- For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF SCHEDULE or the course search tool https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm.
- For all courses not described below, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions
Jump to Portuguese Expanded Course Descriptions
Jump to Spanish Expanded Course Descriptions
Undergraduate Courses
POR 1 - Elementary Portuguese
Professor Eugênia M. da Silva Fernandes
This course follows an online format with synchronous and asynchronous instruction. Class time is used to build social interactions through the Portuguese language. Outside of the class, students are required to complete homework assignments, readings, and complete parts of the projects. POR 001 is an introduction to the Portuguese language focusing on the development of all language skills in a cultural context with particular emphasis on communication. Students will learn how to exchange basic greetings, discuss their university studies, share their cultural traditions, narrate their daily routine, describe the weather, complete a purchase at a store or market, talk about what they used to do, debate issues, express feelings, and opinions, give recommendations, tell a story about a past event, express obligations, and other issues. Unit topics will be presented contemplating contemporary issues of Lusophone communities with underlying topics such as official orthography and language varieties. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to communicate in oral and written Portuguese at the beginner level.
Important: This course has an organic format; thus, the syllabus can be modified according to the students’ demands.
Prerequisites: None
Textbook: Português Plural (Access provided by the instructor, no purchase required).
Course hours: M-F (12:10 – 1:00 p.m.)
POR 21 - Intermediate Portuguese
Professor Eugênia M. da Silva Fernandes
Course description: This course follows an online format with synchronous and asynchronous instruction. Class time is used to build social interactions through the Portuguese language. Outside of the class, students are required to complete homework assignments, readings, and complete parts of the projects. POR 021 is a continuation of POR 3 or POR 31, consisting of the development and improvement of all language skills in Portuguese with an emphasis on interaction and problem-solving in the Lusophone world. Students will be led to the use of language by reading literary and authentic genres, based on contemporary discussions to reach an intermediate-mid proficiency in the target language. Unit topics will be presented contemplating contemporary issues of Lusophone communities with underlying topics such as official orthography and language varieties. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to communicate in oral and written Portuguese at the intermediate-mid level and enroll in POR 22.
Prerequisites: POR 3/POR 31 or instructor's consent.
Important: This course has an organic format; thus, the syllabus can be modified according to the students’ demands.
Textbook: Contextos: Curso Intermediário de Português by Denise Santos, Gláucia V. Silva & Viviane Gontijo (2020, via UCD Inclusive Access).
Course hours: M-F (1:10 – 2:00 p.m.)
SPA 116. Applied Spanish Linguistics (4 units)
Cecilia Colombi
TR 10:30-11:50pm
CRN 53010
Course Description: In this course students will review both the most difficult structural properties of Spanish (e.g. aspect, mood, subordination, sequence of tenses) as well as the most promising methodological approaches to teaching Spanish. The course will be informed by insights from the field of applied linguistics, including CALL, computer-assisted language learning, and pragmatics. The material is appropriate for anyone in general wishing to deepen their linguistic knowledge of Spanish as well as for future language professionals who specifically seek a career in teaching Spanish at the secondary or post-secondary levels.
Prerequisite: Spanish 024/024S or Spanish 033, or consent of instructor. Linguistics 001 recommended.
