Module description
Global Iberias: Perspectives is an innovative foundational introduction to the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds globally. Taught in weekly lectures and seminars, it provides an accessible, one semester long historical and cultural introduction to key moments and processes of the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world encompassing the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, and Lusophone Africa.
Exploring individual lives and collective imaginations, cultural flows and encounters, and the violence and creativity which shaped these worlds at key historical moments from the medieval to the contemporary and across continents, the lectures provide an interpretative overview of the making of what we call the Global Iberias, and the core cultural concepts appropriate for its study.
These lectures are complemented by weekly one-hour seminars that focus on concrete case studies (literary texts, historical documents, and other readings). Seminars give students an active role in the learning process, enabling them to engage with the material directly and, under the tutor’s supervision, develop the practical academic skills essential to undergraduate study.
Assessment details
Coursework (1 Essay) 60%; Coursework (3 short assignments):40%
Educational aims & objectives
This module will introduce students to the range of Iberian cultures in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, taking on a multidisciplinary approach which reflects the unique breadth of expertise of the SPLAS members of staff in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. From a selection of key-concepts and themes relevant to this field, it will identify cultural, political and historical connections and discontinuities, similarities and differences, convergences and divergences in the Spanish and Portuguese- speaking territories, across the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, and Lusophone Africa. It will stimulate comparative approaches to the study of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds across time, from the medieval and early-modern periods to the present day. It will also provide students with conceptual, interpretative, methodological, and presentation skills essential to the study of the history, literatures, languages, and cultures of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds.
Learning outcomes
At the end of the module students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practicable skills appropriate to a Level 4 module.
In particular they will be able to demonstrate knowledge of:
- The history of, and the historical connexions and discontinuities between the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds (including the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, Africa) from the Middle Ages to the present day;
- The cultural diversity of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, through a study of a variety of cultural objects critically explored in the seminars (historical sources, literary works, visual arts, film, music);
- Important conceptual categories used in critical discourses about the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds (e.g. Nation, Nationalism, Europe, Imperialism, Colonialism, Cultural Hybridity, Otherness);
- Methodologies of literary, cultural and historical analysis.
Teaching pattern
1h lecture, 1h seminar per week
Suggested reading list
Students are encouraged to explore areas of interest in the history, literatures and cultures of Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Latin America, Lusophone Africa, medieval Iberia, early modern expansion and modern colonialism and anti-colonialism.