fernandez

From the Slave Ship to the Cruise Ship: Violence & Resistance in the Hispanic Caribbean

This course explores how authors and creators at the edge of empire defy and resist neocolonial gestures and interventions. Students will examine an array of literary and cultural productions from the 19th century to the present, with a special focus on contemporary visual cultures.

SPAN 316 - SPRING 2024

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Introduction to Latin American Cinema

This introductory, graduate-level course on Latin American cinema familiarizes students with the three fundamental areas of expertise that shape scholarship in the field: 1) the techniques of filmic analysis; 2) film theory; and 3) the history of film production in the region from the silent period through contemporary cinema.

SPAN 468 - SPRING 2024

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Beginner/Intermediate Basque

Continuation of BASQ401, with an exhaustive initial overview. Basque is an isolate language spoken in the Basque Country of northern Spain, southern France and the Basque diaspora in Western US and elsewhere. It is unrelated to any modern language. The course may be adapted depending on enrolled students’ needs & interests.

BASQ 402 - SPRING 2024

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Beyond Bracero, Narcos and Latin Lovers: Latin American and Latinx Film

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH, Gen Ed for “Literature and the Arts” and “US Minority Cultures;" This course studies the relationships between Latinx and Latin American culture through exciting films. It focuses on a set of current and relevant topics (migrations, assimilation and integration, ICE, political struggles, globalization, nationalism and transnationalism).

SPAN 248 (LLS 248) - SPRING 2024

Diego Rivera's Gloriosa Victoria

"Tan Cerca de los Estados Unidos": U.S. Interventions in Latin America Through Literature & Visual Culture

This course addresses the conflictive relationship between the United States and Latin America through literature and visual culture. In 1891, Cuban writer José Martí published his essay Nuestra América, referring to Latin America as opposed to the United States and Canada.

SPAN 535 - SPRING 2024

Felipe Galindo, 4th of July from the South Border

Mapping the Borderlands: Border Culture & Migration in the U.S. & the Americas

Span 326 Mapping the Borderlands focuses on how border communities imagine, experience, and coexist in el Norte, the American Southwest, and Greater Mexico. For the queer Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, the U.S.-Mexico border is an open wound: "una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds" (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 25).

SPAN 326 - SPRING 2024