DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE
FALL 2015 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
(SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
PORTUGUESE COURSES
PORT-UA 3.001 Intermediate Portuguese I
Monday, Wednesday & Thursday: 11:00am - 12:15pm
Carlos Veloso
This is a four-credit intermediate course that expands on grammar topics covered at the elementary level and introduces
the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive and compound tenses. Short fiction, the news and the arts are also utilized to
foster spontaneous communication and knowledge of the culture of the Portuguese-speaking world. The ultimate goal of
this course is to help you further develop the oral, written and analytical skills in the language that you have acquired so
far.
PORT-UA 4.001 Intermediate Portuguese II
Monday, Wednesday & Thursday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Carlos Veloso
This is a four-credit intermediate to advanced level course for students who have a good command of the language. A
descriptive review of grammar through the use of more sophisticated sentence patterns and vocabulary offers students the
opportunity to think independently and to analyze the work of artists and writers. Short literary pieces and plays, works of
art and news media are utilized to prompt writing responses, critical ideas and informed classroom discussions. The
ultimate goal of this course to expand, refine and solidify your knowledge of the languages culture and communication in
Portuguese. Prerequisite: PORT-UA4; placement test or permission of the DLP.
PORT-UA 11 Elementary Portuguese for Spanish Speakers
Section 2: Monday, Wednesday & Thursday: 3:30pm – 4:45pm
Carlos Veloso
This is a four-credit course for advanced Spanish speakers with a very good command of Spanish and Spanish grammar
that provides a comprehensive approach to Portuguese. Comparisons between pronunciation patterns, grammatical forms
and the vocabularies of the two languages will ultimately make possible the transfer of skills from Spanish into
Portuguese. Emphasis will be given to readings, the writing of essays and classroom discussion. Grammar and usage will
be taught at an accelerated pace so that, by the end of the semester, students will be able to master essential
communicative skills in Portuguese. Students in this class should have completed SPAN-UA 110 “Advanced
Grammar and Composition.” Heritage students should have command of grammar and know how to write in
Spanish.
PORT-UA 704.001 Narrarating Poverty (AHSEM-UA 186.001)
Tuesday & Thursday: 3:30pm-4:45pm
Marta Peixoto
This course, CONDUCTED IN ENGLISH, examines literary works in various genres (novels, autobiography, short
stories), and Brazilian films (Cinema Novo and after, including documentaries), that attempt to narrate the experience of
poverty. We will discuss texts by Graciliano Ramos, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Clarice Lispector, Rubem Fonseca, and
Patricia Melo and view the films (Barren Lives, The Scavengers, The Hour of the Star, Pixote, Bus 174, City of God,
Babilônia 2000 and Black Orpheus), in light of key questions. How do these texts reflect on the nature of representation,
and on the investments of author and reader in images of deprivation? How do they present the connections of poverty
with violence, stigmatization, and citizenship rights? How do they frame the ethical responsibilities of the writer or filmmaker, as well as of readers and spectators? What are the patterns of consumption and circulation of these texts?
Readings for the course are available in one or more of the following ways: for purchase in amazon.com, posted on NYU
Classes, or at Bobst Library, sometimes in multiple copies. The films are on reserve at the Avery Fisher Film Library at
Bobst.
PORT-UA 850.001 Topics: The Help: Gender, Race, Relations and Domestic Service in Brazilian Literature and Film
Tuesday & Thursday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Marta Peixoto
This is a course taught in PORTUGUESE; in some cases, papers may be written in English. Some of the readings are also
available in English translation. We will discuss an array of different kinds of texts: literature (novels, short stories,
poems, and a play), historical and anthropological studies, excerpts from manuals for employers, as well as several films,
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in order to examine gender, race and class relations in Brazil from the late nineteenth- to the twentieth-first centuries
though the lens of domestic employment. How has this site of intimate exposure across class and racial differences been
variously imagined and constructed? What has been the role of gender and sexuality in relationships of such great power
imbalances? How do a culture and a national self-image that have often taken pride in the harmonious managing of
differences coexist in domestic spaces with stark socioeconomic disparities?
