‘Disobedient Politics in Modern Spain 1868-1939’ is an undergraduate language through content course that enhances writing, speaking and grammatical skills through literary, historical, visual and essayistic content.

The course focuses on the relationship between politics, social tensions, and histories of wrongdoing from the Spanish Glorious Revolution (1868) until the outbreak of the Civil War and its political aftermath (1936-1939). We have examined movies, short literary pieces, and modern mass media – particularly broadsheet newspapers, photographs, and political pamphlets – that politically engage with notions of wrongdoing in gender, religion, and class. We have examined the multiplicity of genealogies that lead to the Civil War, as they embodied a complex arena of contested social formations and related aesthetic forms. Apart from the ongoing debate in class about the material, we have organized visits to the Metropolitan Museum (galleries of Impressionism, Realism, Early Avant Garde), the Cervantes Institute (Lecture on the Politics of Resistance and the maquis) and the Hispanic Society (gallery talk by the invited Art History professor Félix Ferrer), as well as casual virtual discussions ‘out of the class’ through VoiceThread messages (https://voicethread.com/myvoice/#thread/7511782/40430314/41559052)

You can also see the anonymous comments by students for the course evaluation clicking on the following link: file:///Users/martaferrer/Downloads/A_S_Spring_2016_Lang_July_1__2016.pdf

 

As for the ‘final project’, students have done an excellent collaborative project which has turned out into this website. The website is divided into three main topics (Gender, Religion & Class Struggles). Each group has been working extensively in each topic from the two last months of the course both in class and at home. Each student has seen and analyzed a particular movie at home. In class, students have had weekly brainstorming sessions within their respective groups. This has provided them an opportunity to discuss individual movies and to map them out in a larger context.

Students:

Yobo Bello-Asemota (Gender)

Franchesca Gonzalez (Religion)

Zoe Jacobs (Gender)

Daniel Limon (Working class struggles)

Ella Merrill (Working class struggles)

Chandler Precht (Religion)

Alexandra Zorn (Gender)

Instructor:

Marta Ferrer

A sample of students’ weekly comments on relevant topics can be viewed below.