Spanish

This course aims to look at racialized feminist practices of resistance across contemporary Latin American and Caribbean culture. Beginning with Victoria Santa Cruz’s “Me gritaron negra,” students will navigate how Black and Afro-descendant women throughout Latin America and the Caribbean deploy the negative terms used against them as an act of self-actualized resistance in the 20th and 21st centuries. Through literature, music, film, and visual and performance art, students will explore the many incarnations of the malcriada, chusma, and/or sinvergüenza as dissenting subjects across a...

This sociolinguistics course provides a ‘structural’ (linguistic) and ‘critical’ (sociopolitical) overview of the language practices of various Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. The main objective of the course is to develop critical and linguistic awareness about the relationship among language, individual, and society. Special emphasis will be placed on: historical migration patterns and settlements, language use and attitude patterns, and features of Spanish in contact with English (in person and in the media). CRN: 60345

What does it mean, in social and linguistic terms, to grow up speaking two languages or to learn a second language? This course is an introduction to the fundamental issues in the study of bilingualism as a sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic phenomenon, with special emphasis on bilingual communities in the United States, Spain, and Latin America. Pre-req: SPAN 252. CRN: 64636

Is she a traitor, a mother, or a visionary? From Mesoamerican figures and deities to colonial figures, this course reads the figure of the “woman” against the grain by placing Malinche at the center of our engagement with modern Chicanx literature and art that centralize these figures objects in their own understandings of gender and sexuality. In other words, we follow the trace left behind by Malinche. Throughout the course will also trace key figures, myths, and events throughout Latin American cultural histories through the present, including the legend of La Llorona, the religious...

Let’s problematize what we mean by “feminism.” Let’s complicate ideas of who or what is the modern Latinx woman. From art, Latin Trap, literature, and film this is a course that brings together different versions of “feminism” through a queer Latinx lens. In this course we will intimately engage and extend the categories of body, race, gender, and sexuality through varying representations, narratives, and preconceived notions about the power of the Latinx femme in literary and artistic production in our contemporary present. We still study works by Gloria Anzaldúa, Becky G,...

In this seminar, we will examine the main issues concerning the study of code-switching. Defined as the alternation of two languages within the same discourse, code-switching can be used as an effective tool to aid in the understanding of the linguistic architecture of the bi-/multilingual mind. In this course we will critically evaluate the methods used in code-switching research from a morpho-syntactic point of view, as well as current debates regarding the study of this linguistic phenomenon. Finally, this course will provide you with the analytical tools and critical...