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

In this class, students will learn about animal welfare and conservation through international films. We will discuss wildlife, companion and farm animals in conjunction with human cultures and politics. The course will cover various animal species, e.g. pangolins, dogs and sheep in fiction films, documentaries and animated movies. Students will learn how to compose film reviews, do research and write a research assignment. The class includes guest speakers, a visit to Cornell barn, library and museum. All films are available for streaming through Blackboard for students to watch them in their free time.

Full details for ROMS 1120 - FWS: Animals in Global Cinema: Human and Nonhuman

This studio class will introduce students to a range of contemporary performance techniques in a Spanish context.  Through exercises, improvisation, textual analysis, and scene study, students will develop core acting skills, learn relevant Spanish theatre terminology, and enhance their self-expression in Spanish.  Students will also explore the dramatic and theatrical potential of short Spanish literary texts adapted for the stage.  The course will be conducted entirely in Spanish.

Full details for ROMS 2901 - Spanish Performance Studio: RVVR Caberet Literario

The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception.

Full details for ROMS 3115 - Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics

The most intense public encounter between Existentialism and Marxism occurred in immediate post-WWII Europe, its structure remaining alive internationally. Existentialist questions have been traced from pre-Socratic thinkers through Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes onward; just as roots of modern materialism extend to Epicurus and Lucretius, or Leopardi. This course will focus on differing theories and concomitant practices concerned with "alienation," "anxiety," "crisis," "death of God," "nihilism," "rebellion or revolution." Crucial are possible relations between fiction and non-fiction; also among philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and political theory. Other authors may include: Althusser, de Beauvoir, Beckett, Büchner, Camus, Che, Dostoevsky, Fanon, Genet, Gide, Gramsci, O. Gross, Hamsun, Heidegger, Husserl, Jaspers, C.L.R. James, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Lagerkvist, Lacan, Lenin, Marx, Merleau-Ponty, Mishima, G. Novack, Nietzsche, Ortega, Pirandello, W. Reich, Sartre, Shestov, Tillich, Unamuno. There is also cinema.

Full details for ROMS 4210 - Existentialism

Focuses on language teaching as facilitation of learning, thus on the learner's processing of language acquisition and the promotion of reflective teaching. Pedagogical approaches will be addressed from a learner-centered perspective involving effective language learning strategies and analysis.

Full details for ROMS 5070 - Methodology of Romance Language Learning and Teaching

Communism merged multiple theories, events and experiences. It's complexity does not lie exclusively in the discrepancies that separate the communist idea from its historical embodiments; it lies in the diversity of its expressions. Sketching its "anatomy", this seminar will distinguish at least four broad forms of communism, interrelated and not necessarily opposed to one another, but different enough to be recognized on their own: communism as revolution, communism as regime, communism as anti-colonialism and communism as a varient of social democracy. The October Revolution was their common matrix, but their trajectories have been different. Exploring communism as a global experience, we will shape the profile of one of the central actors of the twentieth century.

Full details for ROMS 6525 - Historicizing Communism

Intertwinement of Gramsci's pre-prison and prison writings with his legacy in subsequent political theory & praxis, philosophy, linguistics, architecture, and cinema. Criticism of his work from the Right also the Left (Autonomia Operaia, Red Brigades), the communist critique (Althusser) and anarchist Nihilist Communism (Monsieur Dupont). Situation of Gramsci in "Western Marxism" (Perry Anderson). Gramsci's Politics of Language as "engaging the Soviet Bakhtin Circle and the German Frankfurt School" (Peter Ives). Concepts of 'hegemony,' 'civil society,' 'war of position & war of maneuver,' 'organic vs. traditional intellectuals'—all via less Machiavelli than the "Modern Prince" (Gramsci) and "Machiavelli and Us" (Althusser). Gramsci's "little discovery" in Dante's Inferno as origin of Cultural Politics: Gramscian Architecture (Manfredo Tafuri), Painting Political Expressionism (Leonardo Cremonini), and international cinema.

