2018-2019 University Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 University Catalog archived

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SPAN 296 - Topics in Hispanic Culture and Expression


Credits: 3 in fall or winter, 4 in spring

This course offers students the opportunity to further their understanding of Hispanic cultures and their expression by focusing on a relevant cultural, linguistic or literary topic, on an historical period, or on a region of Spain, Latin America or the U.S. Readings, discussions, and assignments are primarily in Spanish. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2019, SPAN 296-01: Topics in Hispanic Culture and Expression: Comparative Critical Race Theory and the Early-Modern Creation of Race (3). Prerequisite: One 200-level Spanish course. Have you ever wondered why you should bother to read 16th- and 17th-century literature? What does Bartolomé de las Casas have to do with Thomas Jefferson? How can Francisco de Vitoria help us to better understand the United States or, even more locally, the Virginia of 2019? This course comprises a survey of theorizations of race and ethnicity in Hispanophone literary and cultural studies, performance studies, visual studies, and philosophy. The course engages with the body of critical literature that examines the construction of race in a variety of different social, political, legal, and economic settings in the West, from the15th century Western Mediterranean to early-modern Spanish-American colonies to the United States of the 20th and 21st centuries. Accordingly, students gain the tools with which to examine their own beliefs and attitudes surrounding race, and with which to engage with the many, diverse people whom they encounter in the complex world of 21st century America. We seek to historicize the context of race and to understand the ways in which people have constructed and made use of race for particular purposes. Spragins.




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