56:940:513 Introduction to Spanish Sociolinguistics (3)
This course is intended to provide the student with a panoramic view of the field of Hispanic sociolinguistics. Topics to be discussed in this course range from basic concepts such as language, dialect, bilingualism, etc. to more complex issues such as language variation and change, or languages in contact. Students in this course will gain a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, be able to use and understand basic terminology in the field of Hispanic sociolinguistics, and develop the ability to do independent research in the field of Hispanic sociolinguistics.
56:940:515 Acquisition of Spanish a Second Language (3)
This course is an introduction to the field of Spanish Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Spanish SLA examines the evolution of foreign language instruction in the last 50 years, focusing on topics such as: grammar instruction; feedback techniques; vocabulary learning; the role of repetition, communication, and interaction; the role of the instructor; and the development of specific abilities and skills. This course looks at some of the current research projects and findings related to those issues, and how such research can help shape the pedagogical practice of foreign language teachers. Students in this course will gain a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, be able to use and understand basic terminology, and develop the ability to conduct independent research in the field of Spanish SLA.
56:940:517 Methods of Teaching Spanish (3)
This course seeks to ask the fundamental questions in Spanish second language learning, teaching, and acquisition in order to provide an understanding of the major issues in theory and in practice faced by professionals in the field subsumed by language(s), literature(s) and culture(s). Upon completion of this course students will be able to demonstrate a familiarity with the present terminology of linguistic theory and methods/pedagogy; exhibit knowledge of the linguistic theories and theories of pedagogy and understand their scope and limitations for application in effective language teaching/learning; and draw on their developing knowledge of linguistics to analyze problems involving the application of the field to language learning and teaching. Prerequisite: 56:940:515.
56:940:521 Spanish Grammar and Linguistics I (3)
Provides the student with a panoramic view of the linguistic patterns present in the Spanish language and their functions within the system. This course has two main objectives: 1) a contrastive study of the Spanish and English grammatical systems; and 2) its practical applications to Spanish language teaching, learning, and research. Students will gain a more accurate perspective on the complexity of internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, be able to use and understand basic terminology, and develop the ability to do independent research. Prerequisite: 50:940:204 or equivalent. Open to all students. Not required for Spanish major.
56:940:522 Spanish Grammar and Linguistics II (3)
This course is a continuation of Spanish Grammar and Linguistics I (56:940:521). While intending to deepen the students’ knowledge of the linguistic patterns present in the Spanish language and their functions within the system, Spanish Grammar and Linguistics II has a bigger focus on the issues and practical applications of teaching, learning, and researching grammatical topics in the Spanish language classroom. Students in this course will develop a more accurate perspective on the complexity of the internal and external factors that shape the Spanish language, and will implement their metalinguistic knowledge to teaching and in independent research. Prerequisite: 56:940:521.
56:940:523 Teaching Spanish Literature for Teachers (3)
This course provides a new awareness of the importance of a literary component in any curriculum of the k12 experience by supplying the necessary tools and skills to teach such curriculum effectively and in the target language (Spanish). Teachers taking this class will gain a deeper understanding of the cognitive, social, linguistic, and cultural benefits that the subject of literature produces in his/her instruction and students. Furthermore, such understanding will deeply illuminate why literature constitutes an essential tool to form, channel, and expand our students’ sense of self and their relation to their surrounding world without undermining the privilege of their own individuality.
56:940:533 Assessment and Evaluation in the Spanish Classroom (3)
This course explores the assessment of foreign/ second languages both at a theoretical and a practical level with a focus on the Spanish classroom. It conceptualizes the dichotomy teaching-assessment of the Spanish language as a fundamental pedagogical enterprise. Specifically, this course explores some of the latest issues that have come of key importance over the last few years among the foreign/second language educators in the field of assessment and evaluation. Throughout the semester students will engage in a range of theoretical, pedagogical, and reflective activities that will enable them to not only understand the material at hand, but also apply it to their Spanish language teaching and assessment practices.
56:940:536 Introduction to Hispanic Applied Linguistics (3)
This course intends to provide students with a panoramic view of the field of Hispanic applied linguistics.Students will be introduced to general notions of communication and language, Spanish linguistics (language and communication, Spanish phonetics, phonology, syntax, and semantics), language in context (sociolinguistics, languages in contact and Spanish dialectology), evaluation and assessment (Dynamic Assessment, Standardized Testing, ACTFL’s OPI), and technology in the Spanish classroom. Upon completion of this course students will have developed a basic knowledge of the key concepts, problems, and hopes associated with the field of Hispanic applied linguistics, as well as a general understanding of its practical applications in the Spanish classroom. Prerequisite: 56:940:533.