Full details for ROMS 6855 - Gramsci and Cultural Politics

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

FREN 1210-1220 is a two-semester sequence. This is the second 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, and critical thinking 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 continue developing their writing skills by writing and editing compositions. Readings are varied and include literary texts and a short novel.

Full details for FREN 1220 - 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 conversation and composition French course is designed for students interested in business fields such as Hospitality, Business Management, and Marketing, those looking for an internship or a job in French-speaking businesses or students interested in exploring the language and cultures of the French-speaking business world.  The course will focus on improving oral and written skills through the acquisition of specific vocabulary and the review of essential grammatical structures commonly used in business.  Students will use authentic written, visual and listening materials and engage in interactive activities relevant to the professional world and its intercultural dimension.

Full details for FREN 2080 - French for Business

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

In this course, furthering oral communication skills and writing skills is emphasized. A comprehensive review of fundamental and advanced grammatical structures is integrated with short stories, literary excerpts, videos, poems, and articles from French magazines or newspapers, all chosen for thematic or cultural interest. Students write weekly papers (essays and translations), have daily conversations focusing on the topics at hand, and give at least one presentation in class. This course is highly recommended for students planning to study abroad in a French speaking university.

Full details for FREN 2180 - Advanced French

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

This course designed to follow FREN 2095, introduces students to key cinematic techniques used in analysis of films and to major movements in the twentieth century French cinema.  Students will view a broad range of French and Francophone films spanning from 1945-2004 that includes canonical as well as contemporary works.  Topics studied include: the evolution of gender representation in French and Franophone films, the depiction of decolonization, and the films de banlieu genre.  The class will combine discussion, presentations, class scene analysis and readings from journalistic and film criticism tets, and will be conducted in French.

Full details for FREN 2320 - Introduction to French and Francophone Film

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 FREN 3020 - French Language Across the Curriculum (LAC)

This course is designed to teach ways of reading and understanding works created from the Romantic period to the present day, in their cultural context. A range of texts from various genres is presented, and students refine their analytical skills and their understanding of various methodologies of reading. Texts by authors such as Balzac, Baudelaire, Cixous, Duras, Genet, Mallarmé, Michaux, Proust, Rimbaud, Sarraute, and Sartre.

Full details for FREN 3210 - Readings in Modern French Literature and Culture

This course is conceived as a critical introduction to a cultural and political debate that appeared in the years of Mitterrand's France and reached its climax in the last decade.  It will focus on a French society deeply shaped by immigration and globalization.  In which way do the youth of the "banlieue" - mostly formed by postcolonial Blacks and Muslims - create their own culture with the French culture?  How have literature, essays, movies, documentary films, "national identity" carried on by governments reacted to these transformations?  Selecting literary texts (by Maryse Condé, Zahia Rahmani, Adb El Malik) and other cultural productions, the course will explore the new expressions of France as an "imagined community".

Full details for FREN 3400 - French Identities: 21st Century Culture and Society in France

The class focuses on the experience of incarceration, as described by literary and philosophical texts written in French, ranging from the 15th to the 20th century.  Select movies will also be commented upon.  After considering literary testimonies from writers-prisoners such as Chenier, Nerval, or Genet, we'll examine the topos of the "last days of a condemned man," with texts from authors such as Stendhal, Hugo, Balzac, Malraux, or Sony Labou Tansi, as well as movies like Bresson's Un condamne a mort s'est echappe.  We'll also reflect on the way thinkers have approached the modern institution of prison and how a generalized view of the world as a prison emerges in the oeuvres of Pascal, Beckett, or Djebar.

