Hispanic Studies BA

Welcome to Spanish at the University of Nottingham — this is where your journey to Spanish fluency shall really begin to take off!

Designed for students who have completed an A level in the language, this module will support you to improve in all the key areas of language acquisition: reading, writing, listening and speaking. To keep the classes interesting and relevant we'll use a wide range of source material from newspapers, audio-visual content and websites.

Through this, not only will your speaking and comprehension skills improve, but also your grammar usage and ability to understand the language in different contexts.

You'll also become more culturally aware of the countries that make up the Spanish-speaking world and get a better understanding of their varying current affairs and cultures.

Aimed at total beginners (or those with a little knowledge) this lively module will lay the foundations for your Portuguese language skills. Right from the first class we'll help you feel confident in gaining the key skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

We appreciate the importance of using interesting, relevant materials to aid your learning and will make use of a range of texts covering subjects from everyday life to current affairs. This way you will not only learn the Portuguese language, but also cultures from the lusophone world.

By the end of the module you will have the ability to understand spoken Portuguese, produce written texts and participate in conversations.

This module will introduce you to the cultures and societies of the portuguese-speaking world.

Through a combination of lectures, guided reading and research you'll explore the main patterns of Latin American political, economic and social history, between independence in the 1820s and the end of the twentieth century.

We'll focus on specific concepts, terminology, events and people, so as to develop an understanding of different perspectives and interpretations of the history in question. We'll also encourage you to appreciate the interaction between the ‘political history’ of major events and protagonists in official positions of power, and the ‘social history' of populations who both contributed to, and were affected by, political change.

You will learn to develop a critical approach to the study of history through a variety of materials; gain an ability to distinguish between the particular and the general and to develop the tools for comparative analysis.

This module is designed as a foundation for all later modules covering Spanish and Portuguese literatures. The main aims of this module are to give you a general introduction to literature and the study of literature, while providing you with a partial overview of literary writing in the Spanish language. As well as to introduce some of the key theoretical issues of literary study and instil good reading and critical habits. Through this you will be tested on your skills in close reading, textual analysis, seminar participation and the ability to write cogent and convincing commentaries and essays. This module is worth 20 credits.

This module will build on the language and cultural skills developed in year one and get you started on your exciting journey towards degree-level Spanish. Over the year, we're going to take you to the next level so by the end of the module you'll be ready to spend time living in a Spanish-speaking country.

We'll further develop your grammar and communication skills, building your confidence so that you feel happy working or studying abroad during year 3. We know the thought of essay writing in another language may feel daunting, but we will help you develop these skills to competence.

To prepare you for participating in conversation with fluency we'll pay special attention to developing your ability to use complex sentence structures and rhetoric. You'll get plenty of practice during laboratory classes where you'll have access to a wide range of contemporary audio-visual materials.

Building on the foundations laid in Portuguese 1 Beginners (MLAC1049), this module will improve not only your language skills but also your confidence.

We'll continue using relevant contemporary materials such as websites, newspapers, magazines and video content to improve your understanding, but we'll also dive deeper into grammar awareness and sentence structure.

You'll grow your vocabulary and focus on areas you may need whilst working or studying in a lusophone country. Listening comprehension skills will be further developed to ensure you feel comfortable taking part in authentic speed conversations.

This module will provide a general introduction to cinema in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds. The first semester will examine contemporary cinema from Spain and Latin America and the second semester will examine cinema from Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa. The module will address questions of style, form, socio-historical context and narrative content. The films will be available with English subtitles.

In this module you will explore a cultural period in the Hispanic world characterised by profound social change and the emergence of major world-figures of modern art (eg Pablo Picasso). It is structured around key literary and artistic movements from Spain and Spanish America from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, such as Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. A large part of your focus will be reading literary and visual texts of the period in relation to the socio-economic and political context of Spain’s and Spanish America’s rapid, but hugely uneven, modernisation.

Individual novels, plays, films, paintings or poems will also be used to exemplify and explore particular movements and historical moments. You will develop skills in close analysis of complex texts, an understanding of some of the major directions of Spanish and Spanish American literature in the 20th century, and the ability to relate texts studied to historico-cultural contexts. This module is worth 20 credits.

This module brings together the histories and cultures of key regions of the world in which Portugal establishes varying degrees of colonial rule between the 16th and 20th centuries. In this module you will examine the historical background to the age of Discoveries against which Portugal emerged as a leader in maritime exploration and European Imperialism. You will also examine the historical and political events of Portuguese colonialism and imperialism in Africa and Brazil, with an emphasis on understanding the political and social significance of cultural production in developing countries.

If you are studying Portuguese, this modules gives you an introduction to some of the major texts of the Portuguese-speaking world. The commonality of language derives from the colonial experiences of the Portuguese Empire, which resonate through the cultures from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century.

We will examine the ways in which ideas of nationhood and national identity have been expressed and constructed through the cultures of the Lusophone world. The texts studied explore the ways in which cultural production (through the arts) is embedded in the formation of nationhood and ideas about national identity. Culture is therefore examined through and in its political and historical context. The module will address questions of nationalism and identity as expressed through language, race and place, as well as issues relating to globalisation.

