Courses

We tell stories for many reasons: to entertain; to seduce; to complain; to think. This course draws upon the literatures and cultures of the romance languages to explore the role of narrative in our construction and understanding of the world.

Full details for ROMS 1102 - FWS: The Craft of Storytelling

What is a culture, and how do we know one when we see it?  This course draws upon the histories and texts of French, Spanish, Italian, and/or Portuguese speaking worlds to discuss issues of identity, difference, politics, place, and community.

Full details for ROMS 1108 - FWS:Cultural Identities; Cultural Differences

What kind of information do images - in photography, painting, and/or film - convey?  What kind of impact do they have on the minds and the bodies of their audiences?  This course foregrounds the role of visual culture in the societies where Spanish, French, Portuguese, and/or Italian is spoken, and it asks students to dwell upon how visual material interacts with spoken and written language.

Full details for ROMS 1109 - FWS: Image and Imagination

Some of the most important and intriguing thinkers, from the Middle Ages to postmodernity, have done their thinking in the romance languages.  This course explores a body of work that would be called philosophical by some, theoretical by others, and that, beyond these names, struggles to articulate fundamental concepts, problems, discourses, and situations.

Full details for ROMS 1113 - FWS: Thinking and Thought

What allows us to make assumptions about people based on the way they speak or dress? How can we understand the deeper meaning of a fairy tale or an episode of The Simpsons? What does macaroni and cheese mean, and why is it not on the menu at most upscale Manhattan eateries? This seminar introduces semiotics, the study of signs and the meaning-bearing sign systems they form; sign systems that include not only human language but also literature, painting, sculpture, film, music, dance and also such aspects of popular culture as advertising, fashion, food, and television, to name just a few. The diversity of semiotic systems provides many possibilities for thinking and writing critically about the world we live in.

Full details for ROMS 1114 - FWS: Semiotics

Full details for ROMS 1115 - FWS:Literature and Medicine: Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean

When sugar "was king," that is, when it was valued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as we might value petroleum today, European nations went to war in order to possess the sugar producing islands in the Caribbean. Sugar production, slave labor, and the transatlantic trade that they generated were crucial for European empire building and the creation of the enormous wealth that, in comparison with earlier historical periods, rapidly revolutionized agriculture, nutrition, industry, labor, and free trade; racialized Caribbean peoples; and gave rise to transatlantic debates on freedom, abolitionism, and humanitarian philanthropy. Readings include A. Stuart, Sugar in the Blood, S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins. Films include, Gutiérrez Alea's The Last Supper and M. Kalatozov's I am Cuba.

Full details for ROMS 3010 - Sweetness: How Sugar Built the Modern World

Marx, never reading Freud, produced analysis of ideology and fetishism as class struggle; Freud, barely mentioning Marx, produced critique of socialism and communism. Freudo-Marxism began 1920s: Austria/Germany (Adler, Gross, Reich); Russia/USSR Bakhtin Circle (Vološinov). Subsequently: Fromm, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Fanon, C. L. R. James, Lacan, Althusser, Timpanaro, Deleuze & Guattari, Derrida, Castoriadis, Kofman, Karatani, Žižek, Kordella, Butler—across frontiers. Recent titles: The Capitalist Unconscious (Tomsic), The Invention of the Symptom (Bruno), Marxism and Psychoanalysis (Pavon-Cuellar), Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present (Löwy), Marx and Freud in Latin American Politics, Psychology, and Religion in Times of Terror (Bosteels), The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make (Matory). We begin with Marx and Freud.

Full details for ROMS 4255 - Freudo-Marxism: Theory and Praxis

This course asks how Renaissance lyric poetry (including Petrarch, Labé, Ronsard, Shakespeare, Wroth) negotiates questions of gender through poetic innovation and, just as often, through the use of poetic commonplaces. We will read this poetry in conversation with modern and contemporary theory (including Cixous, Sedgwick, Ngai, Berlant) to help us understand Renaissance lyric's particular fascination with women's bodies. We will ask how male poets' cliché-ridden poems about women offer us ways to think about the persistence and flexibility of misogynist tropes. We will also ask how feminist and queer theory—as well as female poets' responses to their male predecessors and contemporaries—variously diagnose, subvert, and internalize those tropes. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ROMS 4655 - Female Complaints: Gender in Early Modern Lyric and Modern Theory

This practicum is designed to better enable the TAs to meet the needs of their students in the understanding and acquisition of the linguistic forms, notions, and functions covered in their course.

