Argentina Today - SPAN-UA 9026 - 4 points
Corequisite: Intensive Intermediate Spanish or Intermediate Spanish II.
Offered in the Spring and the Fall
This class is designed for students who want to perfect their Spanish as they expand their knowledge regarding social and political issues within modern Argentine society. The reading of different texts and viewing of various films throughout the semester will serve to expand lexicon, strengthen grammar and improve the student's rethoric. The objective of this course is that the students familiarize themselves with everyday language of current newspapers and magazines, at the same time as they enter into the world of local culture. To this end, every week the students will analyze and debate a newspaper article or/and an academic text. In addition, every two or three weeks the students will present a written composition of topics covered in class. In the classroom linguistic correction will be emphasized along with listening practice through the use of a wide range of materials and resources: theoretical explanations, comprehension and vocabulary exercises, film viewing, as well as exercises that highlight certain morphological aspects or grammatical usage of Spanish. Classes will be conducted in Spanish.
Sample Syllabus
La Lengua de Buenos Aires - SPAN-UA 9103 - 4 points
Open to students who have completed Advanced Grammar and Composition or enrolled concurrently in Advanced Grammar and Composition.
La lengua de Buenos Aires is an advanced conversation course, which seeks to make students familiar with the most outstanding features of the Spanish of the Rio de la Plata area. It does also work as a map of the local effects of well known global processes. Buenos Aires is justly regarded as a cosmopolitan city, unique in Latin America for its multicultural mélange of European and American cultural influences. Yet Buenos Aires is cosmopolitan in another, deeper sense: as a city, it has been defined by the same global forces that affect and shape London, New York and Shanghai. The course will focus on six problems that can be studied in any major city in the world: tensions around immigration; poverty, social exclusion and its impact in urban life; discrimination and violence in connection to racial, sexual and class difference; drugs and the narco-machine; violence against women and femicide; religious tensions in a modern society. All these social, cultural and political problems are present everywhere, and global in their character. However, they assume peculiar and specific forms in Buenos Aires and Argentina. This tension between a global process and its local forms is what we will explore in the course.
Sample Syllabus