Variable Topic Courses

This link shows the titles and brief descriptions of our current undergraduate elective courses and graduate seminars. Detailed course descriptions can be found on the Registrar’s office website Spanish and Portuguese

Fall 2025:

SPAN 135: Written on the Ocean: Ships and Sailors in Colonial Spanish American Literature
MW 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Jimena Rodríguez
Analyze the ocean as a literary and cultural space in Early Modern Colonialism through the journeys of sailors, pilots, and cartographers. Topics include major expeditions, lesser-known coastal voyages, and ships as narrative spaces in texts and maps. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 150: Ethnic Otherness in Latin American Culture
TR 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Patricia Arroyo Calderón
Study how ethnic otherness has been represented in 20th- and 21st-century Latin American culture—from indigenista depictions in literature, art, and film to contemporary indigenous voices in digital media, performance, and activism. Focus includes countries like Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and indigenous expression in California. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 150: Mexican Climate (Change) Fiction
TR 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Kip Tobin
Explore contemporary Mexican literature, film, and art responding to climate change, often through dystopian, utopian, and Anthropocene themes. Coursework includes discussions, creative projects, and analysis. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 160: Spanish in the United States
MW 10:00–11:50 PM | Instructor: Jack Carter
A sociolinguistic examination of Spanish in the United States with attention to both the linguistic structures of U.S. Spanish varieties and the sociopolitical contexts that shape them. Explores intersections of language with race, identity, policy, education, and media, and their impact on ideologies surrounding Spanish and its speakers. Emphasis on developing academic inquiry through literature review and identification of research gaps.

SPAN 170: Indigenous Andean Life in the Contemporary World
TR 4:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Luz María de la Torre
Learn about the resilience, strategies, and political emergence of Indigenous Andean communities in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The course focuses on concepts like Sumak Kawsay, interculturality, and collective rights, highlighting contemporary Indigenous voices and their roles in politics, culture, ecology, and beyond. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN M172XP / CCAS M170XP: ¡Cine vivo! Community-Engaged Sensory Ethnography Workshop
R 2:00–4:50 PM | Instructor: Greg Cohen
A hands-on workshop combining theory and practice in participatory video and sensory ethnography. Students collaborate with Latino communities in L.A. to create short “urban video portraits,” while studying experimental and community-based cinema in Latin America and Iberia. Culminates in a public screening. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 180: History, Memory, Truth, Fiction — Documentary Practices in Latin America
TR 10:00–11:50 AM | Instructor: Greg Cohen
Explore Latin American documentary practices from the 1960s to today through film, video, photography, and participatory media. Topics include memory, archives, political agency, and the boundaries between truth and fiction. Weekly materials in Spanish, English, and subtitled Portuguese. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 224: Ingenious Ecologies — Poetry, Nature, and Society in the 17th-Century Hispanic World
R 3:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Javier Patiño
Explore early modern Spanish poetry as a space where nature and human creativity intertwine. From cities to villages, poetry served as social and intellectual expression across diverse communities, linking verse and natural study. Discussions focus on the creative parallels between poets and nature.

SPAN 290: Competing Islands, Archipelagic Thinking, and Caribbean Cultural Production
W 3:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Jorge Marturano
Explore key theories and concepts of the Caribbean as a geo-cultural region, focusing on its 20th- and 21st-century literary and visual cultural production. Mostly taught in Spanish, with some flexibility for English in discussions and assignments.

PORT 141C: Unforeseen Connections. Brazilian Film and the World
MW 10:00 AM-11:50 AM | Instructor: Patrícia Lino
Have you ever thought about the various types of connections that Brazilian film has established with the world since the late 19th century? In addition to being geographical, aesthetic or thematic, these connections often consist of the recreation or decolonial metamorphosis of one or more cinematographic and communicative tools developed around the globe.
In this class, we will have the opportunity to not only discuss these references but also understand them in practice through a series of creative and collective exercises. Taught in English (may vary according to student preference).

PORT 290: Plantation Thinking
M 3:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Nohora Arrieta Fernandez
This seminar examines the sugar plantation’s role in Brazilian and Caribbean intellectual and aesthetic traditions through essays, novels, poetry, and visual arts. Students will analyze foundational and radical texts to understand the plantation as a complex cultural symbol.

Winter 2026:

SPAN 130 – TBA
TR 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: John Dagenais

SPAN 135: Performing One’s Life in the 17th-Century Global Hispanic World
TR 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Javier Patiño
Explore 17th-century performance culture through plays by Lope de Vega, Sor Juana, and others. The course investigates public and private identities, theatricality in daily life, and the tension between appearance and inner truth. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 150: Colonial Literature in Cinema: Adaptation, Representation & History
MW 10:00–11:50 AM | Instructor: Jimena Rodríguez
In this course we will visit different representations of the colonial period, analyzing, comparing, and relating existing connections among cinema, literature and history. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 150: Myth, Memory, and Revision in Spanish Women’s Writing
MW 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: McKenna Middleton
Explore how contemporary Spanish women writers (1980s–present) reinterpret myths, legends, and history to challenge cultural traditions. Focus on Spain’s democratic transition and feminism through novels, stories, and films. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 155: Stories of the Unaccompanied Alien Child
TR 10:00–11:50 AM | Instructor: Alejandro Castro
Examination of the invention of the figure of the unaccompanied alien child as a way to understand the cultural dynamics that shape Latin American communities in the United States. Drawing on literary, journalistic, visual, and cinematic works, the course will explore how the “epic adventure” of children traveling alone illuminates broader patterns of racism, infantilization, and displacement. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 160: Spanish Language and Cognition
MW 10:00–11:50 AM | Instructor: Carla Suhr
Explore the relationship between Spanish, cognition, and culture through cognitive linguistics concepts like categorization, stereotypes, and metaphor. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 160 – TBA
MW 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Carlos Quícoli

SPAN 170: Latin American Queer Cultural Production & Activism
TR 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Leandro Hernandez
This seminar examines queer cultural production and activism in Latin America amid political violence, stigma, and marginalization. Focusing on Cuba, Argentina, and Chile from the 1970s to today, students will analyze texts, visual media, and performances that center queer bodies and identities as acts of resistance.