Full details for FREN 3630 - In Prison 15th-20th Century

When Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduced the concept of the "general will" in his classic text The Social Contract, he made what was then an unprecedented and scandalous claim: that the people as a whole, and not an individual agent, could be the subject of political will and self-determination. This claim was all the more revolutionary in that historically "the people" [ie peuple] named those poor masses who had no political representation, and who were subjects of the state only to the extent that they were subject to the will of a sovereign monarch. What then is "the people," and how is it constituted as a collective subject?  How does a people speak, or make its will known? Can that will be represented or institutionalized? Do all people belong to the people? How inclusive is the social contract? This course will examine crucial moments in the constitution of the people from the French Revolution to the present day, considering the crisis of political representation they have alternately exposed or engendered and the forms of the social contract to which they have given rise. Our discussions will range from major political events (the French and Haitian Revolutions, the Paris Commune, colonialism and decolonization, May '68) to contemporary debates around universalism, secularism, immigration, and "marriage for all". Readings by Rousseau, Robespierre, L'Ouverture, Michelet, Marx, Freud, Arendt, Balibar, and Rancière.

Full details for FREN 3780 - What is a People? The Social Contract and its Discontents

This course examines a range of exciting and provocative 20th- and 21st- century theoretical paradigms for thinking about literature, language and culture. These approaches provide differing, though often overlapping, entryways into theoretical analysis, including structuralism and post-structuralism, translation studies, Black studies, Afro-Diasporic Studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, performance studies, media theory and cinema/media studies, the digital humanities, psychoanalysis and trauma theory, gender studies and queer studies, studies of the Anthropocene/environmental studies, and animal studies. Occasional invited guests, lectures and class discussions will provide students with a facility for close textual analysis, a knowledge of major currents of thought in the humanities, and an appreciation for the uniqueness and complexity of language and media.

Full details for FREN 3921 - Literary Theory on the Edge

This course explores the global, intellectual history of friendship, in order to illuminate a host of underlying questions: what is the nature of human affection? How have different cultures contended with the power of love to defy gendered conventions? How is friendship mobilized as a political concept? We will consider evolving philosophical definitions of friendship (Aristotle, Ibn Muqqafa, Derrida, Mbembe), legenday literary friendships (Rumi and Shams of Tabriz: Montaigne and La Boetie:Tennyson and Arthur Hallam), and aesthetic portrauals of friendship, from its betrayals in a Soviet gulag (Solzhenitsyn), to its fraught dynamic in a Nazi camp in Mauritius island (Appanah), and its redemptive potential in a Tunisian culture divided by jewish and muslim conflicts (Albou).

Full details for FREN 4065 - Friendships: A Global History

Guided independent study of special topics.

Full details for FREN 4200 - Special Topics in French Literature

A number of well-known French novels have been adapted, appropriated, and reimagined, giving them a life well beyond France and beyond the time in which they were produced.  We will explore how one novel can serve various, sometimes contradictory, purposes in different times and cultures by examining the context in which it was written, the text itself, and the variations that have arisen over time.

Full details for FREN 4265 - One French Novel

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for FREN 4300 - Honors Work in French

In the XIXe century, both literature and medicine shaped the birth of the idea of the psyche.  A new medical discipline like psychiatry (at that ime called "alienism") considered the pathologies of the soul at the same time as romantic authors investigated the misfortunes and sufferings of the individual in modern society.  Clinical cases (Charcot, Freud) could be read like novels and scientific theories similarly fed fictions (Maupassant, Zola, etc.).  This course will explore these reciprocal influences between literature and medicine in France through medical case studies and fiction, taking into account both classical texts and the most recent researh.  At the intersection between madness, psychiatry, literature, cultural history and narrative theory, it raises questions about personal identities and the birth of modern subjectivities.

Full details for FREN 4820 - Madness, Literature and Medicine

A critical exploration of the phrase "la race des poetes," with and without consideration of racial-colonial power. 1780 marks the release of "La mort d'Abel," by Nicolas Gilbert, whose influence is to be felt from Vigny to Baudelaire and Mallarme on ideas of racial purity, innate poetic genius and determinism- to the third iteration of Cesaire's Cahier, whose successive rewritings re-articulate the transcendental gift of poetry with a critique of colonial racism, in the wake of both Rimbaud and Verhaeren or some 19th century Haitian poets (e.g. Lochard, Ardouin). A meta-concern in the seminar is to contrast the intellective profusion of poetic texts situating the racial with the intellectual reductionism of identity-based readings of the literary.