Full details for ROMS 5080 - Pedagogy Practicum

Designed to give insight into how to formulate projects, conduct research, and publish one's work, the colloquium offers a venue for faculty-graduate student dialogue in a collegial, intellectual setting.  Meetings are biweekly, 2-3 hours, and are open to all students and faculty in Romance Studies, but required for first year students in the program.  Each meeting, two faculty members will be invited to discuss their scholarship and also a short text of their choice, to be distributed beforehand.

Full details for ROMS 6100 - Romance Studies Colloquium

Marx, never reading Freud, produced analysis of ideology and fetishism as class struggle; Freud, barely mentioning Marx, produced critique of socialism and communism. Freudo-Marxism began 1920s: Austria/Germany (Adler, Gross, Reich); Russia/USSR Bakhtin Circle (Vološinov). Subsequently: Fromm, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Fanon, C. L. R. James, Lacan, Althusser, Timpanaro, Deleuze & Guattari, Derrida, Castoriadis, Kofman, Karatani, Žižek, Kordella, Butler—across frontiers. Recent titles: The Capitalist Unconscious (Tomsic), The Invention of the Symptom (Bruno), Marxism and Psychoanalysis (Pavon-Cuellar), Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present (Löwy), Marx and Freud in Latin American Politics, Psychology, and Religion in Times of Terror (Bosteels), The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make (Matory). We begin with Marx and Freud.

Full details for ROMS 6255 - Freudo-Marxism: Theory and Praxis

This course asks how Renaissance lyric poetry (including Petrarch, Labé, Ronsard, Shakespeare, Wroth) negotiates questions of gender through poetic innovation and, just as often, through the use of poetic commonplaces. We will read this poetry in conversation with modern and contemporary theory (including Cixous, Sedgwick, Ngai, Berlant) to help us understand Renaissance lyric's particular fascination with women's bodies. We will ask how male poets' cliché-ridden poems about women offer us ways to think about the persistence and flexibility of misogynist tropes. We will also ask how feminist and queer theory—as well as female poets' responses to their male predecessors and contemporaries—variously diagnose, subvert, and internalize those tropes. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for ROMS 6655 - Female Complaints: Gender in Early Modern Lyric and Modern Theory

What gives contemporary poetry and poetics its resonance and value? What are its dominant features, audiences, and purposes? What does 21st-century poetry's environment look like, and how does it situate itself among other genres, discourses, disciplines, media? How would we describe its ambient noise and how does that noise shape, inform, inflect its particular concerns and motivated forms? How are we to understand its relation to the pivotal developments of our time? This seminar will explore these and related questions in a range of works from the past two decades that open onto the rich interplay of contemporary poetry and poetics with questions especially of language, aesthetics, and politics. 

Full details for ROMS 6860 - Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

Full details for FREN 1108 - FWS:Monstrous Forms: Wild Men and Wicked Women

FREN 1210-FREN 1220 is a two-semester sequence.  FREN 1210 is the first half of the sequence designed to provide a thorough grounding in French language and an introduction to intercultural competence.  French is used in contextualized, meaningful activities to provide practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing.  Development of analytical skills for grammar leads students toward greater autonomy as language learners.  Students develop their writing skills by writing and editing compositions.  Readings are varied and include literary texts.  Daily preparation and active participation are required.

Full details for FREN 1210 - Elementary French

FREN 1230 is an all-skills course designed to improve oral communication, listening comprehension, and reading ability, to establish a groundwork for correct writing, and to provide a substantial grammar review. The approach in the course encourages the student to see the language within the context of its culture.

Full details for FREN 1230 - Continuing French

This intermediate-level course is designed for students who want to focus on their speaking and writing skills. Emphasis is placed on strengthening of grammar skills, expansion of vocabulary and discourse levels to increase communicative fluency and accuracy. The course also provides continued reading and listening practice as well as development of effective language learning strategies.

Full details for FREN 2090 - French Intermediate Composition and Conversation I

This advanced-intermediate course is highly recommended for students planning to study abroad as it aims to develop the writing and speaking skills needed to function in a French speaking university environment. A comprehensive review of fundamental and advanced grammatical structures is integrated with the study of selected texts (short stories, literary excerpts, poems, articles from French periodicals, videos) all chosen for thematic or cultural interest. Students write weekly papers, participate in class discussions of the topics at hand, and give at least one oral presentation in class.

Full details for FREN 2095 - French Intermediate Composition and Conversation II

This course, designed to follow FREN 2095, introduces students to an array of literary and visual material from the French and Francophone world.  It aims to develop students' proficiency in critical writing and thinking, as well as presenting students with the vocabulary and tools of literary and visual analysis.  Each section of FREN 2310 will have a different focus-for example, colonialism and the other, or the importance of women and sexual minorities in French and Francophone history, performance in literature and film, or image and narrative-but all sections of FREN 2310 will emphasize through writing assignments and in-class discussions, the development of those linguistic and conceptual tools necessary for cultural and critical fluency.

