Spring 2006

SPN 328 • Spanish Civilization

Course Description

This course distinguishes between Spanish Culture and Spanish Civilization. The former implies both ethnographic cohesion and collective aesthetic production. This course is mostly not about that. It's about the second term. And CIVILIZATION mainly implies social, political, and economic history, nation-state history, and the expansions and contractions of a given national community which is self-defined as "civilized". This entity is in confrontation, competition, or collaboration with other analogous national entities.

This course is about a particular specimen of one of these civilization-entities: the one founded in and operating out of the Iberian Peninsula, and known to history as "Spain" and "Spanish Civilization."

Grading Policy

Worksheets 10% 2 quizzes @ 2.5% each 5% Midterm 15% Prospectus to final paper (250 words) 5% 8-page (2000-word) final paper 25% Final exam 40%

Texts

Civilizaciñn y cultura de Espaïa. Vicente Cantarino. Prentice Hall, 1999, and Handouts, lists, etc., distributed in class or as e-mail attachments.

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