Spanish: Language, Literature, Culture (including courses in English)

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  • CAS LS 507: The Sounds of Spanish
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS LX 250; AND one LS 300-level language course; or consent of instructor.
    Introduction to Spanish phonetics and phonology. Covers articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics, focusing on techniques for visualizing speech sounds. Examines the phonemic inventory and phonological organization of Spanish from several perspectives, including generative and articulatory phonology as well as sociolinguistics. Conducted in Spanish. Also offered as CAS LX 383 and GRS LX 683.
  • CAS LS 557: Poetry of the Spanish Golden Age
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS LS 350; and at least two 400-level LS course.
    The development of lyric poetry during the Renaissance and the baroque period. Emphasis on close thematic, stylistic, and structural analysis of individual poems by major figures including Garcilaso, Fray Luis, San Juan de la Cruz, Gongora, and Quevedo.
  • CAS LS 575: Topics in Peninsular Literature
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS LS 350; and two LS 400-level literature courses or consent of the instructor.
    May be repeated for credit as topic varies. Topic for Fall 2023: Topic for Fall 2023: Framing the Mediterranean. How the cultural hybridity of the Mediterranean shaped Spanish Early Modern prose. With a focus on brief-narrative collections, analysis of how Spanish authors used the narrative framework for a variety of purposes, especially constructions of authorship.
  • CAS LS 576: Topics in Spanish American Literature
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS LS 350; and two 400-level LS literature courses; or consent of instructor.
    Topic for Fall 2023: A textual construction of Latin American "thirdworldness." Traces cardinal literary, political, cinematographic and musical texts in relation to its imagined subordination to the "Global North", from Columbus's letters to twenty-first-century Latino Netflix production and the multimedia manifestations of reggaeton.
  • CAS LS 579: Topics in Hispanic Cinemas
    Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS LS 350; and at least two 400-level LS course.
    Cinema as a perspective from which to analyze cultural and socio-political developments within the Spanish- speaking world. Topics drawn from the history of specific national cinemas, individual filmmakers or particular "schools," relations between literature and film, and political uses of film. Topic for Spring 2023: This course offers an overview of Cuban cinema after the revolution of 1959. We focus particularly on the forging of a new cinematic language from the Third World. Themes include censorship and cinema, trance and revolution, African- derived religions and cinema. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Critical Thinking.
    • Aesthetic Exploration
    • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
    • Critical Thinking