An introduction to design, directing, and performance conducted in a combined discussion/workshop format. Students will be exposed to visual methods of interpreting a text. Early class discussions focus on a theoretical exploration of theater as an art form and seek to establish a vocabulary for and understanding of basic theatrical conventions, with readings from Aristotle through Robert Wilson. Students will spend the bulk of the semester testing these theories for themselves, ultimately designing their own performances for two plays.

The Department calls attention to the fact that Special Topics courses may be offered to students on either an individual or group basis.

Students interested in forming a group course on some aspect of Hispanic life and culture are invited to talk over possibilities with a representative of the Department. When possible, this should be done several weeks in advance of the semester in which the course is to be taken.

Fall and spring semesters.

This course offers an examination of how authors and readers grapple with questions of history and narration in postwar Spain. Spanish novelists were often subject to censorship and overt oppression by the Franco dictatorship while they struggled to understand their own history and translate it onto the page. We will study the historical and cultural background of dictatorship and democratic Spain (1940-present), reading novels by authors such as Cela, Matute, Martín Gaite and Cercas that reflect the diversity of modern Spanish literature and its authors.

(RC) A detailed study of the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1967. Although other works written by the Colombian author will also be discussed (stories, essays, reportage, and fragments of other novels), the course will concentrate on the structure, style, motifs, historical and aesthetic context of the masterwork that brought him the Nobel Prize in Literature. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite: SPAN 199, 211 or 212 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students.  Spring semester. Professor Stavans.

A study of Spanish consciousness from the beginning through the Golden Age. Emphasis on the chivalric and picaresque traditions, mystical poetry, sacred and secular drama, and the invention of the novel. Conducted in Spanish.

Requisite:  SPAN 199, 211 or 212, or consent of the instructor.  Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Professor Maraniss.

(Offered as SPAN 236, EUST 232 and FAMS 328.) Once severely constrained by dictator Francisco Franco’s censorship laws and rarely exported beyond the country’s borders, Spanish film has been transformed into an internationally-known cinema in the last decades.  This course offers a critical overview of Spanish film from 1950 to the present, examining how Spain’s culture and society are imagined onscreen by directors such as Berlanga, Erice, Bollaín, and Almodóvar.

This course provides an introduction to the diverse literatures of the Spanish-speaking world over the course of six centuries, from the Middle Ages to the turn of the twentieth century.  Students will learn the tools and critical vocabulary for advanced work reading the canon of Hispanic literatures from Spain, Latin America, and the Caribbean Basin, identifying aesthetic trends and historical periods such as the Renaissance, the Golden Age, the Romantic era, realism and modernism.  The syllabus will include a wide variety of authors of different national, political, and artistic

This course is intended to enhance language skills and share knowledge of local Spanish-speaking communities. Organized around field-based learning, the material, shaped into modules, will connect students with pre-existing community service organizations in Holyoke, Springfield, and other nearby urban centers. Class time will be devoted to understanding the concept of voluntarism in a pluralistic society. Sociological and historical readings on Latinos will provide context. Students will spend approximately three hours a week doing volunteer work in the field.

In this course students will learn how to approach writing as a process.  The emphasis is on writing as a communicative act rather than as a mere language exercise.  As such, emphasis is given to the interaction between the author and the text, the target audience, and the purpose and message of the final product.  In order to develop the necessary skills that good writers should have, the course will focus on expanding vocabulary, exploring rhetorical techniques for organizing information, developing strategies for writing, and characterizing the target audience(s).  At

In this course students will learn how to approach writing as a process.  The emphasis is on writing as a communicative act rather than as a mere language exercise.  As such, emphasis is given to the interaction between the author and the text, the target audience, and the purpose and message of the final product.  In order to develop the necessary skills that good writers should have, the course will focus on expanding vocabulary, exploring rhetorical techniques for organizing information, developing strategies for writing, and characterizing the target audience(s).  At