The world is growing increasingly reliant on collecting and analyzing information to help people make decisions. Because of this, the ability to communicate effectively about data is an important component of future job prospects across nearly all disciplines. In this course, students learn the foundations of information visualization and sharpen their skills in communicating using data. Throughout the semester, we explore concepts in decision-making, human perception, color theory and storytelling as they apply to data-driven communication.

Taught in Spanish, this 1-credit course must be taken in combination with CLT 204 Writings and Rewritings: Queering Don Quixote, a close reading of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel in English (see description in cross-listed courses below). SPN 356 supplements CLT 204 through close readings and translation of selected fragments in Spanish, and additional critical literature. SPN 356 is taught once a week (F) within the same time-block as CLT 204 (MW). The combination CLT 204/SPN 356 meets the Spanish major seminar requirement. Enrollment limited to 14.

Topics course. May be repeated once with a different topic. Normally offered both fall and spring semesters.: This course explores the Afro-Cuban world in literature, history and culture through the writings of Fernando Ortiz, Lydia Cabrera, Miguel Barnet, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Nicolás Guillén and Nancy Morejón. Readings in Afro-Cuban religious practice like Regla de Ochá, Regla de Palo and Abakuá are included, as well as examples of Cuban ritual theater in plays by Gerardo Fulleda and Eugenio Hernandez Espinosa. Class discussions and most readings in Spanish.

This course focuses on reviewing communicative skills, especially in spoken and written Portuguese, and is designed to build cultural knowledge and vocabulary. Course content and assignments focus on Brazil through the theme of the four seasons. Materials include short texts, including a young adult novel, music, and visual culture. Taught in Portuguese. Prerequisite: POR 100Y or POR 125 or the equivalent.

Topics course.  Normally offered each fall.: This class will look at how Latin American filmmakers and writers have imagined this region’s place in the post Cold War global configuration since the 1990s. Through the analysis of films from several Latin American Countries, as well as recent literary works by authors from various backgrounds, students will explore cultural production as an alternate means of negotiating conflicts related to globalization, neoliberalism, media and consumer culture, immigration and continuing political instability. Enrollment limited to 14.

Topics course.  Normally offered both fall and spring semesters.: In this seminar we investigate individuals of African origin who lived or travelled in Spain: 17th century painter Juan de Pareja (Velazquez’s slave), whose portrait by Velazquez hangs at the New York Met; Arturo Schomburg, 1920s Afro-American Studies scholar; the 1930s Lincoln Brigade volunteers in the Spanish Civil War: poet Langston Hughes, singer-actor Paul Robeson and nurse Salarla Kea; 20th century migrant workers; and Smith student Lori L. Tharp, author of “Kinky Gazpacho” (2008).

An historical and thematic perspective of literature and culture in the Americas and the Caribbean, from the colonial period until the present time. Topics include Coloniality, indigenous knowledge and the natural world; slavery, piracy and power; and gender, conquest and empire. Prerequisite: SPN 220 or equivalent.  Enrollment limited to 19.

Topics course. Normally offered each fall.: This course examines the medieval understanding of sex and the woman’s body within an urban context. We read medieval texts on love, medicine and women’s sexuality by Iberian and North African scholars. We investigate the ways in which medieval Iberian medical traditions have viewed women’s bodies and defined their health and illness.

Topics course. May be repeated once with a different topic.

Topics course. May be repeated once with a different topic.  Normally offered both fall and spring semesters.: This class investigates questions of contact between peoples and cultures, in Latin American texts and films that tell stories of travel. We analize how the concept of the journey as exploration and learning appears in Latin American culture, configuring identities and negotiating conflicts raised by the transit of people, objects and ideas in the region.