Full details for FREN 2310 - Introduction to French and Francophone Literature and Culture

In the turbulent and violent years from 1789 to 1815, France experienced virtually every form of government known to the modern world. This course explores the rapidly changing political landscape of this extraordinary period as well as the evolution of Revolutionary culture (the arts, theater, songs, fashion, the cult of the guillotine, attitudes towards gender and race). Whenever possible, we will use texts and images produced by the Revolutionaries themselves.

Full details for FREN 2860 - The French Revolution

Part theory, part textual analysis, and part creative writing, this course aims to help students develop a richer, more nuanced understanding and command of both the spoken and written language. As students refine their understanding of style and learn techniques for characterizing stylistic varieties, they apply these concepts both to the reading of a singular (and yet very plural) literary text. Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style, and to the writing of new exercices de style of their own. We also consider the relevance of stylistics to translation and of translation to Queneau's text.  Seminar-style participation in class discussions and activities is expected.

Full details for FREN 3120 - French Stylistics

This course is designed to familiarize students with works from the Renaissance, the Classical period, and the Enlightenment, as well as the cultural and historical context in which these texts are created, reflecting a dynamic period of significant change for France. Texts by such authors as Rousard, du Bellay, Montaigne, Molière, Marquerite de Navarre, Corneille, Diderot, de Lafayette, Racine, Perrault, Rousseau. Students may read texts in the original languages or in translation.

Full details for FREN 3220 - Readings in Early Modern French Literature and Culture

Modern capitalism is intimately connected to the ethics of play.  Through French and Francophone literature, this course explores a host of capitalist players and the vexed moral questions they raise from casino gamblers and roulette addicts to bankers who invented speculative finance by domesticating fortune through probability, a middle-class founded on ruinous debts, and hustlers who create an informal economy in order to make their own luck in the capitalist game.  Readings may include: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Guitry, Mabanckou, Carrere, among others.

Full details for FREN 3295 - Bankers, Gamblers, Hustlers

The concept of "intellectual" - the writer or scholar who takes a political commitment - was born in France at the end of the nineteenth century.  From the Dreyfus Affaire to the recent polemics on French "identity," passing through Vichy, the Algerian War and May 68, intellectuals established a symbiotic relationship between culture and politics, becoming a sort of national brand, object of both admiration and contempt outside of the country.  The aim of this course is to revisit some crucial moments of this history, focusing on different attempts to define the nature and function of the intellectual, from Emile Zola to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Simone de Beavoir to Michel Foucault.

Full details for FREN 3460 - Intellectuals: A French History

This course will offer an overview of theoretical and historical responses to bodily and cognitive difference.  What was the status of people with (dis)abilities in the past, when they were called monsters, freaks, abnormal?  How are all of these concepts related, and how have they changed over time?  How have we moved from isolation and institutionalization towards universal design and accessibility as the dominant concepts relative to (dis)ability?  Why is this shift from focusing on individual differences as a negative attribute to reshaping our architectural and more broadly social constructions important to everyone?  Authors to be studied include: Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Lennard Davis, Tobin Siebers, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, and Jasbir Puar.

Full details for FREN 3520 - (Dis)ability Studies: A Brief History

In the age of smartphones and Facebook, the competing claims made on our attention only seem to be multiplying. This course is an opportunity to think about and to enact certain practices of attentiveness and concentration, drawing largely from religious, literary, artistic, philosophical and anthropological sources. We'll be trying various kinds of exercises - from reading poems and looking at paintings to eating more slowly - as we read about the ways in which our seneses reach out to the world, and as we think together about how technology may be used in ways that are not, strictly speaking, technological. This course is for students at all levels, from all backgrounds, graduate and undergraduate, with the understanding that we all need an excuse to slow down and observe the world - and ourselves - a little more carefully.

Full details for FREN 3540 - On Paying Attention

For dozens of millennia before COVID 19, humans lived with epidemics and contagious diseases.  Plagues occurred throughout history, and, as we all know too well, viruses do exist.  But, until very recently, literary descriptions (often tied to religious considerations and philosophical determinations) also played a central role in the way population faced and envisioned epidemics.  Moreover, the notion of contagion is not limited to the medical sphere: fear, ideas, and cultural forms are apt to become contagious, in this class, we will focus on the representation of epidemics in modern French and ancient Greek literary texts, ranging from Homer and Sophocies to Maupassant, Camus, Guibert, or Cixous.  In a comparative way, we'll also interrogate other key texts, from authors such as Boccaccio or Mary  Shelley.