SPAN 180: New Cinemas in the Latin American Sixties
TR 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Greg Cohen
A critical examination of independent Latin American cinema during the “long decade” of the 1960s that addresses a wide variety of innovative films in relation to the global transformation of both film aesthetics and critical discourse at the time. The focus will span well-known works and genuine outliers often ignored by the official canon. Topics include the aesthetics of “new wave” cinemas; the transnational elements of Latin American film history; the cinematic engagement with cultural identities, national imaginaries, and dominant ideologies; and the matrix of modern discourse, revolutionary politics, and global film styles during a high point of world cinema culture. Films in Spanish and Portuguese with English subtitles; readings in both Spanish and English. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 180: New Mexican Cinema
TR 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Kip Tobin
Explore Mexican film since the late 1980s, focusing on political, economic, and cultural shifts. Topics include melodrama, romantic comedies, urban thrillers, narcoviolence, feminicide, indigenous film, and migration. Weekly film screenings and analysis. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 191B: The Art of Revolution and the Politics of Art in Latin America
T 3:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Greg Cohen
Where and how do art and politics coincide? What role can or should the artist play in local, national, or global social movements? What is the relationship between art and its public, and how do institutions and governments either promote or undermine them? What, in other words, are the politics of art and the art of politics in any historical moment? This course examines how the visual arts in Latin America have addressed such questions since the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. Weekly study materials in both Spanish and English. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 290: Practices of Disobedience in Contemporary Venezuelan Culture
T 3:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Alejandro Castro
This seminar examines disobedience as a strategy for symbolizing political and economic crisis in Venezuelan culture under chavismo, focusing on literary, visual, and performance works produced over the past twenty-five years. Drawing from queer theory, biopolitics, and memory studies, the course explores representations of sexuality, violence, environmental crisis, illness, and diaspora as sites of confrontation between body and state. Taught in Spanish.

PORT/COM LIT M142C: Visiting and Exile, 1820–2020
MW 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: José Luiz Passos
A 200-year exploration of travel, migration, and exile in Brazil through literature and film. The course covers diverse voices from Maria Graham to Clarice Lispector and explores Brazil’s cultural ties to Europe and the US. Films with English subtitles; no prior knowledge required.

PORT 290: The Body Moves the Mouth — Expanded Poetry in Brazil and Portugal
M 3:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Patrícia Lino
Study 20th- and 21st-century avant-garde poetry from Portugal and Brazil, exploring movements like Modernism, Concrete, and Neoconcrete Poetry. The course focuses on intermedial development, performative essays, and the lasting impact on contemporary poetry. Taught in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Spring 2026:

SPAN 140: Narratives of the Mexican Revolution
TR 4:00–5:50 PM | Instructor: Maarten van Delden
Explore novels and stories from 1910s–1960s that depict the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath, featuring authors like Mariano Azuela, Juan Rulfo, and Rosario Castellanosa and more. Taught in Spanish

SPAN 150 – TBA
TR 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Patricia Arroyo Calderón

SPAN 150: Sound Universe, Cultural Memory, and Resistance in the Arguedian Narrative
TR 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Luz María de la Torre
Explore the sonic and oral world of the Indo-Andean culture through the works of José María Arguedas, focusing on how sound preserves cultural memory and resistance. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 160: Spanish in the 21st Century
MW 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Gelsys García Lorenzo
Study and apply the latest Spanish language norms from the RAE and ASALE (2010–2025). Emphasis on professional writing, including new orthographic, grammatical, and lexical updates, with a focus on modern usage and inclusivity. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 170: Te voy a contar mi historia / I Am Going to Tell My Story
MW 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Jimena Rodríguez
An upper-division writing course focused on personal narratives of First Generation students. Explore chronicle, testimonio, oral history, and visual narratives while reflecting on identity, power, and positionality. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 170: The Black Diaspora in Latin America: Literature and Visual Cultures
MW 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Nohora Arrieta Fernandez
This course explores how African diaspora communities in Latin America and the Caribbean use literature and visual art to question citizenship, nationhood, and Black identity. Materials range from 19th-century enslaved people’s autobiographies to 20th- and 21st-century stories, paintings, and performances. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN M172XP – TBA
R 2:00–4:50 PM | Instructor: Carla Suhr

SPAN 175: Taller de poesía
TR 2:00–3:50 PM | Instructor: Alejandro Castro
The course will explore poetry as both a practice of language and a form of inquiry into experience. Through close readings of literary theory and poets from Latin America and the Latino diaspora in the United States, the course will consider how a poem listens to the world and reimagines it through rhythm, image, and silence—how, for the poetic imagination, language serves as a laboratory for reshaping personal and social experience. The course will also consider what it means to write in Spanish within a U.S. setting, including how translation, migration, and linguistic friction generate new creative and political possibilities. Taught in Spanish.

SPAN 180 – TBA
MW 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: Greg Cohen

PORT 175: “Write a Novel”
MW 12:00–1:50 PM | Instructor: José Luiz Passos
An intensive workshop guiding students through the full process of novel writing—from idea to polished chapters. Conducted in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, the course focuses on narrative structure, character development, and peer review across languages. Students create original work and engage in cross-cultural discussions about storytelling. Open to undergraduates and graduates with intermediate language skills.