Full details for FREN 6040 - The Race of the Poet (1780-1949)

Designed for those with little or no background in French. Aims primarily to develop skill in reading French. Covers grammar basics, extensive vocabulary, and strategies for reading in a foreign language. Some flexibility in selecting texts according to fields of interest.

Full details for FREN 6300 - French Reading for Graduates

Guided independent study for graduate students.

Full details for FREN 6400 - Special Topics in French Literature

This course begins with a word - mysticism - that doesn't work, and for good reason: for the authors variously associated with the mythical traditions of medieval Christianity, words are necessary failures.  They snap at the point where they endure the greatest tension.  We'll witness together the limits of language in some of the most provocative so-called mystics of the medieval West, including Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Catherine of Siena, Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Aquinas, and the roots of their extraordinary speech in earlier thinkers such as Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Bernard of Clairvaux.  Along the way, we'll ask what language has to do with love, and what each of these might have to do with God, whose name (for these writers) is never one.

Full details for FREN 6425 - Mysticism in Medieval Europe

Communism merged multiple theories, events and experiences. It's complexity does not lie exclusively in the discrepancies that separate the communist idea from its historical embodiments; it lies in the diversity of its expressions. Sketching its "anatomy", this seminar will distinguish at least four broad forms of communism, interrelated and not necessarily opposed to one another, but different enough to be recognized on their own: communism as revolution, communism as regime, communism as anti-colonialism and communism as a varient of social democracy. The October Revolution was their common matrix, but their trajectories have been different. Exploring communism as a global experience, we will shape the profile of one of the central actors of the twentieth century.

Full details for FREN 6525 - Historicizing Communism

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 is a fast-paced, introductory course designed for students with some basic knowledge of the language.  This introductory course provides a thorough grounding in all language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with practice in small and large groups.  Interactive lectures cover grammar and cultural information.

Full details for ITAL 1202 - Italian II

The aim of this course is to help students familiarize themselves with one of the most important, and world-renowned aspects of Italian culture, or rather "La Cucina Italiana". This course will combine different language learning approaches like grammar and audio/oral activities such as video clips, role play activities in class, interviews regarding food topics, etc., as well as some "hand-on" lessons. Class will alternate grammar and conversation lessons, while adding a few practical cooking activities that will focus on recipes and traditions that characterize different geographical regions of Italy.

Full details for ITAL 1212 - Italian Food Culture

An intensive elementary Italian language course. This 6-credit course covers material presented in ITAL 1201 and ITAL 1202 in just one semester. It's offered to students who cannot study Italian in the Fall, but can only do it in the Spring semester.

Full details for ITAL 1401 - Intensive Elementary Italian

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 in ITAL 2201. Students will be guided in perfecting their communication skills, improving their cultural proficiency, and developing a critical eye toward printed and visual material drawn from literature, history, politics, science, and 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 a short contemporary novel.

Full details for ITAL 2202 - Italian IV

This course, which is at the core of the major and minor in Italian, is designed to give students a basic grounding in some of the most important facets of Italian culture, including cinema, literature, art, and food.  Students will trace the development of Italian national identity in literary and cinematic texts as well as across Italian photography and cuisine.  Readings will include selections from the works of Primo Levi, Roberto Saviano, and Leonardo Sciascia.  Students will also view films by directors such as Rossellini, de Sica, Antonioni, Bertolucci, and Sergio Leone, becoming familiar along the way with genres in Italian national cinema.  By the end of the semester, students will have a working knowledge of the effects of geographic and national fragmentation on political life in post-Risorgimento Italy, understand the so-called Southern Question and the fraught relationship between the Italian South and wealthier Northern regions, and gain different perspectives on political life today in Italy.

Full details for ITAL 2204 - The Cinematic Eye of Italy

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

This course is dedicated to studying important works of literature that address what it means, in the Renaissance, to strive for excellence as a man or as a woman, especially in the public sphere and in love.