Full details for FREN 3655 - Epidemics, Plagues, Contagions

This course will introduce students to the contemporary ecofeminist theories which are being developed in the francophone world today in parallel with the analysis of different case studies, using literary, philosophical, scientific French and Francophone works.  The course seeks to look at some of the engendered frameworks that have led to political, sociological and ecological impasses and explores how solutions to ethical, environmental and economical problems may require a feminist perspective.  The goal of the course is to open a dialogue between these works, as they represent, symbolize, translate the so-called "universal" knowledge of the Western World and the emerging "situated knowledges of the "Other Non Western World."

Full details for FREN 3750 - Ecofeminisms and Wonder Stories in the Francophone World

The Second World War and the Occupation of France by German forces had a traumatic impact on the nation's identity. We will examine the way France has tried to deal with this conflicted period through a series of films that each deal, directly or indirectly with the major questions posed by history to French "memory" of the Occupation. What was the role of collaboration, resistance, anti-Semitism, of writers and intellectuals during this traumtic period? How has film helped to define and re-shape the ways in which France has come to terms with its conflicted past?

Full details for FREN 3840 - Occupied France Through Film

Guided independent study of special topics.

Full details for FREN 4190 - Special Topics in French Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for FREN 4290 - Honors Work in French

The course will propose a parallel reading of some of the most famous texts of romantic literature with texts less known in order to develop and challenge both the canon of literary history but also to extend the field of romantic studies beyond purely literary concerns and geographies. Taking as a starting point Harold Bloom's famous definition of Romanticism as "the internalization of romance, particularly of the quest" we propose to scrutinize some of these canonical works. Texts to be read could include Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir, Germaine de Staël's Corinne ou l'Italie, Chateaubriand's Atala, Flora Tristan PéIrégrinations d'une noir, George Sand's Indiana, Suzanne Voilquin, Mémoires d une fille du peuple en Egypte, Louise Michel's L'ère nouvelle.

Full details for FREN 4745 - Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests

Confined to the figure of the "care-giver," the concept of care has long been seen as apolitical.  This course explores African aesthetic works in the light of recent debates that have taken "care" seriously as an ethical, philosophical, and political category, one with the potential to disrupt conventions conceptions of the modern political subject.  In addition to being deeply entangled with questions of race, gender, and class.  African works by Traore, N'Diaye, and others, are examined through a host of different philosophical lenses, from the bioethical concerns with reproductive rights and the issue of abortion (Gilligan; Butler), to the tradition of "cura" which extends from Seneca to Kierkegaard, to the centrality of care in articulating an "embodied citizenship" (Fleury; ubuntu).

Full details for FREN 6015 - The Politics of Care in African Literature

This course will explore the ways in which Michel Foucault's oeuvre transitions from a concern with sovereignty to a preoccupation with biopolitics. Foucault's early work (one understands that there is no absolute Foucaultian division into "sovereignty" and "biopolitics"), such as "Madness and Civilization," attends to the structure, the construction and the force of the institution – the birth of asylum, the prison, while his later career takes up the question of, for want of a better term, "political efficiency." That is, Foucault offers a critique of sovereignty insofar as sovereignty is inefficient (neither the sovereign nor sovereign power can be everywhere; certainly not everywhere it needs or wants to be; ubiquity is impossible, even/especially for a project such as sovereignty) while biopower is not. Biopower marks this recognition; in place of sovereignty biopower "devolves" to the individual subject the right, always an intensely political phenomenon, to make decisions about everyday decisions – decisions about health, sexuality, "lifestyle." In tracing the foucaultian trajectory from sovereignty to biopower we will read the major foucaultian texts – "Madness and Civilization," "Birth of the Prison," "History of Sexuality" as well as the various seminars where Foucault works out important issues.

Full details for FREN 6212 - Michel Foucault: Sovereignty to BioPolitics

This seminar will study the problem of transmission in psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on its stakes for political history and theory. Freud's Moses and Monotheism addresses the unconscious and intersubjective dimensions of the act that founds a people, which "imprints" itself on the people in ways that exceed the framework of allegiance. "How", he asks of Moses, "did one single man come to stamp his people with its definite character and determine its fate for millennia to come?" This transmission is further remarkable in being non-linear, discontinuous, distorted by repression, skipping many generations and crossing continents, but imposing itself nonetheless. My hypothesis is that Freud's argument might shed light on one of the central problems of political theory: the status of what Rousseau calls "the act by which a people is a people. "The act as psychoanalysis understands it is not something we can know, interpret, or anticipate, but something by which we are "struck" both psychically and in the body, where it leaves its traces or impressions. What then is involved in being "struck" by the act of another, and how might it help us to understand the stakes of the act for those who receive it? What role do the unconscious and the body play in the subjectivation of the people and the transmission of its legacy? We will read psychoanalytic texts alongside works of political theory by Rousseau, Marx, CLR James, Du Bois, Arendt, Derrida, Rancière, Zizek, and Badiou.

