Course Samples

Spanish for Healthcare Professions (SPAN 311)

Description:

This course is designed to provide students with skills necessary to communicate with the growing Spanish-speaking community in the United States. Conducted entirely in Spanish, this course will build on the student’s previous skills in order to develop his/her listening, speaking, writing and reading skills in Spanish. Specifically, it will focus on how to conduct medical interviews, obtain the pertinent personal and family history and give specific instructions in Spanish. The course will also address the importance of understanding Hispanic Cultures and ways to build a patient-practitioner relationship. By learning Spanish, the student will also gain insight into the nature of his/her own language and culture in a comparative way — particularly, “false cognates” (words and phrases that sound similar to English but have different meanings) relevant to the medical field.

Course Attributes:

GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Prerequisites:

Course or Test: SPAN 202

Minimum Grade of D

May not be taken concurrently

Nueva York Latino (New York as a Latino Cityscape) (SPAN 330)

Description:

Nueva York Latino/Latin New York is an interdisciplinary course designed to explore the complexity of the Latino communities in the New York/New Jersey area. The 2010 Census already shows that Hispanics are the second largest group in America, with one in six Americans identifying as Latino. By the year 2050, nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Hispanic. This course will examine the ways in which generations of Latinos have become integral to the fabric of New York City’s urban landscape since the 19th century, extending their influence from the city to neighboring suburban enclaves and even back to the Caribbean and Latin America. It will examine the diversity within the Latino ethnic groups and their claim to cultural citizenship, as well as the Hispanic influence in some of the sites–popular culture, literature, and the arts–where Latinidad, a discursive category, finds concrete expression. The course will be taught in Spanish.

Course Attributes:

GE-INTERCULTURAL NORTH AMERICA

Prerequisites:

Course or Test: SPAN 303

Minimum Grade of D

May not be taken concurrently

Must be enrolled at undergraduate level

Hispanic Caribbean Writers and Pop Culture (SPAN 415) 

Description:

The Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico have produced some of the major writers in Hispanic literature, as well as some of the most popular musical forms in Spanish-speaking countries and beyond. Guided by a thematic and largely chronological approach to cultural manifestations in the Hispanic Caribbean, students taking the course will read prominent works in various genres, watch relevant films, and study musical forms such as the son, danza, plena, and merengue from the region. Some of the themes include the making of nations, race and mestizaje, gender and sexuality, and the Caribbean experience in the U.S. The course, entirely conducted in Spanish, will have a quick pace, requiring a lot of reading at times. It is recommended that students take at least two upper level courses before enrolling in this one.

Course Attributes:

GE TOPICS SOCIAL SCIENCE

Prerequisites:

Course or Test: SPAN 303

Minimum Grade of D

May not be taken concurrently

Must be enrolled at undergraduate level

Early Transatlantic Encounters (SPAN 404)

Description:

The course introduces students to Spanish and Latin American major texts written around the period of the Conquest, through critical examination and literary analyses. These texts are addressed in their cultural and historical context. Through a transatlantic approach, students compare the consequences of the Conquest in the epistemologies of Spanish and Latin American authors. As the course is taught in Spanish, the students will also be developing their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills in this language.

Course Attributes:

GE-INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Prerequisites:

Course or Test: SPAN 303

Minimum Grade of D

May not be taken concurrently.

Must be enrolled at undergraduate level