SPANISH COURSES
SPAN-UA 101 Advanced Spanish Conversation
Section 001: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday: 11:00am - 12:15pm
Laura Amelio
Section 002: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday: 12:30pm-1:45pm
Enrique DelRisco
Section 003: Monday, Tuesday & Thursday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Enrique DelRisco
Advanced Spanish Conversation is a four-credit advanced-level course designed to expand students’ speaking skills
beyond the practical, day-to-day language functions. The aim is to achieve a more elaborate and abstract use of the
language through the practice of pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms, and structures, within the contexts of selected subject
areas. Although the main concentration of the course is on the oral component, reading and writing skills are practiced as
well, as a basis for oral expression.
The goal of the course is to generate active participation through thought-provoking discussions and creative activities
that stimulate critical thinking as well as conversation. This is achieved through authentic readings from contemporary
sources — newspapers, magazines, literature, films, music, videos, etc. — that sensitize students to the actual concerns of
Spanish. A process of recording, transcribing and editing actual conversations will also help students better their Spanish.
Finally, various listening comprehension activities will be included to fine tune the student’s ear to Spanish sounds.
SPAN-UA 110.001 Techniques of Translation
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Maria Jose Zubieta
This course will explore the principles and problems of translation through readings and in-class workshops. The theory
will concentrate on ideas and issues about translation from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Students will develop their skills in Spanish-English translation by working with different types of genre, such as poetry,
short story, drama, film, comics, advertisements, and legal documents. The selected works will be translated into the
student’s native language. Theoretical questions and problems will be addressed in the readings and discussed in class as
they arise within the translation exercises. Reading assignments are in Spanish and in English, but the discussions will be
conducted entirely in Spanish.
In-class workshops will focus on practice that highlights the difficulties of translating from one language into another.
Special attention will be paid to the structural differences between English and Spanish; the significance of tone and style;
the author's "voice" and the translator's "ear"; and the on-going issues of fidelity, literalness, and freedom.
Students will visit three sites in New York City that work with and depend on the Spanish-English bilingual community.
These sites are: the Museo del Barrio, El Repertorio Español, and the Southern District of New York Interpreter’s Office.
Students will write a report in Spanish on each of these three visits.
SPAN-UA 200 Critical Approaches (in Spanish)
Section 001: Tuesday & Thursday 11:00am - 12:15pm
Pablo LaParra
Section 002: Tuesday & Thursday 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Marcelo Carosi
Section 003: Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Matthew Nicdao
Section 004: Tuesday & Thursday 3:30pm - 4:45pm
Javier Rodriguez
Critical Approaches is a 4-credit course designed to develop writing and analytical skills in Spanish. Structured around the
questions, What is literature? What is a text? The course looks at literary texts divided by genres (poetry, short story,
theatre novel, essay) and non-literary texts (autobiography, testimony, documentary film, chronicles), and studies textual
structure and narrative point of view and focalization as key analytical considerations. Students in this course develop
skills for close textual readings in class discussions and engage in writing as a collaborative process that includes self
correction, peer correction and correction by the instructor. The course includes a final research paper that is developed
throughout the semester and has readings from the Golden Age in Spain or slave narratives in the Caribbean to modern
theatre and the novel. Critical Approaches counts for all Spanish majors and minors in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese and is a prerequisite for most upper level courses in the department.
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SPAN-UA 225.001 Creative Writing in Spanish (in Spanish)
Monday & Wednesday 11:00am – 12:15pm
Lila Zemborain
El objetivo principal de este curso es ayudar a los estudiantes a reflexionar sobre el proceso creativo mientras elaboran y
producen sus propios textos. En ambas secciones del curso, poesía y cuento corto, el estudiante podrá explorar y ampliar
sus hábitos de escritura a través de ejercicios específicos y de la lectura de textos modelo. Se discutirá el trabajo de
algunos de los poetas y cuentistas de habla hispana más influyentes del siglo XX, como Octavio Paz, Vicente Huidobro,
Jorge Luis Borges y Silvina Ocampo, así como la obra de otros escritores contemporáneos. Simultáneamente, el
estudiante aprenderá a refinar y a pulir sus textos. Se prestará especial atención a la lectura y revisión de acuerdo a las
necesidades individuales. *THIS COURSE IS AN ADVANCED LANGUAGE ELECTIVE AND COUNTS TOWARDS
THE SPAN MAJOR AND MINOR*
SPAN-UA.0300.001 The Iberian Atlantic
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday: 11:00am-12:15pm
James Fernandez & Laura Torres
Recitation, section 2. Thursday 9:30am-10:45am
Taught in English.
