Course description
Programme description
- Wide range of courses across the field, taught by scholars of international standing.
- Excellent opportunities for both taught and research courses.
- Excellent seminar and lecture series that attracts national and international speakers and allows students access to state-of-the-art thinking in the subject areas.
The programme covers Spanish literature, language, history and culture from medieval times to the present and Latin American literature, history and culture from 1492 to the present. You will take three courses and also write a dissertation. Module descriptions are available from the website (see below).
Programme format and assessment
Students take three modules and complete a compulsory dissertation of 10,000 words; each element comprises 25 per cent of the total mark; modules are taught in weekly two-hour sessions; modules are assessed by coursework.
Programme modules for MA Spanish & Latin American Studies
Colonial Cultural Studies: Reading Literature and Historiography
The aim of this module is to counterpoint some of major and lesser-known works of colonial literature with important critical studies. The purpose of this counterpointing is to reflect on the value of history to literature and vice versa; on the uses each puts the other to; and on the ways in which such a relation can be explained and examined in order to produce a fuller cultural history of the period. The module will encourage students to question generic classification, the creation of canons, national literatures etc, and link this insight into their reading of modern and contemporary Latin American literature.
Culture and Identity in Brazil
The module examines the key moments in the history of cultural debate and practice as they have constructed and reflected upon conceptions of Brazilian identity. Particular attention is given to the way in which centralised notions of a unified, integrated national identity have been challenged by alternatives based on ethnicity, non-Western and popular cultures in the context of colonialism, imperialism, the construction of the nation-state under Empire and Republic, twentieth-century modernisation and dictatorship.
Guided Reading and Research Module 1 (Spanish and Spanish-American Studies)
This module is intended to allow students to pursue guided independent research in an area of their choosing that is not covered in the options or Pathways in the MA in Spanish and Latin American Studies or related degrees. The area of study must be chosen in consultation and approved. The aims of the module are to guide students in the acquisition of the skills, theoretical frameworks and methodologies for independent research at graduate level. It is particularly, but not exclusively, aimed at students who aim to continue to PhD research, who will be guided in research skills, which will be further complemented by their dissertation. Unlike the dissertation, this module is taught and the student will be engaged in seminars and supervision with an appropriate academic.
Duration
One year FT, two years PT, September to September.
