The aim of this course is to provide a view of significant political, social and artistic issues in the Spanish-speaking world through its rich heritage of musical culture. The study of classic genres, such as the tango, the bolero or the Spanish copla, will be contrasted with contemporary music genres that have been inspired by them, and Spanish and Latin American responses to the rock, punk and hip-hop movements. The social and cultural background of the societies that gave rise to such genres will be explored, and significant political events reflected in music, such as the Cuban revolution, the fall of Allende's Chile or the return to democracy in Spain after the Franco regime, will be studied. A listening mp3 CD with relevant interviews and radio programs on the genres or artists studied through the course will be provided.

Students will be exposed to a considerable amount of spoken Spanish from around the Spanish-speaking world, as they will have to listen to radio programs dealing with the different music genres before each class.

Students will gain critical skills, including the critical reading of song lyrics as literary and social texts. They will also gain an insight into the main sociological and political events that shaped the Spanish-speaking world, as reflected in music and music lyrics. Students will also gain an insight into the many informal registers of spoken Spanish, as well as the wide range of regional syntactic and lexical variation in the Spanish language.

3 hours of classes per week.

SPAN6512 Current Affairs in the Spanish Speaking World (Continuing)

None. Most of the course material is composed of audio and multimedia resources

Students need to be able to operate an MP3 player