Full details for FREN 6240 - Psychoanalysis and Historical Transmission

Guided independent study for graduate students.

Full details for FREN 6390 - Special Topics in French Literature

This course will propose a parallel reading of some of the most famous texts of romantic literature with the field of romance studies beyond purely literary concerns and geographies.  Taking as a starting point Harold Bloom;s famous definition of Romancticism as "the internalization of romance, particularly of the quest we propose to scrutinize some of these canonical works.  Texts will be read could include Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir, Germaine de Stael's Corinne ou I'Italle, Chateaubriand's Atala, Flora Tristan Perregrinations d'une noir, George Sand's Indiana, Suzanne Voilquin, Memories d une fille du peuple on Egypts Louise Michel's L'ere nouvelle.

Full details for FREN 6745 - Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests

This introductory course provides a thorough grounding in all the language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with practice in small groups.

Full details for ITAL 1110 - Elementary Italian In Rome I

This introductory course provides a thorough grounding in all the language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with practice in small groups.

Full details for ITAL 1120 - Elementary Italian In Rome II

ITAL 1201 is a fast-paced, introductory-level course, designed for students with no previous knowledge of Italian.  Students will be guided in developing four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in the context of everyday topics (school, housing, travel personal preferences, simple exchanges about past, future and possible events, etc.).  They will also be introduced to culturally acceptable modes of oral and written communication in Italian, some fundamentals of Italian history, and select current social and political issues.

Full details for ITAL 1201 - Italian I

This is an all-skills course designed to improve speaking and reading ability, establish a groundwork for correct writing, and provide a substantial grammar review.

Full details for ITAL 2110 - Italian Intermediate Composition and Conversation I in Rome

This course provides a review of composition, reading, pronunciation, and grammar review, as well as guided practice in conversation.  It emphasizes the development of accurate and idiomatic expression in the language.

Full details for ITAL 2130 - Italian Intermediate Composition and Conversation II in Rome

An intermediate-level course that aims to further develop intercultural, reading, listening, speaking, and writing abilities.   Students will be guided in perfecting their communications skills, improving their cultural proficiency, and developing a critical eye toward printed and visual material drawn from literature, history, politics, arts in the Italophone world.  Conversation skills will be practiced in daily discussions and in individual or group projects and presentations.  A variety of written assignments will help students increase the range, accuracy, and stylistic appropriateness of their writing.  Review of  select grammar topics is part of this course, as is reading parts of contemporary novels.

Full details for ITAL 2201 - Italian III

This course will introduce students to sustained study of one Italian masterpiece (a literary, philosophical, historical, or scientific work, or a major achievement in the visual, performance, or media arts).

Full details for ITAL 2240 - One Italian Masterpiece I

Italy is known for many things -- its history, its architecture and art, its food, and its cinema and literature.  It is also known as a land of mystery, of baroque politics, secret societies, illicit books, and murder.  In this course we will examine the genre of the Italian mystery across the 20th and 21st centuries in novels, short stories, and film in order to probe the features of one of Italy's most important and overlooked genres.

Full details for ITAL 2290 - Italian Mysteries

This course serves as an introduction to the close reading of, and critical engagement with, a range of sources from various periods of Italian literary and cultural history.  In fact, since Italy doesn't really cohere as a political entity until late in the nineteenth century, this course could just as easily be called Perspectives in Pre-Italian Culture.  The questions of perspective-of who's looking, what's being looked at, and what we're  looking through-will haunt our readings from sources as varied as Dante's Commedia, the reception history of St. Francis of Assisi, medieval visionary women, Michelangelo's love lyrics, the novel (e.g. Moravia), the short story (e.g. Celati), film, and political philosophy.  We'll pay special attention to the way in which desire, pleasure, excess, and resistance structure the articulation of Italian-or more local, frequently urban-identities, and we'll attempt too grapple with how, even as we get a kind of perspective on Italy, Italy always looks back at us with questions, desires, and a gaze of its own.

Full details for ITAL 2900 - Perspectives in Italian Culture

Guided independent study of special topics.

Full details for ITAL 4190 - Special Topics in Italian Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for ITAL 4290 - Honors in Italian Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for ITAL 4300 - Honors in Italian Literature

Guided independent study for graduate students.

