Intermediate Spanish This accelerated course is designed to review, reinforce, and consolidate the linguistic structures that students need in order to reach the intermediate level of proficiency in Spanish. A grammar review will accompany intensive language acquisition, vocabulary expansion, readings, discussions, and compositions.

Ideas and Cultures of the Southern Cone What’s in a name? A sub-region of Latin America, the Southern Cone consists of three countries marked by cultural, geographical, historical, sociopolitical (dis)connection. In this course we will approach Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay not only as nations, but as a region with extensive transnational connections. Through analysis of a wide-range of cultural products like Ercilla’s early modern epic poem La Araucana, Figari’s paintings depicting candombé culture, and films of the New Argentine Cinema, we will study aspects of the cultural identities and intellectual histories of these countries and the region.

Intermediate Spanish II A course for students seeking to perfect their academic writing skills in Spanish. The course is also an introduction to literary analysis and critical writing and will include reading and oral discussion of literary texts. The course will also include a thorough review of grammar at a fairly advanced level. This course may be used to fulfill the foreign languages distribution requirement.

Hispanic Performance Studies Performance studies is an interdisciplinary field that borrows from theatre studies, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies. This course offers an introduction to performance studies through a focus on Hispanic culture. We will ask the question “What is performance?” and develop the tools to describe, analyze, and interpret a broad range of performances such as plays, political speeches, bullfights, protests, recordings, celebrations, and everyday encounters.  We will focus on performance as a process–oriented, participatory, and experiential way of engaging the world. We will concentrate on the overlapping aspects of performance as/of literature (poetry and drama), as/of everyday life (ritual, identity, and culture), and as/of politics (power, activism, and social change).  We will pay particular attention to the relationship of performance to social culture, investigating the link between performance and race, gender, and sexuality.   Because the goal of the course is to produce critical thinkers who are capable of using performance as an analytical tool and as part of a creative process, students will be required to perform.

Growing Up Other in the Americas Who am I and how do others see me? How do I see myself? This seminar will focus on the growing up and educational experiences of individuals from a number of marginalized groups throughout the Americas. Through novels, memoirs, essays and films from the U.S. and Latin America we will look at such questions as: What does it mean to be "othered"? What does "American" mean? Where and how does one find one's voice? What is the importance of place in one's identity? We will touch on issues of race, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, and more.

Hispanic Theatre In this course we will explore a broad selection of dramas from Spain and Spanish America. We will focus on close readings of plays, considering, where relevant, their historical and cultural contexts. Emphasis will also be placed on the development of critical vocabulary and writing skills in Spanish. Texts will be selected from various periods from the Middle Ages to present day. Authors include: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Tirso de Molina, Alarcón, Castellanos, Gambaro, García Lorca, Mihura, Díaz, Solórsano.

Miguel Fernandez

Profe Fernandez is one of the best professors I've had here. He's upbeat, funny, accommodating, and good at engaging the class. In Hispanic Theater, we actually did not perform – we read four plays of differing genres, wrote an essay on one, and did a presentation on another. The plays were all decently interesting, and the amount of reading was never overwhelming. I was worried going in since I had done 220 during Covid and didn't think I had learned that much, but it was fine. For an 8 AM, Profe Fernandez made the class great.

Spanish has been a pretty fun class. Fernandez is good at teaching and getting students to engage with vocab/grammar. He has been very easy and accommodating to work with if you go to office hours. The exams can be kinda brutal because they're so grammar heavy, but it is what's required to learn the subject. 

This is the best Spanish class I've taken at Middlebury, with the best Spanish professor I've ever had. The class is low-stress and fun, yet informative and interesting. Couldn't recommend this class more!