Required Texts:  Back To Top
Cantarino, Vicente. Civilización y cultura de España. 4^a ed. New Jersey: 
           Prentice Hall, 1999.
Gies, David T., ed.  The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture.
           Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. (Excerpts: Library Reserves)
Graham, Helen and Jo Labanyi, eds.  Spanish Cultural Studies: An 
           Introduction.  The Struggle for Modernity. 
Oxford:  Oxford UP, 1995.  (Excerpts:  Library Reserves)

Coursepack. 

Films (depending on availability):  Back To Top
Bigas Luna,  "Jamón, Jamón" (1993)
Luis Bu?uel,  "Un chien andalou" (1929)
Carlos Saura,  "¡Ay, Carmela!"  (1990)
Montxo Armendariz,  "Cartas de Alou"  (1990)
Pedro Almodovar,  "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios" (1988)

Course Evaluation:  Back To Top
18%        Class Participation
10%        Oral Presentation
10%        2 Quizzes (5% each)
12%        Group Project: Autonomías (6 entries total)
20%        Midterm Exam
30%        Final Paper

Class participation:  Back To Top
This may be the element most crucial to your interest and therefore, the class's success.  Engaged, intellectual participation in class discussion is fundamental both to your understanding and that of your peers.  To this end, you should take notes and think critically about the texts before  coming to class. You will find that if you bring all of your questions, opinions, and problems to the discussion, we all benefit from them. 

Attendance:  Back To Top
The class format is driven by class discussion, with very few lectures, therefore regular class attendance is critical to your success.  You may miss 3 classes during the course without penalty, after which, your final participation grade will be lowered 3% for each subsequent absence.  Please remember that if you must miss class, you are responsible for both the material covered that day as well as the work for the following class. 

Oral Presentation/s:  Back To Top
Each student will be required to give at least one 15-20 minute oral presentation on a particular cultural topic.  Keeping in mind the nature of the course, the presenter should take advantage of (or create) visual, audio, etc. media that might enrich her presentation. Each presenter will be prepared with his own observations and information, but will also be expected to lead discussion by asking questions of the class.   This, therefore, does not excuse other students from participating.  If the topic is something we have all worked on for that day, everyone is expected to be involved and should come to class with questions already formulated - to pose to all of us as a group as well as to the discussion leader. 

Quizzes:  Back To Top
The quizzes are intended to make sure important concepts and terms are in place as we move through the first half of the course.  We will discuss their format during the term. 

Group Project - Autonomías: Back To Top
Each student will be assigned to a particular group responsible for an "autonomía" in Spain.  Every two weeks, each member of the group will post current information regarding a specific aspect of their autonomy (restaurants, sports, upcoming concerts, politics, etc.) to a designated web-page. Each posting should be entered by Friday 5pm of the designated week (see course schedule).  We will switch "autonomías" after spring vacation.  You will be graded according to your own entries, though you will be constructing your page with the rest of the group.  You will be given more information on this at the beginning of the term. 

Midterm Exam:  Back To Top
This will be a take-home exam building on your cumulative past work.  You will be given a time limit, format description of the exam and instructions as we approach it.

Final Paper:  Back To Top
We will discuss the specifics of the final project during the term.  However, it will be open topic and limited to 8-10 pages.  During the first two weeks of April (date TBA), you will turn in an abstract of your paper and we will discuss your topic.  The due date for the final project will be as listed in the Final Exam Schedule for Winter 2000. 

Films, Spanish Cultural Events on Campus: Back To Top
During the term, there will be campus events involving Spain that I will list on the course web page.  I will offer extra credit for *some of these events, though I encourage you to take advantage of any opportunity you can to complement class.  See the web page from time to time for the list of events, the corresponding extra credit assignment, and an explanation of "extra credit".