The Teaching of Undergraduate Spanish Courses for General Education

Abstract

people. The regional specialist who is to deal effectively with educated Latin Americans should know something, if not as much, about Rub6n Dario and Euclydes da Cunha as about Sim6n Bolivar and Pedro II. This inevitably raises the question of the relevence of the literatures of Spain and Portugal to the Latin American regional specialist. Cervantes and Gald6s, Camoes and Ega de Queiroz are also household words in Spanish and Portuguese America. There is no simple answer to this and many other questions concerning the role which the Hispanic literatures should play in Latin American area studies. For example, how much useful literary experience can be incorporated in language instruction designed for area specialists? How provide for an integrated approach to the study of Brazilian and Spanish-American literatures as manifestations of a common Latin American culture? To what extent can or should literature in translation be introduced in the area curriculum in order to obtain a much larger volume of literary reading? How can the teaching area specialist who is primarily a social scientist, and who is engaged in the pioneering task of integrating sociological, historical, economic, geographic, and political data in order to explain the current Latin American scene, be guided so as to enrich the content of his courses with significant literary materials? The growing number of Latin American area programs in our colleges and universities and their increasing maturity suggest that a systematic investigation of these matters would be timely and profitable.