This module follows on from the module Spanish and Latin American Studies 1. Its key objectives are to continue to extend students’ reading and listening skills in Spanish through the study of longer texts/films than those which feature in the Spanish Language modules; to widen and deepen their understanding of Italian language texts/films as cultural products which provide important insights for the development of the range of inter-cultural competencies required to function professionally in a Spanish-speaking environment. The theme of this module is Modernity. This class will take a pragmatic approach to the concept in order to explore its complexities and contradictions in relation to 19th and 20th Century Spain and Latin America.
These geographical and cultural regions have given rise to particularly heated debate, given that the status of Spain within European modernity is contested, at least until the death of Franco and the transition to democracy, while specifically Latin American issues such as mestizaje, the conflict between ideas of ‘Latin America’ and the struggles of individual countries for independence, or the rejection of European aesthetic and epistemological values, underline the tensions and paradoxes contained within the struggle for economic and social modernity.
Class content will reflect the research specialisms of Spanish lecturing staff in the School of Languages, Law and Social Sciences, and the actual texts and films studied may vary from year to year to reflect student demand and staff availability, as determined by the research focus of the staff concerned. All texts/films studied will be in the original language.
The class will examine and debate key aspects of the concept of modernity, and look at manifestations of Modernity in 20th Century Spain and Latin America through the study of individual texts and films such as short stories from Spain and Latin America, Los últimos de Filipinas (Antonio Román), Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (Luis García Berlanga) or Amores perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu). These films and texts will enable focused exploration of issues such as the following: the impact of the arrival of the railway and capitalist values on provincial life and state politics; the loss of empire and the erosion of ideas of national ‘honour’, as well as the growth of the superpowers; the impact of post-World War II economic policies, and their uneven application, and the inherent contradiction between these liberal economic values and international recognition of dictatorships; the representation and re-writing of science and history in magical realism; the representation of individual subjective reactions to social, political and economic events in the context of the historical struggle for modernity and modernization.
The class will be delivered through a mixture of lectures and seminars. Specific reading will be identified for each lecture hour, prioritised as ‘essential’ and ‘further reading’, and should require approximately 2 hours of private study/preparation. Each tutorial topic will be accompanied by a list of specific readings/questions and/or prompts. Adequate tutorial preparation should involve approximately 2 hours of private study.
Indicative Learning Hours:
| Staff led activities: Lectures | 40 |
| Staff directed activities: Tutorials | 10 |
| Student directed: lecture preparation | 80 |
| Student directed: tutorial preparation | 20 |
| Student led: class test, essay and presentation preparation and completion | 20 |
| Student led: exam preparation and completion | 30 |
| TOTAL | 200 |
E-learning
All class materials and additional support materials will be available through Brightspace.
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Formal Examination | 50 |
| Other Assessment(s) | 50 |