Fall 2023 Spanish Course Descriptions

SPAN / LALS / GWS 192 – From the Convent to the Streets: Latin American Women Writers in Translation
On Campus, MW 3:00-4:15
Instructor: Dr. Margarita Saona
Since Colonial times Latin American women have been negotiating their role in society through their writing. In this class we will approach a variety of authors, from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th Century Mexican nun whose writings challenged the situation of women in the Church and in society, to contemporary authors such as Claudia Salazar Jiménez and Samantha Schweblin, who deal with gender violence and the complexity of the technological intrusions in our relationships.
TRIGGER ALERT: Many of the readings contain violent scenes, including sexual violence; there might be references to suicidal ideation; there are also topics and references to racial, gender, and social discrimination.
Taught in English. No prerequisites.
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These courses meet on campus MWF. Asynchronous online work outside of class is required.

SPAN 101 – Elementary Spanish I
MWF 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50, 12:00-12:50, 1:00-1:50, 2:00-2:50, & 3:00-3:50
Extensive computer use required. Field work required. Class is taught in Spanish, at a level appropriate for the course; the main purpose is communication. Course includes: regular in-classroom interactions, substantial reading and listening for homework, regular class presentations, and one exploratory visit to a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. One credit hour takes place online, plus homework. Prerequisite(s): Appropriate score on the department placement test. Classes are on campus.

SPAN 102 – Elementary Spanish II
MWF 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50, 12:00-12:50, 1:00-1:50, & 2:00-2:50
Extensive computer use required. Field work required. Class is taught in Spanish, at a level appropriate for the course; the main purpose is communication. Course includes: regular in-classroom interactions, substantial reading and listening for homework, regular class presentations, and one exploratory visit to a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. One credit hour takes place online, plus homework. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 101; or appropriate score on the department placement test. Classes are on campus.

SPAN 103 – Intermediate Spanish I
MWF 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50, 12:00-12:50, 1:00-1:50, & 2:00-2:50
Extensive computer use required. Field work required. Class is taught in Spanish, at a level appropriate for the course; the main purpose is communication. Course includes: regular in-classroom interactions, substantial reading and listening for homework, regular class presentations, and one exploratory visit to a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. One credit hour takes place online, plus homework. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 102; or appropriate score on the department placement test. Classes are on campus.

SPAN 104 – Intermediate Spanish II
MWF 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50, 12:00-12:50, 1:00-1:50, 2:00-2:50, & 3:00-3:50
Extensive computer use required. Field work required. Class is taught in Spanish, at a level appropriate for the course; the main purpose is communication. Course includes: six 30-minute face-to-face interactions with native speakers of Spanish from Latin America and Spain via TalkAbroad; regular in-classroom interactions, substantial reading and listening for homework; regular class presentations; and one exploratory visit to a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. One credit hour takes place online, plus homework. Prerequisite(s): SPAN 103; or appropriate score on the department placement test. Classes are on campus.

SPAN 113 – Spanish for Bilinguals I
MWF 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50, 12:00-12:50, & 2:00-2:50

SPAN 114 – Spanish for Bilinguals II
MWF 8:00-8:50, 9:00-9:50, 11:00-11:50, 12:00-12:50, & 2:00-2:50

SPAN 202 – Spanish Grammar in Practice
On Campus, MW 8:00-9:15
Instructor: TBD

SPAN 202 – Spanish Grammar in Practice
On Campus, TR 11:00-12:15
Instructor: Dr. Shane Ebert

SPAN 202 – Spanish Grammar in Practice
On Campus, TR 12:30-1:45
Instructor: Dr. Kim Potowski

SPAN 202 – Spanish Grammar in Practice
On Campus, TR 2:00-3:15
Instructor: Dr. Luis López

SPAN 203 – Extensive Reading and Writing for Non-Native Speakers of Spanish
Online Synchronous, TR 9:30-10:45
Instructor: Dr. Silvia Rosman

SPAN 204 – Extensive Reading and Writing for Heritage Speakers of Spanish
Online Synchronous, TR 8:00-9:15
Instructor: Dr. Silvia Rosman

SPAN 204 – Extensive Reading and Writing for Heritage Speakers of Spanish
On Campus, TR 9:30-10:45
Instructor: Dr. David Rodriguez

SPAN 206 – Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics
On Campus, MW 9:30-10:45
Instructor: Dr. David Miller
Words–and the rules that bring them to life–are at the core of the human experience. Linguistic sounds (phonology and phonetics), structure (syntax), meaning (semantics), and context (pragmatics) help us understand why hit is as trivial as a word can be, but adding an s- to the front will get your mouth washed out with soap; how a lawyer can crack a cold case based on a criminal’s use of tense; how “mere semantics” can cost us billions of dollars; or how lying, as terrible as it can be, is as commonplace to our linguistic repertoire as any other of the games we play with language. SPAN 206 will be a lens through which we come to understand these and other language-related phenomena as a wonderful feat of human cognition and, therefore, the human experience.

