Hispanic Studies

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 aims to provide students with an understanding of the centrality of the history of slavery in the study of Brazilian society and of the significance of Brazilian Slavery in both the transatlantic slave systems and slave societies in the Americas. In the first semester the module introduces students to the different disciplinary and intellectual approaches to the study of slavery in Brazil.

Through a combination of lecture and seminar work, students are encouraged to develop skills of analysis and interpretation through close reading of key texts. While the historiographical focus in on Brazil, the module attempts to accommodate students who have not studied Brazilian history or Portuguese. Mindful of the different skills sets and degree programmes of all students, the module draws on comparative contexts of slavery across the Americas both thematically and theoretically.

Topics covered in the first part of the module include the ideology of slavery, economics of slavery, systems of slave labour, slave culture and community, slave identity, and slave resistance. Within these topics we examine themes of agency, race, class, ethnicity and gender.

Over the course of the first semester students are expected to identify a topic for their second-semester research essay. The second semester is student lead, based on presentation work in a seminar setting. Students will be required to produce individual in-class presentations (work-in-progress) based on their book review.

Throughout the module close attention will be paid to the problems of sources and perspectives in the study of the history of slavery. The module encourages students to develop an awareness of how different historical sources are used and to think critically about them. In class discussions and in written work the expectation is that students apply comparative analysis and demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of historiography. 

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.

The module exposes students to an array of contemporary literary texts written in Spanish, and presents these texts and their translations against a backdrop of key research questions that explore literary translation, power and gender. The module focuses on both literary translation as a process (principles of literary translation, interventionist strategies, translators and activism), and as a product (paratexts, critical reception).

Students develop their knowledge of theory and practice throughout a series of lectures and practical translation workshops, where they will have the opportunity to apply, explore and critique the theoretical frameworks in their own translations of contemporary Hispanic literary texts.

Taught in Spanish, this module has been designed to give you a thorough insight into Spanish business including the contexts that have influenced its development and the ways it interacts with wider society.

We'll investigate a range of factors that have shaped the Spanish business landscape since the transition to democracy, such as:

• changes within the global and European regulatory environment
• ideological factors
• entrepreneurship
• government action to attract foreign investors, promote Spanish FDI and boost trade with regions such as Latin America, Europe and China.

You'll not only gain a historical understanding, but a contemporary perspective too by looking at case studies of both companies like Inditex (the owners of Zara and other important fashion brands) and important Spanish industries such as tourism. The module also explores some of the less positive impacts and criticisms of Spanish business practices relating to the environment, debt and corruption.

Free education from cradle to grave has been central to modern Cuba’s cultural and ideological identity. This module will encourage you to explore Cuba’s revolutionary change since 1959, through an examination of its evolving ideologies. You’ll review the critical factors of nationalism, dependency, radicalism and leadership which shaped developments from the original rebellion up to the present day.

Together we’ll discover the role of education policies and the ways in which a ‘cultural revolution’ was fundamental to the socialisation process of, and popular participation in (or dissent from) the Revolution.

This study will help you form conclusions about both the meaning of ‘ideology’ within the context of the Revolution, and the international geo-political significance of Cuba's self-definition and evolution.

This module will present a survey of the literature and film produced in Spain during the Franco period (1939-1975), focusing in detail on at least one literary work and one film from each decade of the Dictatorship. The chosen literary texts will include poetry and prose fiction, while the filmic ones belong to a variety of genres, including historical drama, neorealism and melodrama, comedy, and documentary.

The texts covered include some which reflect (and even help to propagate) the ideology of the rÉgime and others which stand in opposition to it. Each will, in its own way, provide an insight into the political, social and cultural attitudes of the decade to which it belongs as well as into the changing role and conditions of literary and cinematic production during this period. 

This module aims to provide you with the training necessary to be able to engage independently, under the guidance of a supervisor, in self-directed research on a topic that the student selects on the basis of an aspect of your Year Abroad experience.

Through a series of one-on-one tutorials, and the submission of a proposal, a literary review, and chapter draft, the student is advised on how to sustain an argument over up to 7,000 words, and how to underpin this argument with appropriate and innovative research.

In this module students learn to devise and develop projects and teaching methods appropriate to engage the age and ability group they are working with. The module enables students to gain confidence in communicating their subject, develop strong organisational and interpersonal skills, and to understand how to address the needs of individuals.

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.

You may believe that politics and literature are two distinct fields of study, but this module will help you understand the complex but integral relationship between the two.

We’ll explore the representation of key social and political issues within contemporary Spanish literature. You’ll discover how literature in late capitalism, and contemporary ‘Hispanic’ authors in particular, dealt with issues of language, identity, culture, society, nationhood, gender, class, memory, time and writing.

We also explore debates regarding the consistency of the categories of ‘Spain’ and ‘Spanishness’ when analysing cultural production in contemporary Iberia. This shall lead us to assess the competing discursive practices involved in remapping the notion of Spanish canonical literature at the beginning of the new millennium.

This module discusses the competing memories and contested legacies of social and political violence in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America by focusing on the disputes over the narratives and discourses about the past (competing narratives, or “memory wars”) and how what is “remembered” and/or “forgotten” can have an impact on the ability to imagine a collective, positive future. It aims to reflect on the apparent difficulty, and obvious imperative, of imagining alternative futures in neoliberal times and thereafter.

In recognition that memory is a creative, active process of working through the past that happens in the present, it will address cultural production from the 21st century. It addresses the role of art and culture  (mainly cinema [documentary, short and feature films], short stories, visual representations) in remembering and contesting the memory of the socio-political violence and conflicts (including Military Dictatorships, civil conflicts, social protests, political persecutions, failed coups) that have shaped late 20th and 21st centuries so far and that can both limit and inspire society’s ability to project an alternative future.

The module adopts a comparative approach which focuses on the formal experiments and common preoccupations of artists, social and political actors across different national cultures and historical contexts (translations and subtitles will be provided when required). It will discuss acts of subversion and protest, violence and resistance,  authoritarianism and transitions to democracy, neocolonial and decolonial practices, racial and class inequality and social injustice, neoliberalism and post-capitalism.