Our Surrounding Community
The Spanish Program supplements its curriculum with lectures, concerts, theme dinners, film screenings, skits, teach-ins, and other extra-curricular activities organized in collaboration with various student organizations, faculty, campus divisions, and neighborhood associations.
The Program also supports La Mesa de español, where students, teaching assistants and faculty meet weekly for dinner and conversation in Spanish. It is led by our Teaching Fellow every Thursday in Pinette Room, Thorne Hall, 5:30-7:30 pm
2011
Spanish Major/Minor Informational Meeting
Monday, November 21, 2011 4pm
Sills 117
Faculty from the Spanish program will discuss their research and teaching interests; provide orientation regarding course sequence and requirements for the major and minor; explain what the field of Hispanic Studies has to offer in terms of intellectual interests, research opportunities, and after-graduation projections; answer frequently asked questions from prospective or current majors and minors regarding off-campus study, placement, independent work, tutoring, civic engagement, and language practice.
Lecture by renowned Spanish author José Ovejero, "The Ethics of Cruelty".
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 4:30pm.
Smith Auditorium (Sills Hall)
Born in 1958 in Madrid, José Ovejero has published novels, collections of short stories, travel books, poetry and drama. He has been awarded the Ciudad de Irún prize for his poetry book Biografía del explorador, the Grandes Viajeros prize for China para hipocondríacos and the Primavera prize for Las vidas ajenas.
“Cruelty is often considered inhuman and immoral, an unacceptable triumph of the animal in us. But our books, and art in general, are full of cruel scenes; western culture, and very much so Spanish culture, is splattered with blood. Is this just because we look in art for an outlet for our repressed instincts? Yes, sometimes. But behind cruelty we can also find the wish to slaughter society’s sacred cows. Indeed the cruel author is very often a moralist.
There is an ethical cruelty, very present in my novels, that does not seek sadistic or voyeuristic pleasure but knowledge.”
Film screening of Poto Mitan: Haitian Women: Pillars of the Global Economy and forum with producer and co-director, Professor Mark Schuller (City University of New York).
Thursday, November 3, 2011 7pm
Kresge Auditorium.
Reading by journalist Mary Jo McConahay.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 7-9pm
Searles 315
Journalist Mary Jo McConahay covered Central America as a war correspondent and lived in Mexico and Central America for fifteen years. Her award-winning work has appeared in more than thirty magazines and periodicals and is collected in a half-dozen books, including True to Life Adventure Stories by Women and Best Travel Writing 2011. She coproduced the PBS documentary Discovering Dominga, was awarded the Cine Golden Eagle and numerous other film honors, and is widely used in college classrooms.
Panel Discussion "From Downtown to Downeast: Fostering Community Voices for Fair and Affordable Housing"
with alumni Ben Beach '97, Elise Selinger '10, and Ian Yaffe '09. Moderator: Professor Craig McEwen.
Monday, October 17, 2011, 4pm
Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union
Bowdoin alumni discuss their legal and non-profit experience with low-income Latino communities in Los Angeles, New York, and northern Maine. Ben Beach ’97 is the Director of the Community Benefits Law Center, a nonprofit legal organization that works with community, labor and environmental groups on their campaigns to improve local economies for low-income communities. Elise Selinger ’10 is a Project Associate at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), a nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and preserves affordable housing throughout the City of New York through a resident-led model of self-sufficiency. Ian Yaffe '09 is Executive Director of Mano en Mano | Hand in Hand, a nonprofit in Milbridge, Maine working with farmworkers and Latino immigrants in the areas of education, access to social services, advocacy, and affordable housing.
Concert by The Cimarrón Project
Friday, October 14, 7:30 PM
Studzinski Recital Hall
The Cimarrón Project is an ensemble interested in representing the diversity of Afro-Cuban music and dance in its most traditional form. The Project’s repertoire includes rumba, son,pilón, changüí, and other deeper forms belonging to the various Afro-descendant religious practices in Cuba such as Regla de Ocha batá drumming. The members of the Cimarron Project are: Román Díaz (musical director), Junior Terry, Mauricio Herrera, Onel Mulet, Abraham Rodríguez and other guest artists.
Lecture by Dr. Miguel Tinker Salas, “Venezuela: From Model Democracy to Bolivarian Republic”.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011, 7-9 pm.
Visual Arts Center, Beam Classroom
Miguel Tinker Salas is one of the nation's foremost authorities on political and social issues confronting Latin America. He is the author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture and Citizenship in Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2009), among many other influential books and articles. Tinker Salas is currently a Professor of Latin American History and Chicano/a Latino/a Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Informational Meeting by Spanish faculty, "Off-Campus Study in Spanish-Speaking Countries."
Thursday, September 29th, 2011, 6:30 pm.
Pinette Room, Thorne Dining Hall
Orientation about semester, year or summer programs in Spain and Latin America; application deadlines and process; the granting of credit policies of the Spanish program at Bowdoin; tips on studying in Spanish-speaking countries by students who participated in a program last year.
