What is it that makes Spain "Spain"?  What are the images and/or stereotypes that make up our imagined collage of this country?  How do we define its culture, its cultural production?  This course takes a critical look at our own constructions of Spain and "Spanish", and seeks to build a more complex understanding of this culture, while providing tools to facilitate future explorations.  We will use critical and historical articles, textbook, music, posters, movies, television, fiction, poetry, magazines, paintings, and architecture as we sketch a new picture of Spain.

The first section of the course is a survey of Spanish civilization and culture from the prehistoric to contemporary times.  While building a solid foundation in Spanish cultural history, here we will focus particularly on those issues that help us discuss current situations and pre occupations in Spain.  With this frame, the second half of the course shifts to consider contemporary issues that define Spain, including nationalisms and globalization, ETA, race and national identity, immigration, past censorship and the current development of the mass media, notions regarding gender and sexuality, the redefinition of Spain through eco- and rural tourism, and the growth of the Spanish film industry.