Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

HISP 231A is the first of the two-semester series of Intermediate Spanish at DePauw. Whether you have tested into this course or have come to it through the 100 series, you have at some point studied the basic structures of Spanish, and/or have practiced the language to some degree. Individual students may be interested in pursuing a minor, or even a major in Hispanic Studies. As part of the Hispanic Studies curriculum, this course focuses on a topic, and highlights the underlying features of language (grammar) and vocabulary that best attend to it, as opposed to an unmanageable and unrealistic panorama of language and culture. Language happens in context, and we will work to develop an engaging context as we build proficiency.

The topic of this course is the intersection of family, city, nation in the Hispanic (Spanish-speaking) world. While social, cultural, and political norms will vary, we can perceive in various examples of the Hispanic experience a tendency to graft an ideal of the nuclear family into broader structures, especially the organization of urban centers and projections of national identity. The perception of a city or nation as a family may be efficient and comprehensible to a community, but it can also be problematic and oppressive. The crises that emerge from this discourse tell us a great deal of where the Hispanic world has been, where it’s at, and where it’s going. This discussion is immediately relevant to all of us, since the U.S. by demographics is very much a Hispanic country (which doesn’t mean that it’s not also an anglophone country). Even if we insist on viewing Spanish as a foreign language—and we really shouldn’t—the endeavor of cultural comparison, that is, an exploration of similarities and differences, is fundamental to internalizing knowledge of a language in such a way that it stays with you beyond the parameters of the course. Presumably, that is what we are here to do as language learners.

Student Outcomes

Through successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Clearly express their ideas and the ideas of others to varied audiences in Spanish, both in written and oral contexts.
  • Gain an understanding of and question the complexity of cultural products, processes and perspectives of the Spanish-speaking world
  • Develop their communicative competence such that they will be able to progress to the next HISP course in the curricular sequence.

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