SPAN 2113 - Contemporary Spain

Taught through the Department of European Languages, and Linguistics, this course provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary Spain through the prisms of history, politics, society, and culture. It is designed to contribute to your understanding of how a modern Spanish citizen thinks and feels in the twentieth-first century. Taught in Spanish at the intermediate level, the course provides opportunities for students to improve their language skills in the areas of speaking, writing, listening and reading. Through this course you will develop: 1) an understanding of some of the most important issues currently facing Spain; 2) an awareness of Spain’s place in the world, and 3) an appreciation of Spain’s diverse and dynamic culture. For students enrolling through Spanish Studies, this course will investigate the history/construction of Contemporary Spain through the lenses of film, narrative, poetry and non-fictional discourses, providing students with the opportunities to acquire cultural knowledge as well as sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence. Special emphasis will be placed on Spanish modernisation through the lens on an enforced single-citizenship identity. Applying pressure to this identity, we will explore the diversity of national and cultural identities (e.g. Catalan, Vasco, Euskadi) that continue to make their presence known in contemporary Spain, and which call for the acknowledgment of an intercultural Spain. The range of topics also includes the traditional role that translation has played (in the First Modernity: 1492-1800) in the construction/emergence of “Europe” as center. Lectures and seminars will be in Spanish.