Recitation, section 3. Thursday9:30am-10:45am
Taught in Spanish.
No pre-requisite. Recommended early in the major, concurrent with language study. This course has a lecture on
Tuesdays & Thursdays (taught in English) and two recitations on Thursdays; one recitation is taught in English and the
other in Spanish. If you have completed SPAN-UA.0200 “Critical Approaches,” you are strongly encouraged to enroll
for section 3, taught in Spanish. See note below.
The Iberian Atlantic explores the early modern Iberian Atlantic from Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) and indigenous America
through the era of Spanish and Portuguese conquest and colonization that closely tied the Iberian Peninsula, Western
Africa, and the Americas to one another in a vast oceanic inter-culture and political economy. The Iberian Atlantic refers
to what is now the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking world, on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. The body of water
functioned as a conduit allowing for contact between Europe and America through conquest and the migration,
displacement, and circulation of people, goods, and capital. The course focuses on those objects of trade—as they work
themselves into cultural, intellectual, and artistic production—to study the collective imagination of populations on both
sides of the Atlantic. We encounter a range of key primary sources that include architecture, textiles, travel writing,
poetry (wine poetry!), testimonies, and visual art.
The course is divided between lectures (in English) and recitations (in either English or Spanish). Recitations are an
opportunity to discuss that week’s readings and concepts introduced during lecture in a smaller group, run by the course
professor. Field trips will be planned to several of the following: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The James Pierpont
Morgan Library, The Jewish Museum, The Hispanic Society of America, The Cloisters, El Museo del Barrio, The
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Arts of the Islamic World gallery. If you take the English section, you need to write your
papers in Spanish.
SPAN-UA 305.001 The Cultural History of Latin America (in Spanish)
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Laura Torres-Rodriguez
This course provides an introduction to the making of modern Latin America through the study of key cultural practices in
literature, visual art, film, and performance from the 19th century to the present. The course will examine three sets of
problems as constituted in Latin American cultural production: 1. Representation and Difference, 2. Intimacy and
Belonging, and 3. Culture and the State. The course will take up representative examples from throughout the region as
points of departure for the discussion of these problems, as well as to challenge conventional assumptions regarding the
homogeneity of the region. Particular attention will be given to the development of critical reading skills and textual
analysis in writing assignments. Taught in Spanish. Pre-requisite: SPAN-UA.0200 “Critical Approaches.” This course is
“writing intensive”.
SPAN-UA 315.001 Contemporary Spanish Culture (in Spanish)
Monday 3:30pm – 6:10pm
Sara Nadal
This course will center on Spanish cultural production in a variety of aesthetic and intellectual contexts (journalism,
essays, theatre, the novel, poetry, cinema, political propaganda, television, new media, etc.) from 1936 to the present.
Over the course of the semester students will be asked to examine the evolution of Spain's cultural and political identities
from the onset of the Spanish Civil War to current debates regarding Spain's position within the European Union. We will
study themes related to Surrealism and the avant-garde movements of the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939),
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repression and censorship under Francisco Franco's dictatorial regime (1939-1975), political dissidence and anti-fascist
discourse (1955-1975), the Transition from dictatorship to democracy (1975-1982), the death of Franco and la movida
madrileña, regional identities and Spanish nationalism(s), the recuperation of historical memory, Spanish identity within
the European Union, and present-day issues such as migration from North Africa and the Movimiento 15-M (2011).
SPAN-UA 320.001 Advanced Poetry Workshop (in Spanish)
Mariela Dreyfus
Tuesday & Thursday 12:30pm – 1:45pm
Students refine their skills in poetry writing through close reading of individual poems, excerpts from poetry collections,
and complete books of poems written by contemporary Latin American and Spanish poets. In class, students reflect on the
creative process of poetry writing while they work on their own poems. Collaborative work and individual meetings with
the instructor are key to the dynamics of this workshop.
SPAN-UA 355.001 Is Spanish One Language (in Spanish)
Tuesday & Thursday: 2:00pm - 3:15pm
Sarah Pearce
This course seeks to familiarize students with the historical, geographical, ethnic, and socio-linguistic factors that
contributed to the large variety of Spanish dialects spoken in the Americas. Why do people in Costa Rica speak like those
in Uruguay and not like their neighbors in Panama? Why do Colombians have a different vocabulary in Bogotá and in
Cartagena de Indias? Or when are “tú”, “usted” or “vos” used as forms of addressing people, and by whom? A web of
factors combined to create a wide range of variations to the Castilian Spanish brought to America, itself the result of
drastic changes since its evolution from its Latin roots.
