SPAN 321 - Masterpieces of Peninsular Literature
Reading and discussion of selected masterworks of literature as they reflect the historical, political, and social context of the Peninsular Spanish experience. Students will be introduced to reading and writing critically, and discussing both form and content within these works. All discussions will be carried out in Spanish. Taught in Spanish.
This course meets: MLO 1 Language Proficiency & MLO 3 Literary and Cultural Knowledge
This course meets: MLO 1 Language Proficiency & MLO 3 Literary and Cultural Knowledge
Course Reflective Narratives
I took SPAN 321 my first semester at CSU Monterey Bay during spring 2022. This was the first course I had ever taken involving peninsular literature and culture. I specifically chose this class due to the fact that I wanted to challenge myself to learn something different from what I had previously studied, which was heavily involved in Mexican literature, and a little bit of Latin American culture and literature. One thing that became evident in this class was how different Spanish was in its earliest forms. While this led to some difficulty, we were exposed to a story in itself purely in looking at the word usage. Additionally, we took a multimedia approach to the class, which allowed us to understand some of the more dense texts better. I especially liked our unit on romanticism and how it is representative of an individualistic perspective on the world. Through looking at characters like El Cid or Don Quixote, I was able to view social criticism in a variety of ways. Towards the beginning of the course, we compared the characters of El Cid to Captain America. I personally enjoyed learning and investigating the novel of La Celestina, which further inspired me to choose the novel for my final project. I was able to analyze the many meanings of love within the novel, as well as being able to show how the novel was showing its humor regarding gender norms, like a man being a strong knight and a woman always wanting a man. As this class was conducted purely in Spanish and dealt with literary and cultural studies, it fulfilled both MLO 1 and MLO 3.