Introductory description

N/A

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Unit 1: Colonising and Decolonising Nature in the New Worl' (Weeks 1-5) Reading Week Unit 2:The Spanish Black Legend (Weeks 7-10) Christmas Vacation Unit 2: The Spanish Black Legend, cont’d (Weeks 1-3) Unit 3: Visualising Spain (Weeks 4-5, 7-10) Easter Vacation Revision tutorials

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• An ability and willingness to engage with other cultures, appreciating their distinctive features
• Ability to use the target language(s) for purposes of understanding, expression and communication
• Knowledge, awareness and understanding of one or more cultures and societies, other than their own.

Indicative reading list

Unit 1: Latin America

Bollaín, Lucía, También la lluvia, 2010
Colón, Cristobal, Diario de Abordo, Edición Luis Arranz, Edaf, S.A.,1986.
Cortés, Hernan, Cartas de Relación, Madrid, Editorial Castalia, 1993.
Darwin, Charles, Voyages of the Beagle, London, Penguin, 1989.
Von Humbolt, Alexander, Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent
during the years 1799-1804, Philadelphia, M. Carey, 1815.

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva España, Madrid, Real Academia,
2011.
El Libro de Marco Polo anotado por Cristobal Colón, Madrid, Alianza editorial, 1987.
Leonard, Irving, The book of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest
and Settlement of the Sixteenth Century New World, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992.
Fuentes, Carlos, Valiente Mundo Nuevo: épica, utopía y mito en la novela hispanoamericana, México,
Fondo de Cultura, 1990.
Fuentes, Carlos, El Naranjo, México, Alfaguarra, 1993.
Lindsay, Claire, Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America, New York, Routledge, 2010.
Pratt, Mary- Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London, Routledge, 1992.
Todorov, Tzvetan, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, New York, Harper and Row, 1984.

Unit 2: Imagining Spain
Cadalso, José, Cartas Marruecas, ed. by Russell P. Sebold (Madrid: Catedra, 2000)
Las Casas, Bartolomé, Brevísima relación de la destrudcción de las Indias (1552)
Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721)

Coletes Blanco, Agustín y Alicia Laspra Rodríguez, Libertad frente a tiranía: poesía inglesa de la Guerra de
la Indpendencia (1808-1814). Antología bilingüe (Madrid: Fundación Dos de Mayo-Espasa, 2013)
Hontanilla, Ana, ‘Images of Barbaric Spain in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Writing’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Volume 37, 2008, pp. 119-143
Iglesias, Carmen, No siempre lo peor es cierto (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2008)
Kitts, Sally-Ann, ‘Cadalso's "Cartas Marruecas" and Questions of Identity, Modernity, and Heroism’, Hispanic Research Journal: Iberian and Latin American Studies, 12 (2011), 34-47
Saglia, Diego, Poetic Castles in Spain: British Romanticism and Figurations of Iberia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000)

Unit 3: Visualing Spain

Berlanga, Luis García, Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (1953)
Cazorla Sánchez, Antonio, Fear and progress: ordinary lives in Franco's Spain, 1939-1975. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.
Richardson, Nathan, Constructing Spain: The Re-imagination of Space and Place in Fiction and Film, 1953-2003 (Bucknell University Press, 2011)
Triana Toribio, Nuria, Spanish National Cinema (Routledge, 2002)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of Hispanic culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of the Hispanic World will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.