Full details for ITAL 3580 - Creating Renaissance Man (and Woman)

Was any political philosopher seemingly more quoted (and misquoted) in the annus horribilis that was 2020 than Niccolo Machiavelli?  In this course we will ask why so much interest by reading his major works, including The Prince and selections from Discourse on Livy.  After that we will time travel to the modern period and attempt to register where and how Machiavelli's understanding of conflict, Fortune, and institutions is located today.  Discussions of populism will figure prominently.  Along the way we will evaluate interpretations from some of Machiavelli's most illustrious readers, including Gramsci, Althusser, Arendt, and Foucault.

Full details for ITAL 3600 - Machiavelli, Yesterday and Today

Guided independent study of special topics.

Full details for ITAL 4200 - Special Topics 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 6400 - Special Topics in Italian Literature

This course begins with a word - mysticism - that doesn't work, and for good reason: for the authors variously associated with the mythical traditions of medieval Christianity, words are necessary failures.  They snap at the point where they endure the greatest tension.  We'll witness together the limits of language in some of the most provocative so-called mystics of the medieval West, including Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Catherine of Siena, Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Aquinas, and the roots of their extraordinary speech in earlier thinkers such as Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Bernard of Clairvaux.  Along the way, we'll ask what language has to do with love, and what each of these might have to do with God, whose name (for these writers) is never one.

Full details for ITAL 6420 - Mysticism in Medieval Europe

Communism merged multiple theories, events and experiences. It's complexity does not lie exclusively in the discrepancies that separate the communist idea from its historical embodiments; it lies in the diversity of its expressions. Sketching its "anatomy", this seminar will distinguish at least four broad forms of communism, interrelated and not necessarily opposed to one another, but different enough to be recognized on their own: communism as revolution, communism as regime, communism as anti-colonialism and communism as a varient of social democracy. The October Revolution was their common matrix, but their trajectories have been different. Exploring communism as a global experience, we will shape the profile of one of the central actors of the twentieth century.

Full details for ITAL 6520 - Historicizing Communism

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

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 11-20.  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 2034 - Intermediate Polish II

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 1220 - Elementary Brazilian Portuguese II

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 2020 - Intermediate Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers II

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 1220, students may take SPAN 1230, SPAN 2070, or SPAN 2090 depending on their LPS score.

Full details for SPAN 1220 - Elementary Spanish II

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

Full details for SPAN 1305 - FWS:Narrating the Spanish Civil War

This innovative course focuses on oral communication in Spanish for students who will do special projects abroad or short term study abroad trips.  Emphasis is placed on developing speaking and listening skills and strategies in a culturally relevant context.  It is intended for students with limited or no knowledge of Spanish and active class participation is required.

Full details for SPAN 1501 - Strategies for Spanish Abroad

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

This advanced course will focus on spoken Spanish in its formal and informal registers, regional dialects, and pronunciations.  Authentic texts from across different genres of film, newspapers, fiction, songs, and essays will be used to develop all skills with emphasis on oral production, as well as intercultural and pragmatic competence.  Students will further their fluency and accuracy by engaging in activities that might include debates, oral presentations, and interviews.

Full details for SPAN 2130 - Advanced Spoken Spanish

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

Interdisciplinary course offered every spring. Topics vary by semester, but readings always focus on current research in various disciplines and regions of Latin America. The range of issues addressed include the economic, social, cultural, and political trends and transitions in the area. In the weekly meetings, instructors and guest lecturers facilitate student discussions. Students taking the course are required to participate in all class discussions and write a research paper in their chosen focus area.

Full details for SPAN 2200 - Perspectives on Latin America

Interdisciplinary course offered every spring.  Topics vary by semester, but readings always focus on current research in various disciplines and regions of Latin America. The range of issues addressed include the economic, social, cultural, and political trends and transitions in the area.  In the weekly meetings, instructors and guest lecturers facilitate student discussions.  Students taking the course are required to participate in all class discussions and write a research paper in their chosen focus area.