SPAN 206 – Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics
On Campus, TR 12:30-1:45
Instructor: Dr. Liliana Sánchez
Everything you wanted to know about Spanish but were afraid to ask.
Do you speak Spanish at home? Have you studied Spanish for many years? If that is the case, you may have had some moments when you have asked an instructor or a Spanish speaker a question about some quirky aspect of Spanish that received an answer that left you with more questions. In this course, we will provide answers for those questions by exploring the sounds of Spanish and their properties, the way in which meaning is conveyed, and the way in which words and sentences are formed. We will also look at how Spanish is used by different speech communities in different contexts as well as how it is learned by children and adults.

SPAN 206 – Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics
On Campus, TR 2:00-3:15
Instructor: Dr. Liliana Sánchez
Everything you wanted to know about Spanish but were afraid to ask.
Do you speak Spanish at home? Have you studied Spanish for many years? If that is the case, you may have had some moments when you have asked an instructor or a Spanish speaker a question about some quirky aspect of Spanish that received an answer that left you with more questions. In this course, we will provide answers for those questions by exploring the sounds of Spanish and their properties, the way in which meaning is conveyed, and the way in which words and sentences are formed. We will also look at how Spanish is used by different speech communities in different contexts as well as how it is learned by children and adults.

SPAN 210 – Introduction to the Formal Analysis of Hispanic Texts
On Campus, TR 11:00-12:15
Instructor: Dr. Tatjana Gajic

SPAN 210 – Introduction to the Formal Analysis of Hispanic Texts
On Campus, TR 12:30-1:45
Instructor: Dr. Keith Budner

SPAN 210 – Introduction to the Formal Analysis of Hispanic Texts
On Campus, TR 2:00-3:15
Instructor: Dr. Dianna Niebylski

SPAN 220 – Spanish for Business and Law I
On Campus, MWF 4:00-4:50
Instructor: Dr. Diana Gonzalez-Cameron

SPAN 221 – Spanish for Health Personnel I
On Campus, MWF 2:00-2:50
Instructor: Dr. Diana Gonzalez-Cameron

SPAN 221 – Spanish for Health Personnel I
On Campus, MWF 3:00-3:50
Instructor: Dr. Diana Gonzalez-Cameron

SPAN 228 – Introduction to Translation Theory
On Campus, TR 3:30-4:45
Instructor: Dr. Dianna Niebylski

SPAN 302 – Exploring Spanish Grammar
On Campus, TR 9:30-10:45
Instructor: Dr. Shane Ebert

SPAN 303 – Advanced Oral Presentation, Writing, and Analysis
Online Synchronous, TR 9:30-10:45
Instructor: Dr. Silvia Rosman

SPAN 362 – Sounds of Spanish
On Campus, TR 2:00-3:15
Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Cabrelli
Have you ever wondered why English words like ‘sport’ and ‘spring’ are often pronounced by Spanish speakers as ‘esport’ and ‘espring’? Or why the ‘d’ in ‘cada’ is ‘softer’ than the ‘d’ in ‘digo’? In this course we will study the sound system of Spanish and examine how sounds are produced, how they form different patterns, and how they change depending on where they fall in a word or phrase. Over the course of the semester, you’ll also become an expert in phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet and gain experience in acoustic analysis using the software program Praat, all while learning about dialectal differences in pronunciation across the Spanish-speaking world.