The course is organized in four modules. Starting with the study of the origins of the language spoken by the colonizers
arriving from Spain since the end of the fifteenth century, the first module will deal with the development of the distinct
dialectal zones emerging in Spanish America through the intersection of political and geographical factors with the
sociological, cultural and linguistic influence of indigenous and African groups. From the vantage point of standard
Castilian Spanish, in the second module we will study the phonic, morpho-syntactic, lexical, and semantic changes
undergone by the language, resulting in the distinct variations spoken today. The third module will cover the dialects of
five salient geo-linguistic areas of Spanish America, through a historical overview of each region and its specific
linguistic characteristics. We will complete this analysis in the fourth module, with a brief overview of the Spanish spoken
in the United States, and the new “dialect”, Spanglish, that has emerged from it.
SPAN-UA 645 Lo Intimo y Lo Precario
Gabriel Giorgi
Monday & Wednesday 9:30am – 10:45am
En este curso vamos a estudiar algunos de los temas y problemas que caracterizan gran parte de la producción literaria y
cultural latinoamericana de las últimas dos décadas. El curso se organiza alrededor de dos ejes, que condensan aspectos
decisivos de la producción literaria reciente en América Latina:
1) Las ‘escrituras del yo’ : la cuestión de la relación entre biografía y ficción, entre intimidad y exposición
pública, y de los nuevos modos de construir la subjetividad constituye uno de los temas más recurrentes en los
debates críticos del presente. Exploraremos estas cuestiones en textos de Fernando Vallejo, Roberto Bolaño, Alan
Pauls y Sylvia Molloy, entre otros.
2) Figuras de abandono, de la precariedad y del desamparo recurren, de los modos más diversos, en gran parte
de las ficciones literarias recientes, reflejando, de modos directos u oblicuos según los casos, transformaciones
radicales de lo político y de la relación entre política y literatura. Vamos a explorar cómo la literatura reformula
diferentes modalidades jurídicas, económicas, afectivas, sociales del “abandono” como signo del presente, a partir
de textos de Rodolfo Fogwill, Mario Bellatín, y Martin Kohan, y films de Lucrecia Martel y Eduardo Coutinho,
entre otros.
SPAN-UA 950.001 Topics: Gestos, Movimiento y Literatura (in Spanish)
Monday & Wednesday: 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Lourdes Dávila
La danza y la literatura se han visto siempre como prácticas heterogéneas; la primera maneja cuerpos reales en
movimiento, y la segunda se mueve siempre en primer lugar a través de la palabra, para producir cuerpos en movimiento.
El propósito de este curso es examinar el punto de articulación que enlaza ambas prácticas, respondiendo a varias
preguntas: 1. ¿De qué manera se piensa o se escribe, desde la filosofía, sobre la danza y el movimiento? 2. ¿De qué
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maneras, y con qué posibles objetivos, se utiliza el gesto, el movimiento y la danza en textos literarios? 3. ¿De qué modos
utiliza la crítica los gestos, el movimiento y la danza como metáfora del pensamiento? 4. ¿De qué manera se puede utilizar
el movimiento y los gestos de la danza y la literatura como base del saber y del pensar? 5. ¿Cómo produce la danza la
literatura y viceversa? El curso incluirá textos de Cirilo Villaverde, García Lorca, Luis Palés Matos, Alejo Carpentier,
Julio Cortázar, Leonardo Padura y Mario Bellatin, entre otros; el cine de Almovódar y Carlos Saura; el baile del flamenco
en general, o de coreógrafos particulares como José Limón, Martha Graham, Pina Bausch, Oscar Araiz, Arthur Aviles o
Viveca Vázquez y los ensayos de Nietzche, Heinrich von Kleist, Agamben, Ranciére, Marie Bardet, Lepecki, y Badiou
que se refieren específicamente al arte del movimiento, o al movimiento y la danza como metáfora para el pensamiento.