Full details for ITAL 6390 - Special Topics in Italian Literature

In this course, students work on their ability to speak, write, read, and understand contemporary Polish. Students will also develop their intercultural competency. The instructor uses communicative language teaching with emphasis on structured input. Students use the textbook and workbook "Hurra! Po polsku 1" supplemented by Polish-English chapter dictionaries. This class covers chapters 0-9. If a student is not sure of his or her language level, he or she can contact the Polish instructor, Ewa Bachminska, at eb583@cornell.edu.

Full details for POLSH 1131 - Elementary Polish I

Eastern Europe has contributed unique films to the global cinema. In this class, students will watch, discuss, and write about a variety of movies: Oscar winners and lesser-known films, thrillers and comedies. Our films come from Poland, Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan etc. In addition to learning film terminology, students will have the opportunity to become acquainted with the cultures, history, and geography of Eastern Europe. They will write film reviews, do research on the topic of their choice, and write a research assignment. All class films are available for streaming through Blackboard for students to watch them in their free time.

Full details for POLSH 1301 - FWS: East European Film

In this course, students continue working on their ability to speak, write, read, and understand contemporary Polish.  Students will also enhance their intercultural competency.  The instructor uses communicative language teaching with emphasis on structured input.  Students use the textbook and workbook "Hurra!  Po polsku 2" supplemented by Polish-English chapter dictionaries.  This class covers chapters 1-10.  If a student is not sure of his or her language level, he or she can contact the Polish instructor, Ewa Bachminska, at eb583@cornell.edu.

Full details for POLSH 2033 - Intermediate Polish I

A full-year introductory course intended for students with no knowledge of Portuguese and with limited or no knowledge of Spanish. Emphasis is placed upon the development of the fundamental communication skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Full details for PORT 1210 - Elementary Brazilian Portuguese I

PORT 2010-2020 is a full year course intended for students who have already taken the first level of Portuguese, or as an intensive introductory course for those who are native/near native speakers of Spanish.  An all-skills course with particular emphasis on Brazilian Portuguese spoken within the contexts of its culture, it presents a fast-paced review focused on improving grammatical accuracy, pronunciation and on enriching vocabulary.

Full details for PORT 2010 - Intermediate Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers I

While building language proficiency and accuracy through communicative activities, the course encourages students to actively interact with one another. The instructor facilitates communication and provides feedback and language learning strategies that guide students to take responsibility for their own learning and become active participants in the process. The course also introduces students to the many peoples and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world, prompting them to make comparisons with their own culture. Additionally, lectures provide students with opportunities to reflect on relevant grammar topics and assist students in developing language learning strategies.

Full details for SPAN 1120 - Elementary Spanish: Review and Continuation

While building language proficiency and accuracy through communicative activities, the course encourages students to actively interact with one another. The instructor facilitates communication and provides feedback and language learning strategies that guide students to take responsibility of their own learning and become active participants in the process. The course also introduces students to the many peoples and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world, prompting them to make comparisons with their own culture. Additionally, lectures provide students with opportunities to reflect on relevant grammar topics and assist students in developing language learning strategies. Class discussions are conducted entirely in Spanish. After 1210 students may take SPAN 1120 (fall) or SPAN 1220 (spring).

Full details for SPAN 1210 - Elementary Spanish I

The goal of this low-intermediate course is to achieve a higher level of comprehension as well as to advance oral and written expression in a cultural context. Classes are in Spanish and the language is actively used in communicative and creative activities. Students engage in linguistic and literary analysis of texts to acquire new vocabulary, complete analytical exercises, and develop reading strategies. Students continue developing writing skills through composition, and review grammatical structures independently with some clarification by the instructor as needed. After this course, students may take SPAN 2000, SPAN 2070, or SPAN 2090.

Full details for SPAN 1230 - Continuing Spanish

This low-intermediate course expands Heritage students' confidence and competence in Spanish by providing opportunities to build upon the conversational skills they have. Through literary texts, other readings, music, films and the visual arts students broaden their vocabulary, improve grammatical accuracy, develop writing skills and enrich their understanding of the cultures of the Spanish-speaking world. The heritage student grew up speaking Spanish and finished high school in the U.S. 

Full details for SPAN 1250 - Spanish for Heritage Speakers I

Designed to expand bilingual Heritage students' knowledge of Spanish by providing them with ample opportunities to develop and improve each of the basic language skills, with a particular focus on writing vocabulary. The heritage student has at least one parent of Hispanic origin and grew up speaking Spanish at home; s/he also finished high school here in the US. After this course, students may take SPAN 2095.

