Spring 2026

This course engages the twin lenses of the comic and the disastrous as modes of studying Portuguese and Brazilian cultures. We will consider how reactions to disastrous events and how creating comic scenarios in written texts and performance are...

This course introduces students to a range of analytical and theoretical approaches to “reading” fiction, poetry, film, and essays. We will pair critical writings and creative texts of importance to the Romance world to help students develop their own...

In this course, we will explore the imbrication of colonialism and environmentalism by focusing on “green” spaces such as plantations; botanical gardens where plants were studied to be mass produced for empire’s profit; and green spaces such as safaris...

Matter—pure potency, pure capacity for being—has consistently eluded humanity’s intellectual and experimental efforts. From the shores of Ningbo to the deserts of Los Alamos, though its names have changed, its essence remains the same. It is Hesiod’s...

Reading novels, plays, tales and stories from the Creole world (Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Louisiana), we will explore the inhuman in all its manifestations: the preternatural such as spirits, ghosts and zombies, and the aberrant such as human-animal...

A follow-up course to Span 80T, Span 80TS continues our historical, social, cultural, literary, and linguistic journey through modern Spain by focusing on texts that foreground territorial and national debates. Through close readings and translations...

The seminar is built around a sequence of fundamental questions regarding the literary disciplines and media studies, their history and epistemology. Discussions are instigated by readings in philology, stylistics, the history of ideas, semiotics...

Introduction to the genres of poetry, drama and narrative prose (fiction and non-fiction) of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. Close reading of representative texts with attention to the emerging literary languages of this period of national...

Through novels that helped to consolidate nation-states in Latin America, explores modernity as personal and public lessons in laissez-faire. Sequels in film, telenovelas, performances show tenacity of genre. Links between creativity and citizenship...

This course will examine a wide range of core Spanish films from directors such as Almodóvar, Amenábar, Berlanga, Bollaín, Buñuel, Coixet, Erice, and León de Aranoa, among others. It will include analyses of prominent genres (drama, comedy, terror...