Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Romance Languages and Literatures
SPANISH 129R: Culture and Development in Reciprocity
Course Instructor: Doris Sommer
This seminar is an interdisciplinary approach to research about Latin America that takes Reciprocity, a core regional ethic, as the pedagogical structure. Harvard students will work in reciprocal collaboration with students in Latin America.
The first half of the semester will introduce a range of topics that include arts, social mobilization, ways of learning, environment, and public policy. By mid-semester students form pairs based on shared interests and choose a question to develop together. Harvard offers important resources for the team and Latin American countries offer other important resources. Student-to-student interchanges will allow for ongoing and reciprocal social and scholarly development.
The seminar has two fundamental objectives: 1) to foster intercultural research through collaborations that combine perspectives on readings and inquiries; and 2) enhance capacity in English and in Spanish, reciprocally, as students read closely together and write persuasively. Pre-Texts will be the pedagogy for achieving language proficiency. Our institutional partners include Instituto Desarrollo in Paraguay, Universidad Mayor in Chile, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others. Partners will serve as co-mentors for the student teams and will provide guidance for accessing resources and convening relevant scholars in the region.
The co-written final paper for the course will be a “Case for Culture.” This is a hybrid essay that combines humanities with social and/or natural sciences to develop the kinds of interdisciplinary collaborations made possible by reciprocity.
Notes: This course is co-taught with José Molinas, Instituto Desarrollo, Paraguay, Nicolas Ocaranza, Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile, and José Falconi of UConn. In Spanish and English with readings and advising in both languages.