SPAN 364 – Acquisition of Spanish
On Campus, TR 3:30-4:45
Instructor: Dr. Inma Taboada

SPAN 375 – Current Topics in Hispanic Studies
On Campus, TR 2:00-3:15
Instructor: Dr. Gabriel Riera

SPAN 378 – Topics in Hispanic Cultural and Media Studies
On Campus, TR 12:30-1:45
Instructor: Dr. Steven Marsh

SPAN 435 – Topics in Contemporary Urban Latin American and Latino Culture, Literature and the Arts
“Registros de la violencia: los usos del crimen en la literatura hispanoamericana”
On Campus, R 3:30-6:00
Instructor: Dr. Gabriel Riera
A partir del policial, el seminario busca explorar los cruces entre la paraliteratura (literatura popular) y la literatura. ¿Qué le permite a la literatura el empleo de la forma genérica del relato o de la novela policial? ¿Qué signos de ésta reconfigura y cómo los reinventa? A partir de estas dos preguntas haremos una tipología de los “registros de la violencia” que estos textos exhiben y un mapeo de sus emplazamientos (individuo, imperio, aparatos represivos del estado, crimen organizado, capitalismo financiero global) para así elucidar las dimensiones ético-críticas de los usos del policial en Hispanoamérica durante los siglos XX y primeras décadas del XXI.
Estos textos nos permitirán explorar las siguientes preguntas:
• ¿Qué es “leer”? ¿Cómo se (de)construye un “saber” y cómo se figura un “no-saber” que lo elude? ¿Cuál es la dimensión “ética” de este último? ¿Cómo se cifran éstos en el llamado proceso de detección?
• ¿Cómo se distribuyen sus dispositivos a partir de la figura del detective? ¿Es posible periodizar estos híbridos textuales a partir de un cambio en sus dominantes formales?
• ¿Qué supone la figura de la víctima y qué discursos sociales se movilizan para construirla?
• ¿Qué aporta la reescritura femenina del género? ¿Cómo se modulan las convenciones y estereotipos del género?
• ¿Qué sucede cuando se “traducen” modelos literarios de otras literaturas (whodunit, golden age detective novel, hard-boiled, thriller, etc.), cuáles son las modalidades de esta “traducción” (parodia, resemiotización, reescritura, “nuevo” modo o género), cómo estos “se acomodan” a las tradiciones literarias locales?
• ¿Qué topografías urbanas trazan los procesos de detección?
Trabajaremos con textos de Argentina, Cuba, México, Perú y Uruguay. La lista de autores que estudiaremos puede incluir a: A. Bioy Casares, Jorge L. Borges, Carmen Boullosa, Miriam Laurini, Silvina Ocampo, Juan C. Onetti, Paco Taibo II, Leonardo Padura, Juan J. Saer, Pablo de Santis, Cristina Rivera Garza.
Suplementaremos nuestra lectura de los textos literarios con ensayos de: Carrera, Ewert, Garramuño, Holquist, Jameson, Ludmer, Moretti, Setton, Stavans, Todorov, Vinarov y Wilkinson.

SPAN 440 – Theory and Methods in Teaching Heritage Speakers
Synchronous Online, W 6:00-8:30
Instructor: Dr. Angela Betancourt

SPAN / FR / GER 448 – Foundations of Second Language Teaching
On Campus, R 3:30-6
Instructor: Dr. Kara Morgan-Short

SPAN 500 – Intensive Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics
On Campus, R 6:30-9
Instructor: Dr. Inma Taboada

SPAN 505 – Seminar in Spanish Theoretical and Descriptive Linguistics: Nominal expressions
On Campus, TR 2:00-3:15
Instructor: Dr. José Camacho
This course will address nominal expressions from different perspectives: what is their structure and representation? What kinds of interpretation do nominal expressions have? How are they processed? How are they acquired? Does bilingualism affect any of these aspects?

SPAN 509 – Spanish Phonology
On Campus, TR 3:30-4:45
Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Cabrelli

SPAN 516 – Hispanic Literatures and Forms of Political Community
On Campus, T 3:30-6:00
Instructor: Dr. Tatjana Gajic

SPAN / LING 556 – Second Language Learning
On Campus, M 5:30-8
Instructor: Dr. Kara Morgan-Short

SPAN 594 – Special Topics in Hispanic Studies: What are you afraid of? Horror in Spanish Language Literature and Film
On Campus, M 5:00-7:30
Instructor: Dr. Margarita Saona
Storytelling has always had –among its desired effects– the generation of fear in listeners or readers, a mix of excitement and surprise. In this seminar, we will explore a resurgence in the terror genre among contemporary writers, while reviewing some of the more traditional horror stories along with the examination of different narrative strategies, and theories of the fantastic and the uncanny. We will also consider how the malleability of the genre responds to issues related to psychoanalytic perspectives, embodiment, phenomenology, trauma, and political violence. TRIGGER ALERT: Many of the readings contain violent scenes, including sexual violence; there might be references to suicidal ideation; there are also topics and references to racial, gender, and social discrimination.
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