Full details for SPAN 2000 - Spanish for Heritage Speakers

Provides a conversational grammar review, with dialogues, debates, compositions, and authentic readings on health-related themes. Special attention is given to relevant cultural differences and how cultural notions may affect medical care and communication between doctor and patient. The objective of 2070 is to provide practice in real-life application, such as taking a medical history, calming a patient, and how to speak to a Hispanic patient in a culturally acceptable manner. After this course, a student may take or SPAN 2095.

Full details for SPAN 2070 - Intermediate Spanish for the Medical and Health Professions

This intermediate course develops accurate and idiomatic oral and written expression in a cultural context. Students achieve a higher level of syntactical and lexical competence through reading and discussing literary texts and viewing films. Particular emphasis is on writing and editing academic essays with peer/instructor feedback. Classes are in Spanish and the language is actively used in oral presentations and communicative, creative, and critical-thinking activities. Students review grammar structures on their own, with clarification and support of the instructor. After this course, students may take SPAN 2095.

Full details for SPAN 2090 - Intermediate Spanish I (Composition and Conversation)

This advanced-intermediate course is designed to prepare students for study abroad and is required for any Cornell CASA program in a Spanish speaking country.  It also serves as an entryway into the major, and advanced-level courses. Students study stylistics, analyze and discuss texts, view films, and acquire advanced reading strategies. Continued emphasis is on writing and editing academic essays with peer and instructor feedback. Classes are in Spanish, and the language is actively used in oral presentations and communicative, creative, and critical-thinking activities. Students review grammar structures on their own, although the instructor may clarify as needed.

Full details for SPAN 2095 - Spanish Intermediate Composition and Conversation II

Introductory survey of modern Spanish literature. Students develop their analytical skills and learn basic literary concepts such as genre (drama, lyric, short story, and novel) and style (romanticism, realism, etc.) as well as male/female perspectives and the translation of literature to film language. The survey introduces students to Spain's cultural complexity through readings of works by authors representative of its diverse linguistic and literary traditions.

Full details for SPAN 2140 - Modern Spanish Survey

Readings and discussion of representative texts of the 19th and 20th centuries from various regions of Latin America. Among the authors considered are Sarmiento, Hernández, Martí, Darío, Agustini, Cortázar, García Márquez, Poniatowska, and Valenzuela.

Full details for SPAN 2150 - Contemporary Latin American Survey

This course explores major texts and themes of the Hispanic tradition from the 11th to the 17th centuries. We will examine general questions on literary analysis and the relationship between literature and history around certain events, such as medieval multicultural Iberia, the creation of the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492; the encounter between the Old and the New Worlds; the 'opposition' of high and low in popular culture, and of the secular and the sacred in poetry and prose. Readings may be drawn from medieval short stories and miracle collections; chivalric romances, Columbus, Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, among others.

Full details for SPAN 2170 - Early Modern Iberian Survey

This course, which is required for the major, is designed to help the learner develop increased accuracy and sophistication in writing in Spanish for academic purposes and continued oral practice in Spanish. To this end, there will be ample writing and revising practice, with a focus on specific grammatical and lexical areas, customized to the needs of the students enrolled in the course.  All writing will be based on a particular theme relating to Latin America with a focus on film, literary texts, newspaper readings and conducting an interview.

Full details for SPAN 2180 - Advanced Spanish Writing Workshop

This course offers a broad introduction to Iberian cultures from the Middle Ages to the present.  Focusing on three main themes-space, culture, and everyday life-our main objective throughout the term will be to explore different perspectives unique to the ever-evolving place we now call "Spain." The first half of the term will concentrate on aspects of space, culture, and everyday life in the medieval and early modern context, while the second half of the term will examine the same themes, questions, and concepts but from a modern and contemporary point of view using a wide variety of disciplines and media to explore them, from history, newspapers and music, to painting, film, and television.

Full details for SPAN 2235 - Perspectives on Spain in Spanish

Music and dance cultures have been central topics of study in the development of Chicano studies, Puerto Rican studies, and Latino studies in general. From Americo Paredes to Frances Aparicio and from Jose Limon to Deborah Pacini-Hernandez, focusing on music and embodied culture through sound has allowed scholars to engage the wide variety of cultural experiences of the different ethnic groups usually described with the term "Latino". Taking this scholarship as a point of departure, this class offers a survey of Latino music in the U.S. as a window into the political, cultural and social that struggles Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, Colombians, and Central Americans have gone through while becoming hyphenated (Eg. Mexican-American, Cuban American, etc) or not, and into how these processes have continually challenged and enriched mainstream notions of "American identity".

Full details for SPAN 2330 - Latino Music in the US

This 1-credit optional course aims to expand the students' vocabulary, and advance their speaking and reading skills as well as enhance their knowledge and deepen their cultural understanding by supplementing non-language courses throughout the University.