SPA 174 - Cultura Chicana: Las Masculinidades Criminalizadas
Professor Robert Irwin
Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:10pm-1:30pm
Please see the schedule or the course search tool for the different course sections and their corresponding CRNs
Durante la campaña presidencial de 2016 el candidato triunfador habló de los inmigrantes mexicanos en términos despectivos, implicado que un gran número de ellos eran criminales, una retórica que se repitió en 2018 sobre los centroamericanos con la llegada de una caravana de migrantes a la frontera. Las políticas de detención y deportación de migrantes en EEUU, y de disuasión y rechazo de solicitantes de asilo en la frontera sur en realidad no son nuevas; más bien continúan políticas implementadas en administraciones anteriores de priorizar la deportación de "criminales". ¿Pero qué es un "criminal"? Y cómo se debe pensar la criminalidad en el contexto de la inmigración indocumentada, la que por varias décadas se ha clasificado como delito. ¿Y por qué se enfoca esta atención especialmente en los varones mexicanos y centroamericanos? Esta clase se aproxima al proceso de la criminalización del inmigrante mexicano y centroamericanos (y de los latinos del suroeste en general) desde una perspectiva histórica. Se estudiarán various casos de hombres mexicanos o centroamericanos vistos como "malos" desde el siglo XIX hasta la actualidad. Se interrogarán tanto los mecanismos de fomentar estereotipos negativos como la mismas nociones de la criminalidad y la masculinidad en tales figuras como Joaquín Murrieta, Pancho Villa, el pachuco, los activistas del movimiento chicano, los cholos, los maras, los narcos, entre otras.
Prerequisite: Spanish 024/024S, or Spanish 033.
GE credit (New): American Cultures Governance & History, Arts and Humanities, and Domestic Diversity.
SPA 118 - Topics in Spanish Linguistics: Peer-tutoring in Spanish
Professor Agustina Carando
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00am-10:20am
CRN 50656
Drawing on key readings on the field of writing pedagogy, writing center research, and sociolinguistics, this course will provide an overview of the best practices and current debates surrounding peer tutoring in the context of Spanish. The course will specially appeal to students with interests in areas such as education, language variation, and multilingual writing. Those who successfully complete the course will be eligible to apply for future tutoring positions in the department.
Prerequisite: Spanish 111N, or Consent of Instructor.
GE credit (New): Social Sciences.
SPA 159 - Special Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture: Chile contemporáneo: política, memoria, cultura
Professor Michael Lazzara
Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:40pm-3:00pm
CRN 53012
Forty-seven years after General Pinochet’s military coup (1973-1990) that violently overthrew President Salvador Allende’s democratically elected, socialist government (1970-1973), Chile stands as an international symbol of the horrors of dictatorship, the power of grassroots mobilization, and the struggle to forge democracy after dictatorship. Since October 2019, Chile has again figured prominently in world news as massive protests have broken out in which citizen are questioning the very fabric of Chile’s neoliberal system and demanding deep change. This course will start with the “October Revolution” of 2019 and delve back into the past to understand what led to it. It will introduce students to the battles that have been waged over history and memory, the struggles of human rights activists, the quest for truth and justice, and the emergence of powerful social movements. From an interdisciplinary perspective, students will analyze topics such as the revolutionary experience of the 1970s; political violence under dictatorship; censorship; the role of film and literature in the battle for truth; forms of social resistance; the idea of justice; and the consolidation of democracy after periods of political upheaval. Students will also work to connect the Chilean case to a broader understanding of Latin American and global realities.
Students need not know anything about Chile to enroll in this course. It is perfect for those interested in literary and cultural production and its relationship to history and politics. Students will work closely with excerpts from novels, short stories, songs, poems, films, testimonies, essays, political speeches, and journalism produced in Chile since the 1960s.
Textbooks: Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 Michael J. Lazzara, ed. Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence. Shorter readings will be available on Canvas.