56:940:540 Bilingualism in the United States: from Theory to the Classroom (3)
In this course, students will gain an understanding of the main tenets of bilingual language acquisition (age of onset, the role of input, types of bilingualism, language planning), with a particular emphasis on the integration of multilingualism and multiculturality in the foreign language classroom. Students will also be encouraged to reflect about current controversies regarding bilingualism in the US educational system and in their everyday lives.
56:940:541 The Scientific Method: Doing Research in Spanish Literature and Linguistics (3)
This course provides students with the tools needed to develop an effective research framework in Spanish (literature and linguistics), walking them through the first stages of designing a project, choosing and reporting the most appropriate sources, as well as developing research questions and hypothesis. Students will be expected to use the information provided to produce their own research paper.
56:940:542 AP Literature in Spanish (3)
This course equips teachers with the pedagogical resources, assessment techniques, and mastery of content necessary to produce extraordinary results among his/her students. The course covers the entire curriculum stipulated by the College Board, organizing it thematically according to the topics proposed by this body (las sociedades en contacto, la construcción del género, el tiempo y el espacio, las relaciones interpersonales, la dualidad del ser or la creación literaria). By providing solid strategies on how to develop a full range of skills—with emphasis on critical reading and analytical writing—this class demonstrates the extraordinary academic opportunities that an AP Literature Course provides to Spanish learners.
56:940:620 Golden Women (3)
The course explores how female Spanish and Latin American writers of all ages exercised textual authority in order to challenge existing gender assumptions and conventions. Students will gain a deeper understanding on the socially constructed perceptions and definitions of womanhood; the ways in which factors of gender, class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality intersect; and the relationship between women’s writing and the traditional literary canon.
56:940:622 Race and Ethnicity in Early Modern Latin World (3)
A course that explores the complex genealogies of Spanish and Latin American racial identities. It traces how such identities were forged in the difficult experiences of their colonial past to the changing democratic realities of their present. Students will learn to identify and evaluate strategies of domination, representation, and resistance.
56:940:624 The Inquisitorial Mind (3)
This course studies not only the emergence, workings, and controversial historical legacies of the notorious Spanish institution, but also examines and the theological and political framework that forged it, establishing perplexing parallels between past and present institutionalized exclusions and/or prosecutions. Thus, the course is particularly focused on the way in which societies learn to demonize its “others” by using a criteria based on gender, race, religion, or a suitable combination of all three. In exploring why certain periods are more prone or willing than others to organize institutionalized responses to eradicate narrowly-defined enemies, students will gain a deeper understanding on the legal, political, and institutional implications of any kind of religious orthodoxy while dispelling popular myths associated with the subject.
56:940:625 Early Modernity in Latin World (3)
This course evaluates the gaps and frictions of early modernity of the Spanish empire. It explains why a very particular cultural “modern” sensibility shaped literary sensibilities such as the Picaresque and crystallized in pioneer genres like the novel. It is also concerned with materials conditions, such as the conflictive relationship between capital, sovereignty, and authority, or diasporas produced by cross-cultural encounters and new global orders. Students will gain a greater critical understanding of the interplay of content and context in literary works learning to infer, examine, and evaluate the value systems inscribed in such texts.
56:940:628 Picturing the Spanish Golden Age (3)
Listen to me with your eyes, demanded Sor Juana 400 years ago, reinforcing how the interactions of text and image elaborate and complicate the production and reception of meaning. Through a constellation of theoretical and literary readings–from Aristotle and Da Vinci to W.J.T Mitchell–this class will anchor a cross-disciplinary investigation of the rich and diverse Spanish visual cultures, and their political, religious, and aesthetic (mis)uses. Students will acquire a deeper understanding of how the image-text nexus addresses questions of representation, and will learn to examine such questions through a variety of historically-sound methods and approaches.
56:940:531 Technology in the Spanish Classroom (3)
This course focuses on the most prominent theoretical frameworks, research, technologies, and concepts of Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL), second language learning theories and its research, and foreign language pedagogy with a focus on Spanish. TELL is an area that is critical for the professional development of prospective foreign and second language educators, and would also be of interest to students of applied linguistics and education. Students in this course will develop a basic knowledge of the key concepts, problems, and hopes associated with TELL and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). This course will also explore the tools, classroom applications, and digital pedagogy of TELL applied to the Spanish language classroom.