Through a programme of lectures, seminars, film screenings, directed reading, and written work, this course introduces students to Renaissance drama in film. It enables students to place plays by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare in their cultural, social, and historical contexts; and furthers students’ understanding of film adaptations of literary works. On successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated an ability to discuss the set texts and films critically; a knowledge of the cultural, ideological, and aesthetic features of the period studied; and the ability to compare and contrast plays by two contemporary writers, one Spanish and one English.

This advanced module will be your final step towards fluency, training you in a more formal, sophisticated register of spoken and written Spanish.

We'll continue to use a wide range of authentic Spanish texts to further deepen your knowledge and confidence at this advanced level. We'll look at how the texts are put together so that you may use these skills within your written and spoken Spanish, taking you to the highest level of proficiency.

This module offers coaching and practice in high-level translation from Spanish to English. You will work with a variety of texts over the semester, exploring different registers in Spanish and English, and equivalences between source and target languages. You will be required to reflect on the process of translation through annotations on specific translation decisions which will be part of the given task each week. You will also be given a brief for each translation and asked to research the target publication/context for their translation and specify ways in which the target context may differ from the original.

This module looks at key 20th century Spanish American novels and short stories and considers issues such as race, gender, sexuality and the conflict of cultures. You will be trained in using a broad range of tools of narrative and rhetorical analysis so as to engage in debates about literary representation and aesthetics, and will hone your use of these through a programme of research tasks, seminar presentations, group discussions, and written assignments.

This module is concerned with the emergence, nature and evolution of the Cuban Revolution. You will consider the Revolution in question within a wider historical and ideological context: the Latin American tradition of an increasingly radical nationalism. Dating from the 19th and early 20th century this is a time when there was a need to engage in serious and collective nation-building. The module therefore examines how the Cuban Revolution went on to influence the subsequent radicalisation of that tradition, shaping a range of political manifestation. For this module you will have one two-hour seminar each week.

We examine the distinct Spanish economic, political, social and cultural context in which the Civil War (1936-1939) played out, but also encourage you to view this period of conflict within a wider European context.

Spain’s fratricidal conflict was merely one – albeit crucial – episode in the early twentieth century’s longer ‘European Civil War’. Spain’s struggle to adapt to modernity, and the emergence of competing ‘solutions’ to this problem, mirrored similar developments across Europe.

The second half of the module examines the recent politicisation of ‘memory’ of this period in Spanish history. You'll be asked to consider how:

• ‘the past’ was used to justify the long dictatorship of General Franco
• ‘forgetting’ the past was crucial to the restoration of democracy in Spain after his death
• competing memories of the past are still dividing Spanish politics, society and culture in the 21^st century.

 

Through a programme of lectures, seminars, film screenings, directed reading, and written work, this course introduces students to Renaissance drama in film. It enables students to place plays by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare in their cultural, social, and historical contexts; and furthers students’ understanding of film adaptations of literary works. On successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated an ability to discuss the set texts and films critically; a knowledge of the cultural, ideological, and aesthetic features of the period studied; and the ability to compare and contrast plays by two contemporary writers, one Spanish and one English.

This module will look at representations of Spain and Portugal in European literature, travel writing, opera and painting from the late eighteenth-century onwards. It will examine the construction of an "exotic", Romanticised "other" Iberia in works of art, music and literature which are as popular today as they were over a century ago and, to some extent, still inform perceptions of European Hispanic identity among non-specialists. You will be trained to compare and contrast cultural production over a range of genres and disciplines such as opera, painting, literature and to inform your discussion with appropriate elements of cultural and historical context. You will be enabled to analyse the manipulation of cultural stereotypes and offer critical assessments of the impact and derivation of these manipulations.

This advanced module will be your final step towards fluency. We'll build on your grammatical competence and assist you to develop a more sophisticated and formal register of vocabulary, idiom and advanced syntax.

During class you'll gain the ability to discuss a wide range of topics in written and spoken Portuguese, giving you the confidence to converse articulately upon complex and intellectual subjects.

This module uses readings of film, poetry, fiction, and popular music to trace the modern cultural and social history of Portuguese-speaking communities, from Europe and Brazil to Africa and India. While consolidating the knowledge and skills developed on modules in year one and two, and your Year Abroad experience, it offers a more in-depth engagement with key twentieth-century cultural and political trends, and, particularly, with changing conceptions of being human, and the growth of ‘identity politics’.

Guided reading and research introduces you to key streams of contemporary critical theory - from psychoanalysis and feminism to post-colonial theory and memory studies – which are applied, in class discussions, presentations, and written assignments, both to texts ranging from ‘combat poetry’ to film musicals, and to the political and social struggles and transformations that those texts were shaped by and helped shape.

An understanding of Brazilian slavery is key to understanding not only the history of the country but also appreciating their culture today. Within this module, we'll explore the significance of Brazilian slavery in both, the transatlantic slave systems and slave societies across the Americas. 

In addition to gaining historical understanding, you'll also learn how to use different historical approaches, tools and skills.