Full details for SPAN 3020 - Spanish Language Across the Curriculum (LAC)

Focuses on the practice of narrative writing in Spanish. Explores what makes a novel and a short story work, paying close attention to narrative structure, plot, beginnings/endings, character development, theme, etc. Students read classic novels and short stories as points of departure for the discussion. Because the course is a workshop, students are expected to write their own fiction.

Full details for SPAN 3170 - Creative Writing Workshop (in Spanish)

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, melancholy flourished at the intersection of medicine, ethics, theology, politics and astrology as a privileged site to think about depression and inwardness, creativity and excess, body and mind, subject and society. We will read Spanish medical texts that discuss melancholy and literary masterpieces that through it explore free will and determination, subjectivity and honor, political power, gender violence, and the sources of creativity. Readings include plays by Calderón and Lope; prose fiction by Zayas and Cervantes; theoretical texts from Aristotle to Agamben, including Cicero, John Cassian, Petrarch, Ficino, Huarte, Freud, and Schiesari.

Full details for SPAN 3420 - Melancholy in Early Modern Spanish Literature

Guided independent study of special topics. For undergraduates interested in special problems not covered in courses.

Full details for SPAN 4190 - Special Topics in Spanish Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for SPAN 4290 - Honors Work I

This course explores the traumatic relationship between modernity and tradition in the Andean countries. The focus will be on cultural and literary projects in different periods: 1890's, 1920's, 1960's, and today. Among the authors to be discussed: Alcides Arguedas, José María Arguedas, Pablo Palacio, Hilda Mundy, Jaime Saenz, Marío Vargas Llosa.

Full details for SPAN 4630 - Modern Andean Literature

An advanced seminar for Spanish majors that examines literary and cinematic works. In this course we will study modern narratives centered on the theme of fabricating, sculpting, or "making over" women. Broader themes and topics of exploration will include the uncanny, the doppelganger effect, control, trauma, amnesia, memory, illness, the male gaze and scopophilic desire.

Full details for SPAN 4755 - Inventing Women

What gives contemporary poetry and poetics its resonance and value? What are its dominant features, audiences, and purposes? What does 21st-century poetry's textual environment look like, and how does it situate itself among other genres, discourses, disciplines, media? How would we describe its ambient noise and how does that noise shape, inform, inflect its particular concerns and motivated forms? How does contemporary poetry resist, engage, respond to, sound out that noise? How are we to understand its relation to the pivotal cultural, economic, historical, philosophical, political developments of our time? This seminar will explore these and related questions in a wide range of works that open onto the rich interplay of contemporary poetry and poetics with questions of personal and collective identity and language in contexts at once local and global. Poets include Armantrout, Bernstein, Collins, Espada, Gander, Fitterman, Goldsmith, Hong, Osman, Place, Rich, Smith, and Waldrop.

Full details for SPAN 4860 - Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

Guided independent study of specific topics. For graduate students interested in special problems not covered in courses.

Full details for SPAN 6390 - Special Topics in Spanish Literature

Reworkings of Góngora's verse enabled in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries the construction of a Latin American place of enunciation, a narrative of Latin American origins and futures, and negotiations of identities and voices across boundaries of locale, gender, class, race, and ideology. We will debate the meanings of Gongorine poetics, "Barroco de Indias," "expresión americana," "neobarroco" and "neobarroso." Readings include poetry and poetics by Góngora, Domínguez Camargo, Valverde, Espinosa Medrano, Valle Caviedes, Sor Juana, Lezama, Gorostiza, Perlongher, and the landmark Medusario; and essays by Picón-Salas, Henríquez Ureña, Paz, Lezama, Sarduy, Rama, Beverley, Moraña, and Chiampi, among others.

Full details for SPAN 6620 - The Barroco de Indias and Latin American Poetics

This course explores the traumatic relationship between modernity and tradition in the Andean countries. The focus will be on cultural and literary projects in different periods: 1890's, 1920's, 1960's, and today. Among the authors to be discussed: Alcides Arguedas, José María Arguedas, Pablo Palacio, Hilda Mundy, Jaime Saenz, Marío Vargas Llosa.

Full details for SPAN 6630 - Modern Andean Literature

This course provides graduate students with an overview of feminist and queer theories of gender and the body, as well as representations of the gender and the body in narrative fiction.  We will critical examine the "discursive turn"; in feminist theory as well as more recent challenges to this school of thought including new feminist materialism and critical disability studies.  We will also look at the ways in which gender is inflection by sexuality, race, caste, and class.

Full details for SPAN 6840 - Excess: Gender and Embodiment in Theory and Fiction