Prerrequisito: SPAN-UA 200-Critical Approaches
COURSES IN ENGLISH :
SPAN-UA 351.001 Medieval Spain in Modern Fiction
SarahPearce
Wednesday: 12:30pm - 3:00pm
AHSEM-UA & MEIS-UA
In recent years, the idea of “the three cultures” of medieval Spain — Christianity, Islam and Judaism — has become a
popular ideal and model for modernity among a wide variety of thinkers and writers; and both utopian and distopian
visions of Sefarad and Andalus (the Hebrew and Arabic terms that refer to the Iberian Peninsula) permeate discourses on
politics, religion and even education. This course will examine the ways in which that nostalgia for a lost Andalus or
Sefarad is both explored as a theme and used as a device in a wide variety of modern novels and short stories (as well as
some poetry), and the ways in which modern authors deploy this trope to comment on the worlds they inhabit. Many of
the modern texts will have a strong sense of place, but others will connect with memories of al-Andalus in other ways.
Reading medieval Spanish texts alongside the writing they inspired in modernity will provide a diachronic framework for
better understanding medieval Iberian literature and will also raise questions about the salience of the past for the present.
SPAN-UA 551.001 The Theory of Avant-Garde
Eduardo Subirats
Monday & Wednesday: 3:30pm - 4:45pm
The purpose of this seminar is an introduction to the aesthetics of the avant-garde’s, focused on Cubism, Neo-plasticism,
Abstract Art and Surrealism. It will focus a special interest in the Latin American Avant-garde. The seminar discussions
will deal with general interpretations of the avant-garde’s, as well as on special artistic and literary movements such as the
Brazilian "Anthropofagic movement", Dali's Surrealism, and Futurist's manifestoes. The seminar's interpretations of the
artistic and literary avant-garde’s will focus on its political and social consequences.
SPAN-UA 551.002 Topics: Love and Politics in Latin America
Perla Masi
Tuesday & Thursday: 9:30am – 10:45am
This course will explore the ways in which art, literature and activism intersect with social and political power in modern
and contemporary Latin America. What is the peculiar relationship between poetic practice, political action and love?
How does the work of poets, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers, and guerrilleros, testify to the resistance to
authoritarianism? And what makes of their creations a work of love, a work that questions the logic of liberal and neoliberal political economies, and becomes a tool for social, political and cultural change? Using case studies drawn from
literature, art, popular culture, film and media, the course will focus on key moments of Latin American history and their
present legacy. Topics will include Mexican muralism, avant-garde movements and contemporary anti-neoliberal social
movements (Sergei Eisenstein, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Juan Rulfo, EZLN); the artistic and political link between
revolutionary Cuba and the Soviet Union as reflected in cinema, diaries of war and poetry (Mikhail Kalatozov, Alberto
Korda, Ernesto Guevara, Reina María Rodríguez); the counterculture of the sixties in Brazil in music and cinema (Maria
Bethânia, Glauber Rocha); the work of political mourning and cultural resistance carried out in Chile by Pedro Lemebel
and Patricio Guzmán. The program includes theoretical readings on the politics of love (eros, agape, familial love and
friendship) by Plato, Søren Kierkegaard, Luce Irigaray and Alain Badiou, among others. All the readings will be in
English; students may choose to do coursework in English, Spanish or Portuguese.
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SPAN-UA 551.003 Topics: Latino Studies: Queering the Archive in Latino Culture
Cristel JusinoDiaz
Friday: 11:00am-1:45pm
We will explore how historical, grassroots, and digital LGBTQ community archives seek to document and archive
unstable bodies and desire across time. Through the study of archives, we will reflect upon the different ways that time
can be conceived and the relevance of these discussions to queer Latino communities. This course will also serve as a
methodological introduction to archival research. Students will conduct research in both physical and digital archives,
with a focus on how archives function within alternative communities. These experiences will serve as the base for
projects that would range from research papers to beginning to build a digital archive utilizing social media platforms.
ARTH-UA 315.001 Spanish Art from El Greco to Goya
Edward Sullivan
Tuesday & Thursday: 9:30am-10:45am
This course deals with art (painting, sculpture and, to a lesser degree, architecture) in the Iberian Peninsula and the larger
realms of the Spanish Empire from the 16th to the early 19th century. We will look at major figures in Spanish art (El
Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Valdés Leal, Goya among others) and discuss them within the aesthetic,
social, political, religious and philosophical climate of their times. We will also look at later artists (eg. Manet, Picasso)
were highly inspired by artists of this time.
