Spanish-American
Culture and Civilization: GoalsSpanish-American
Culture and Civilization: Goals
Main objectives:
- to expose the students to various tenets of Spanish-American civilization that distinguish it from our own culture
- as well as its own diversity from one region–or subculture–to another within the Americas
The primary goal of the course concerns intellectual content as well as linguistic expression. You should be aware that given the demands of learning sophisticated concepts new to the student, some of the readings will be in English with supplemental material in Spanish. You will be expected to conduct class discussion in Spanish. The readings in Spanish are typical of those attempted by intermediate to advanced students. The content material (in English) is similar to that which might be found in a Latin American Studies course or liberal arts classes in various disciplines, especially the social sciences.
The course is organized in a three-fold manner, including a geographic,
historical, and topical
approach.
(1) Geographically we will focus on the four main subcultures: the Meso-american, Caribbean, Andean, and Southern Cone.
(2) Historically, through readings and class discussion we will examine the most common pre-Columbian, colonial, and modern legacies which form contemporary Latin American society. The reading assignments for this part will be in Spanish accompanied by videos in English from The Buried Mirror series.
(3) The majority of the course content will focus on pertinent topics in an attempt to reveal inter- and intra-cultural differences. Namely, these are national development (both political and economic); demographics; ethnicity; religion; and revolution. The topical study includes videos and primary readings in English from the Americas series, as well as introductory readings in Spanish. These topics will introduce us to pertinent concepts, such as dependency theory, liberation theology, import substitution industrialization, etc.
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