Spanish Cultures Ii

The aim of the course is to provide students with appropriate tools to study and research Spain's contemporary cultural production and representation. The course is designed to offer analytical methodologies and conceptual categories to foster students' critical reflection on the period from the democratic transition to the present. The course adopts a concrete, multicultural, and interdisciplinary perspective, typical of Cultural Studies, integrating other methodological approaches when appropriate. Theoretical tools are provided to analyse and understand the interrelations of culture, literature, identity, discursive strategies, social phenomena and the production and consumption of cultural products. The goal is to encourage students' active participation, develop their critical thinking and judgement-making skills, and enable them to make reasoned connections between different works, genres, ideologies, practices and lifestyles, as well as to self-organise their learning path. Additionally, students will develop communication skills by making presentations and participating in class debates in Spanish.

Through continuous encouragement of active participation, independent thinking and language production, students will learn to discuss, contextualise and critically analyse a range of materials (journalistic, cultural, and political discourses, fiction and non-fiction texts, visual artworks, documentaries and films) that are representative of contemporary Spain, examined both locally and globally. By applying Cultural Studies methodologies, students should be able to compare and relate ideologies, experiences and practices, developing informed responses to contemporary issues. This active approach and independent work will not only enhance their linguistic and argumentative skills, but also foster greater intellectual curiosity, autonomy and discernment. Moreover, the skills acquired during this course may be applied to related fields of study and will provide solid methodological foundations for future research.