A communication-based approach to using the Spanish language and learning about Spanish-speaking communities and cultures, this course emphasizes communication through extensive oral practice in class in order to provide students with an immersion experience. Strives for mastery of complex grammatical structures and continues working on writing, listening, and reading skills to provide the necessary linguistic and cultural tools to communicate about current social issues.

Emphasis on written expression in Spanish through frequent assignments emphasizing difficult grammatical structures or idiomatic usages, sentence and paragraph structure, making smooth transitions, writing the short essay, writing descriptions, engaging in personal or business correspondence, analyzing texts, doing library research, and drafting and completing research papers. Students will comment on each other's work in the classroom and/or via the use of email or Web sites and will practice techniques of self-editing and self-criticism.

This course will equip students of Spanish with a variety of skills that prepare them for upper-division courses. Specific areas of study will include introduction to literary genres and movements; practice in critical reading and writing; study of figures of speech, rhetoric, and style; presentation of oral reports; use of library resources. In addition, students acquire basic knowledge of the geography, history, and culture of the Hispanic world.

This course will equip students of Spanish with a variety of skills that prepare them for upper-division courses. Specific areas of study will include introduction to literary genres and movements; practice in critical reading and writing; study of figures of speech, rhetoric, and style; presentation of oral reports; use of library resources. In addition, students acquire basic knowledge of the geography, history, and culture of the Hispanic world.

This survey course will review the complex interaction of gender and violence as a personal and institutional issue in Spain from Medieval times to the present. What are the ideological and sociocultural constructs that sustain and perpetuate violence against women? What are the forms of resistance women have put into play? Among the texts, we will study short stories by Lucanor (thirteenth century) and María de Zayas (seventeenth century), song by Bebé and movie by Boyaín (twentieth century), contemporary news (twenty-first century), and laws (from the thirteenth century to the present).

This course offers a broad introduction to the history, politics and aesthetics of Spanish cinema through its most iconic films. We address the innovations of surrealism, neo-realism, and postmodernism as well as Hollywood-style commercial genres. The course also familiarizes students with the basic terminology, concepts and approaches of film studies in Spanish. Pedro Almodóvar, Luis Buñuel, Isabel Coixet and other directors included.

What is a thing? What is stuff? Water bottles, bread, trash, relics, photos, dirt, a broken printer, your favorite socks... Where do they come from and where are they going? In this course we'll gain an understanding of the political, historical, spatial, and affective agency of objects. We'll study how artists, writers, collectors, hoarders, migrants, and things of modern-day Latin America, Spain, and U.S.-border areas engage with the inanimate things around us.

In this course we will read and discuss a group of short stories written by contemporary female, queer and trans Latin American authors. These stories deal with (among other weird feelings and states) the uncanny, the unsettling and the horror of daily life as well as processes of becoming, embodiment and disidentification. This course considers the intersections of identity and imagination, race, gender, and class. Special attention is given to the way in which these writings depict oppression and resilience and how they reinvent the Latin American short story writing tradition.

This course surveys the major geographic regions of the world in terms of environmental features and resource distributions, economic mainstays, population characteristics, cultural processes, social relationships, and patterns of urbanization and industrial growth. In addition to these topical foci, we use various sub-fields of geography to animate different regions. This approach provides a sense of depth while we also pursue a breadth of knowledge about the world.

Using regional case studies from across the world, this course examines some of the causes and consequences of human-induced environmental changes. The course explores the fundamental relationships and processes involved in human-environmental interactions; the various impacts that humans have had over time upon soils, water, flora, fauna, landforms, and the atmosphere; and possible alternative development strategies that could create a balance between human needs and environmental sustainability