56:940:569 Representing Identities in Latin America (3)
Explores the representation of identity through written narrative of Latin America of the 19th and 20th centuries. For the purposes of this course, we concentrate on four identity categories: race, class, gender, and nation, and we operate under the foundational assumption that identities are unstable and fluid, rather than fixed and essential. The course will focus on different literary movements that have underlined an autonomous nationalism such as indigenismo (Perú), criollismo (Argentina), costumbrismo (México), and negrismo (Cuba).
56:940:560 Women Writers of the Hispanic World (3)
This course introduces students to the work of major Spanish and Latin American women writers, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. Some of the authors to be studied include Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico), Alfonsina Storni (Argentina), Lucía Etxebarría (Spain), and María Luisa Bombal (Chile). In reading women writers from different backgrounds, students will have an opportunity to explore and understand the differences and commonalities among them. Among the issues that will be addressed in class are: women writers and the literary canon; the representation of female identity and female sexuality; women and the political reality.
56:940:561 Reading the Urban Experience in Spanish America (3)
This course will analyze the city as a space of representation in Spanish and Spanish American literary texts from early modernization to the 1930s. Emphasis will be placed on the ways the city becomes the site for opportunities, new hopes, and sociopolitical awareness, but also for anxiety, misery, and despair. The course intends to respond to the questions that arise upon looking into spaces–the urban exterior and the bourgeois interior–occupied and represented by national and generic subjectivities.
56:940:568 Modernismo and Modernity in Latin America (3)
This course follows the major modernist writers of Latin America, starting with early writers and accompanying European influences, leading up to the transition into contemporary and postcontemporary forms. Both poetry and prose are studied, but special emphasis is given to early modern poets and poetry of the early 20th century. Given the historical context of Latin America at the turn of the century, the course also examines the link between the artistic and political movements of the period, as well as authors’ roles as both poets and as heads of political movements within their respective countries and regions of the Americas.
56:940 562 Spanish American Short Story (3)
The course will approach the developments of the modern short story in Latin America during the 20th century. We will proceed chronologically, exploring the different manifestations of the genre according to the literary, social, and aesthetic movements and trends. The course studies short stories according to their style and form (modernismo, avant-garde, regionalist, surrealist, marvelous real), as well as their content (costumbrista, fantastic, detective, psychological). Our readings will include masterpieces in the genre by Ruben Darío, Horacio Quiroga, Juan Carlos Onetti, Cristina Peri-Rossi, Leopoldo Lugones, Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar, Juan Rulfo, and Rosario Castellanos, among others. Lectures will provide the cultural, historical, and social context. Students will be introduced to literary concepts and analytical methods during lectures as well.
56:940:698 Speaking of Film I (3)
Foreign language movies constitute powerful cultural references that allow students of a different language to be expose–and immerse–in different accents, cultural frameworks, and mentalities. This class capitalizes these possibilities by studying in depth not only a selected number of films, but the conditions and perceptions that produced them. Thus, although it is primary concerned with cinematographic texts, a fair amount of critical readings should also be expected. Students write one essay per class period, hence its writing-intensive designation.
56:940:681 Psychological Foundations of Teaching Spanish (3)
From an interdisciplinary perspective, this course explores the psychological conditions learning strategies, and cognitive and emotional responses required in the learning of Spanish as a Second Language. Educational psychologists suggest that in order to be an effective teacher one must not only understand the learner cognitive make up (physical, social, and moral development), but also how such make up has shaped his/her learning capacities (intelligence, special needs, multiculturalism, motivation). Current research indicates that it is thanks to these pedagogical competencies that teachers can design, structure and maintain optimum learning environments. This class is thus designed to develop such pedagogical skills in current and future teachers of Spanish.
56:940:665 Practicum (3)
This course provides students the opportunity to apply and integrate knowledge acquired through coursework. In clarifying and broadening career goals, it assists students in discovering, developing and refining necessary competencies and skills for their proposed career objectives.
56:940:669 Student Teaching Seminar (2)
This course introduces students to systematic observation and analysis of teaching practices and their impact on student learning. It also provides the opportunity for the student to demonstrate the competencies, knowledge, attitudes, and understandings of an effective teacher.
56:940:668 Student Teaching in Spanish (6)
Full-time supervised student teaching in grades K12 a minimum of 10 weeks in a school accredited by the state of New Jersey. The experience is directed by a qualified supervising teacher and has university-provided supervision.