Full details for SPAN 2205 - Perspectives on Latin America in Spanish

This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important fictional work by US Latina writers, including short stories, novel, and film, with a particular focus on social justice, gender advocacy work, and work by Afro Latinx writers.  We will begin with discussion of canonical figures like Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, to provide a basis for our focus on more recent writers like Angie Cruz, Elizabeth Acevedo, Linda Yvette Chávez, and Carmen Maria Machado.

Full details for SPAN 2460 - Contemporary Narratives by Latina Writers

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)

This course seeks to explore the cultural and linguistic diversity of Spain and its political stakes by analyzing texts from regions that still remain in the periphery of Peninsular studies: Catalonia, Basque Country, and Galicia. We will examine how identities are shaped and contested in Spain by examining current political debates and discussing literary and theoretical works by authors such as Prat de la Riba, Juan Marsé, Carme Riera, Sabino Arana, Jon Juaristi, Bernardo Atxaga, and Manuel Rivas. 

Full details for SPAN 3240 - Iberian Modern Political Cultures

In this course, we want to explore the links between politics and fiction in Latin America from different perspectives: narrative devices, philosophy, and cinema. We will focus on the role of sensibility, fantasy and fiction in building political narratives of Latin America; we will also explore how these narratives produce a visual dispositive that oscillates between colonial and emancipatory representations. Some of the writers and directors to be studied are: Simón Rodriguez, José Carlos Mariátegui, Pablo Palacio, Ricardo Piglia, René Zavaleta Mercado, Jorge Sanjinés, Luis Ospina and Lucrecia Martel.

Full details for SPAN 3325 - Politics and Fiction in Latin America

This course focuses on a place and a concept where two of the most urgent issues of our times - migration and environmental degradation - converge, collide, and shape each other. It examines borders not as abstract lines on the map, but as dynamic hubs that connect human societies, politics, and cultures with the natural and built environments that we inhabit and transform. Through scholarly and creative work from an array of borders around the world, we will develop new theoretical approaches and methodological toolkits for rethinking and re-visioning borders in an era of climate change, toxic pollution, and mass extinction. The course encourages multi- and inter-disciplinary projects from students and will feature guests from diverse areas, disciplines, and practices.

Full details for SPAN 3335 - Border Environments

A visually-based study of rural and urban landscapes of decay and overgrowth, ruin and resilience through film and photography. This course begins with works from the contemporary Iberian context (Spain, Galicia and Portugal) that visualize the phenomenological affinities between place and experience, as well as the tensions between overdevelopment and underdevelopment. We'll explore the concept of landscape as a mode of representation and as a complex multi-layered archive of traces, memories and histories. Bridging key works from the slow cinema movement emerging from the Iberian Peninsula with films and select photographic works from other geographies including Italy, UK, Latin America, China and the US, the course will offer a uniquely comparative approach to media and culture.

Full details for SPAN 3970 - Ruined Landscapes and the Visual Archive

This course examines how modern Spanish writers and doctors represented the human body as they grappled with disease and disability. Reading fiction alongside medical and anthropological texts we will examine notions of the normal/abnormal, beautiful/ugly/ and healthy/infected as they change over time. We also look at the ways in which these concepts are inflected by other identity categories such as gender, race, sexuality, and class.

Full details for SPAN 4020 - Reading the Body in Medicine and Fiction

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

Full details for SPAN 4200 - Special Topics in Spanish Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for SPAN 4300 - Honors Work II

In this course, we will take an inter- and multidisciplinary approach that examines works of fiction, film, performance, and photography, as well as graffiti, souvenirs, and internet memes, to explore how specters intervene in and mold the social, political, and cultural landscape of contemporary Latin America. We will discuss how different spectral figures—the desaparecidos of the dictatorships and armed conflicts, the missing migrants who have died crossing the US/Mexico border, the ghostly reincarnations of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Eva Perón in Argentina, to name a few—challenge official narratives of memory, ground political authority, complicate transitions and endings, and fuel social movements and revolutions. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for SPAN 4666 - Specters of Latin America