SPA 175 - Topics in Latin American Cultural Studies: Ecologías de la cultura en Latinoamérica
Lecturer: Santiago Acosta
MWF | 9:00-9:50am
CRN: 54176
Este curso explora las intersecciones entre cultura, política y naturaleza en Latinoamérica desde el siglo XIX hasta nuestros días. A través del análisis de diversas manifestaciones culturales (principalmente la literatura, el cine y las artes visuales), se abordarán preguntas relevantes para el estudio de la crisis ecológica del presente. Por ejemplo, ¿qué relación existe entre el arte y la ecología?, ¿qué papel han cumplido artistas e intelectuales en la dominación de la naturaleza durante la modernidad?, ¿qué alternativas pueden ofrecer el arte y la cultura para afrontar una era de degradación ecológica y crisis climática? Desde el pensamiento de José Carlos Mariátegui hasta los relatos de Jorge Luis Borges y el cine de Ciro Guerra, pasando por la fotografía de Sebastião Salgado y las instalaciones artísticas de Esperanza Mayobre, el curso propone una visión panorámica del rol jugado por el arte, la política y la ideología en las relaciones entre sociedad y naturaleza. Tendremos en cuenta hechos históricos recientes como la pérdida de biodiversidad en el Amazonas y los efectos de la pandemia del Covid-19. Finalmente, integraremos a nuestras discusiones las estrategias culturales adoptadas por movimientos sociales por la justicia ambiental, la igualdad racial y los derechos reproductivos en Latinoamérica.
Textbooks: Todas las lecturas estarán disponibles en Canvas.
Graduate Courses
SPA 212-Applied Linguistics - Claudia Sanchez Gutierrez- Tusedays 4:10-7:00
This seminar aims to prepare MA and PhD students for the Applied Linguistics section of the exams. As such, each weekly meeting will focus on a specific topic that repeatedly appear in the exams and will require that students read the appropriate readings from the list, as well as other journal articles or book chapters that complete them. After each session, students will be asked a possible exam question and will need to draft an answer. During the quarter, each student will receive appropriate feedback on their answers, both from the instructor and from their peers.
SPA 274 (202) : A World in Motion: Travelers, Migrants, and Exiles in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Literature - Robert Newcomb Wednesdays 4:10-7:00
Human movement has been a core feature of the literatures of the Portuguese-speaking world, from the medieval Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo, through the literature of Portugal’s imperial expansion and the development of national literary traditions in Brazil and Portuguese-speaking Africa. Building the themes taken from my Spring 2019 graduate seminar, “Zonas de contato: Lusophone Narratives of Encounter,” “A World in Motion” will examine literary representations of travel, forced and voluntary migration, exile, and other cross-border experiences within the Portuguese-speaking world. In so doing, we will open up Luso-Afro-Brazilian literature to comparison with Hispanic and Latin American texts, and to critical conversations taking place within transoceanic studies, post-colonial studies, border studies, and so on. We will read authors who hail from the Azores, Brazil, Cape Verde, continental Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe. In terms of genre, we will examine an eclectic mix of prose fiction (novels, short stories), travel accounts, poetry, and theater.
All primary readings will be in Portuguese, though the professor will provide information on translations when available. Seminar discussions will be in Portuguese and Spanish; the professor will primarily speak Portuguese, but students may choose to participate in Spanish and write their final papers in either language. The following is a tentative, week-by-week list of themes and primary readings:
SPA 390- Claudia Sanchez Gutierrez - The Teaching of Spanish in College Monday and Wednesday 2:00-3:00 & 3:00-4:00
Este curso tiene tres objetivos:
1. Descubrir, discutir y practicar técnicas de enseñanza relacionadas con la gestión de clase, la enseñanza de la gramática, del vocabulario y de la cultura en el aula de ELE. Este primer objetivo se lograra a través de la lectura de bibliografía relevante sobre diversos temas de pedagogía y enseñanza de lenguas. Para cada lectura, lxs estudiantes deberán responder a un cuestionario que se discutirá en las sesiones presenciales.
2. Desarrollar materiales de enseñanza propios, basados en las técnicas aprendidas a través de las discusiones sobre las lecturas. Este segundo objetivo se logrará en las sesiones presenciales prácticas en las que lxs estudiantes deberán desarrollar materiales didácticos en grupos, que puedan luego ser utilizados en las clases de español que están enseñando.
3. Analizar críticamente la práctica docente propia y ajena, a partir la observación de clases en vivo y en vídeo. Este último objetivo se logrará mediante la compleción de informes de observación de las clases de otrxs compañerxs, una auto-observación en vídeo, y un diario semanal de enseñanza.