N.B.: Students who are not art history majors should contact Professor Sullivan for permission to enroll. In the spring, the
Professor Mendelson will be offering her class on "Spanish Art 1898 to the present," and the two classes together will
make a good sequence for those majors especially interested in art history and visual studies. If you are not an Iberian
Studies majors but still interested in the course, please speak with Professor Mendelson since this class is given in English
and arrangements would need to be made with the Professor to do coursework in Spanish.
SPAN-UA 952.001 Topics: Latinas/os in the Age of Social Media (AHSEM-UA 231.001)
Tomas Urayoan
Mondays: 4:55pm – 7:25pm
This seminar examines twenty-first century U.S. Latina/o culture and identity through the lens of social media. The rise of
Latin@s as a demographic and political force over the past fifteen years coincides with the rise of social networks, and the
Internet has been a crucial yet underexamined space for the negotiation of contemporary Latinidad. In this course we will
explore how artists, activists, governments, and corporations are using social media to reshape Latina/o identity from
above and from below. While engaging with various social networking sites (including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and
Instagram), we will also consider a range of related phenomena: internet memes, data-mining and hacking, new-media
activism around issues such as immigration and gentrification, the politics of hashtagging, social movements in the age of
digital libertarianism, and the intersections between technology and race/gender/sexuality/class. Critical readings will
consist of work in the emerging field of social media studies (e.g. Mandiberg's The Social Media Reader and Fuchs's
Social Media: A Critical Introduction) as well as key texts in media, cultural, and Latina/o studies by authors such as
Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Marshall McLuhan, Leah Lievrouw, Ian Bogost, Arlene Dávila, Jillian Báez, and Cristina
Beltrán. We will also read one or more work of “electronic literature” (Hayles) by authors such as Salvador Plasencia,
Josefina Báez, and Andrew E. Colarusso, and we will reflect on the state of literature in the age of social media.
Assignments may include a visual essay, a group blog, a mapping exercise, and a social-media project. (No background in
media and digital studies is assumed or required.)
SPAN-UA 980.001 Internship
Lourdes Dávila
Students wishing to do an internship for credit should make an appointment to speak with Professor Dávila. Majors may
apply for an internship for either 4 credits or 2 credits, depending on the number of hours they work. Interns must work at
least 10 hours for the 2-credit internship; a 4-credit internship entails at least 16 hours per week. Consult our NYU Classes
site to see available internships. You are welcome to pursue internship possibilities beyond those listed on the NYU
Classes site: if you find an internship on your own, make an appointment with Professor Davila to discuss it. A 4-credit
internship, or two semesters of 2-credit internship may count as one course toward the major requirements for all majors
in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
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SPAN-UA 995.001 Senior Honors Seminar
Jordana Mendelson
Mondays: 11:00am – 1:45pm
The Honors program in Spanish & Portuguese is a unique opportunity for students in one of our five major tracks to
undertake a sustained research project. Students with a general and major GPA of 3.65 or above are encouraged to
participate in the Honors Program. In the course of a year, students will be able to work closely with individual faculty
members, while also having the chance to develop their own voice in scholarship and writing. The Honors program
consists of a two-term sequence. In the fall semester, Honors students meet weekly in a workshop-type setting where they
will develop their topics and projects under the guidance of the Honors Director and in discussion with their peers. By the
end of the semester, every student will have a well-developed project, including a workable outline and a bibliography.
Every student will also have found an individual faculty advisor with whom to work in the spring semester while finishing
the Honors thesis. The spring segment of the Honors Seminar is devoted to the writing of the thesis (40-60 pages).
Students will arrange for an independent study with their individual faculty advisors, with meeting times to be determined
by each student and his or her faculty member. There are no regularly scheduled class meetings in the spring.
SPAN-UA 997 Independent Study
Jordana Mendelson
For majors only, no exceptions. By permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Majors who have completed preliminary requirements for the major (“foundations” courses) may have the opportunity to
pursue directed research for 2 or 4 credits under the supervision of a professor in the department, in most cases a professor
with whom they have previously taken an upper level literature/culture course. Students should first contact the professor
to discuss this possibility; the student and professor will devise a syllabus to be submitted for approval to the Director of
Undergraduate Studies.
For more information please email us at: spanish.dus@nyu.edu
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