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Home | About Hispanic Studies | Research | Resources | Events | Staff | Undergraduate Degree | Courses | Alumni
About Hispanic Studies
The Department of Spanish was first established in 1920, and currently has a complement of six full-time members of staff. Undergraduate student numbers have risen to an intake of over one hundred students in the first year.
Hispanic Studies is the study of the languages and cultures of Spain and Latin America.
Spain and Latin America are united by common histories and common languages. But they also encompass a wide variety of different experiences and distinct cultures.
Spanish is now the second most widely spoken language after English in the Western Hemisphere. It is spoken by 350 million native Spanish speakers in nineteen Latin American states, the Spanish Peninsular, and increasingly in the United States. Spanish is an important language for business, commerce, and international relations (in the European Union and in the Americas), and a very useful language for travel and tourism, as well as the language of Cervantes, Lorca, Picasso, García Márquez, and Almodóvar, among many other great writers and artists.
The diversity of the cultures that it embraces makes Hispanic Studies an exciting and dynamic subject to study, one which will not only deepen your understanding of other fundamentally different cultures, but which will also sharpen your insight into your own cultural context.
Hispanic Studies is one of the most dynamic fields in which to study and research. We aim to equip our students not only with the skills to speak and communicate in one of the world's most widely-spoken and fastest-growing languages, but also with more general skills enabling them to read critically a variety of literary and cultural texts, and to communicate their own ideas and arguments through oral and written presentation.
The programme at Aberdeen is one of the most interdisciplinary programmes available and at all levels the Department offers courses not only on Hispanic literature, but also on visual representation, film, history and society. Hispanic Studies focuses both on the Spanish language and on the cultural frameworks in which the language is sited. The working definition of Hispanic culture in the Department includes not only literary texts (novels, poetry, and drama) but also film and other visual texts, the culture of politics (and the politics of culture), language policy, museums, television, dance, music, and ordinary people's everyday experience.
As an undergraduate, you will be introduced to these cultures first through a series of four courses--two about Latin America, two about Spain--in your first two years. You will then be able to experience something of Hispanic culture in your residence abroad. As an Honours student, in your final two years you choose between courses on a wide variety of topics . You also have the opportunity of writing a dissertation on a topic of your choosing.
As a postgraduate, you will be working on a piece of extended research in Hispanic Studies with the aid of a supervisor with expertise in the field, and in the context of a Department committed to research and intellectual enquiry.
To explore other sites concerned with Hispanic Studies on the world wide web, feel free to follow the following links. But do bookmark this page, and come back soon.
Hispanic Studies, School of Language & Literature
Taylor Building · University of Aberdeen · Aberdeen · AB24 3UB · Scotland
Telephone: +44 (0)1224-272549 · Fax: +44 (0)1224-272624
Follow us on Twitter @abdnhispanists
Page last modified: Tuesday, 16-Aug-2011 11:56:41 BST
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