In this course we will explore how Latin American science fiction and fantastic novels, graphic novels, short stories, and films from the modern and contemporary period have represented the figures of the animal, the monster, and the cyborg. The aim is to reflect on what these representations tell us about the shifting notions of race, gender, and ethnicity in the region, and to analyze how these "weird" bodies are able to challenge binary constructions such as civilization/barbarism, nature/culture, human/animal, normal/abnormal, and body/mind, while creating spaces for emerging alternative communities. Some of the authors to be read are Mario Bellatin, Samanta Schweblin, Leonora Carrington, and Martin Felipe Castagnet.

Full details for SPAN 4895 - Cyborgs, Animals, and Monsters

This course focuses on a place and a concept where two of the most urgent issues of our times - migration and environmental degradation - converge, collide, and shape each other. It examines borders not as abstract lines on the map, but as dynamic hubs that connect human societies, politics, and cultures with the natural and built environments that we inhabit and transform. Through scholarly and creative work from an array of borders around the world, we will develop new theoretical approaches and methodological toolkits for rethinking and re-visioning borders in an era of climate change, toxic pollution, and mass extinction. The course encourages multi- and inter-disciplinary projects from students and will feature guests from diverse areas, disciplines, and practices.

Full details for SPAN 6335 - Border Environments

Guided independent study for graduate students. For graduates interested in special problems not covered in courses.

Full details for SPAN 6400 - Special Topics in Spanish Literature

Communism merged multiple theories, events and experiences. It's complexity does not lie exclusively in the discrepancies that separate the communist idea from its historical embodiments; it lies in the diversity of its expressions. Sketching its "anatomy", this seminar will distinguish at least four broad forms of communism, interrelated and not necessarily opposed to one another, but different enough to be recognized on their own: communism as revolution, communism as regime, communism as anti-colonialism and communism as a varient of social democracy. The October Revolution was their common matrix, but their trajectories have been different. Exploring communism as a global experience, we will shape the profile of one of the central actors of the twentieth century.

Full details for SPAN 6525 - Historicizing Communism

In this course, we will take an inter- and multidisciplinary approach that examines works of fiction, film, performance, and photography, as well as graffiti, souvenirs, and internet memes, to explore how specters intervene in and mold the social, political, and cultural landscape of contemporary Latin America. We will discuss how different spectral figures—the desaparecidos of the dictatorships and armed conflicts, the missing migrants who have died crossing the US/Mexico border, the ghostly reincarnations of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Eva Perón in Argentina, to name a few—challenge official narratives of memory, ground political authority, complicate transitions and endings, and fuel social movements and revolutions. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.

Full details for SPAN 6666 - Specters of Latin America

In this course we will explore how Latin American writers and filmmakers have represented, imagined, and intervened in the natural world, from the nation-building political projects of the XIXth century to the battles for the interpretation of the environment and its relationship to local peoples and cultures in the XXth century. We will analyze the current ecological crisis, the emergence of new subgenres such as "climate fiction," and the development of important theoretical perspectives such as ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and Amerindian perspectivism.

Full details for SPAN 6670 - Fictions of the Environment

This seminar explores the links between critical thought and aesthetic production of the 20th and 21st century in Latin America. We will choose the modes of irruption of the popular as a common thread of the different aesthetic and theoretical currents that have shaped the tradition of critical thought. We will explore how image of the people and the popular appears and changes through fiction and non-fiction texts. We will build a conceptual map that allows us to focus on three key moments in the production of Latin American critical thought: the beginning of the 20th century, marked by the scene of the avant-garde, the critical turn brought about in the 70s and the irruption of new critical apparatus of the XXI century. We will study authors such as d Andrade, Campobello, Vicens, Mariatequi, Zavaleta Mercado, among others.

Full details for SPAN 6950 - The People's Irruptions: Latin American Critical Thinking