SPA480.54 Introduction to Academic Reading and Writing

SPA480.54 Introduction to Academic Reading and Writing

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica. This course is designed to develop your basic academic communication skills. To this end, we will focus on reading comprehension and writing of increasingly specialized texts, preparing you for success and sharpening your skills during your studies at Chilean universities. Learning outcomes will be assessed through reading comprehension tests and creation of a writing portfolio.

Upon successfully completing this course, you’ll be able to:

  1. Reflect on the main characteristics of communication in an academic context.
  2. Appropriately interpret different texts that circulate in the academic sphere.
  3. Plan and formulate academic texts to effectively communicate.
  4. Apply normative and stylistic conventions during the writing process.
  5. Articulate and support the importance of ethical academic practices during the writing process.

Topics covered include:

Introduction to Communication in the Academic Context

  • Functions and contexts of language use
  • Differences in language use at school vs. university
  • Differences between spoken and written language
  • Metalanguage: text, paragraph, sentence, word

Reading Texts for Learning

  • Social purposes of texts
  • Structure and stages of texts
  • Ways of expressing specialized concepts and causality
  • Author’s stance and integration of other voices in a text

Writing Texts for Learning

  • How to structure an answer to an open-ended question
  • How to represent knowledge
  • How to establish a position and integrate other voices
  • How to revise one’s own writing

Note: Students whose placement test indicates proficiency beyond that required for SPA 480.54 must take an additional local university course taught in Spanish to meet the Santiago program’s Spanish study requirement.

(PUC #LET010)

PSC380.29 Politics and Power in Chile

Taught in Spanish at Universidad Pontificia Católica and may not be offered every semester. In this course, you will study the Chilean political process from independence through the present time. You’ll develop the capacity to systematically analyze the origins, development, and breakdowns of Chilean democracy, and the inner and external factors that influence political and economic development through different methodologies such as content dialogic exposition, team-based learning, and case studies, focusing on the main political actors’ roles and their interactions with institutions. Learning outcomes will be evaluated through essays and oral group presentations.

Upon successful completion of this course, you’ll be able to:

  1. Critically analyze, based on relevant literature, the main cleavages or fissures in theprocesses of continuity and change in the political process of the last two centuries.
  2. Analyze the Chilean political process of 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries up through the present, identifying milestones, interrelations between political actors and the institutions, internal and external factors, and their influence on the economic and political development from Chilean independence until current days.
  3. Develop an active commitment to Chilean society and politics, promoting citizens’ participation and fostering positive changes that benefit the community, informed by public ethics.

(PUC #ICP0156)

GEO 380.24 Environmental Assessment

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and may not be offered every semester.  The course consists of a theoretical-methodological approach to environmental and strategic project assessment and of politics, plans, and programs, in the context of sustainable development and processes of integral environmental management.

Upon successful completion of this course, you’ll be able to:

  1. Conceptualize the process of projects and activities environmental impact assessment in the context of sustainable development and environmental management.
  2. Conceptualize the strategic environmental assessment process for land use planning, policies, programs, and instruments within an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable development.
  3. Learn about environmental institutions and the current main environmental regulations in Chile.
  4. Develop the ability to confront, understand, plan, develop, and discuss different environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment methodologies.

(PUC GEO506)

ECN380.20 Environmental Economics

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and may not be offered every semester.  In this course, you’ll work with analytical tools with the goal of exploring how to apply them to current issues such as climate change, environmental pollution in cities, and de-forestation, among others. The course will provide tools for critical analysis and promote discussion and problem-solving through the study of the interaction between society and its natural environment from a socioeconomic perspective.

Upon successful completion of this course, you’ll be able to:

  1. To describe the role of the economy in the management of socio-environmental issues.
  2. To characterize socio-environmental issues incorporating the understanding of their genesis and the interaction between their social and environmental components.
  3. To solve socio-environmental problems by integrating the concepts of economic efficiency and equity.
  4. To analyze a socio-environmental issue with a team and propose a solution to it.
  5. To critically analyze your own and others’ opinions about the state of knowledge, and study methodologies around environmental policies.

(PUC AGE313)

GEO 380.23 Sustainability and Development in Chile

Taught in Spanish at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica and may not be offered every semester. In this course, you’ll gain a deep understanding of the global socio-environmental crisis and its impact on Chile, with a particular focus on poverty, inequality, and sustainability. Through lectures, case studies, group discussions, simulations, and practical activities, you’ll develop a systemic perspective that connects social challenges such as poverty and inequality with ecological challenges. You’ll also explore how economic development and environmental protection intersect and how the historical and social context, including the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship, affects Chile’s ability to achieve sustainable development. Additionally, you’ll develop critical thinking and analytical skills through group projects and individual essays.

Upon successful completion of this course, you’ll be able to:

  1. Develop a systemic perspective that connects social and ecological challenges.
  2. Analyze the historical and social context of Chile’s development model and its impact on sustainability.
  3. Analyze the intersections of economic development and environmental protection in Chile.
  4. Critically evaluate the social, economic, and environmental challenges facing Chile and propose possible futures.

VIS280.1 Typography and Layout

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica; may not be offered every semester. Layout is the act of materializing an order of thoughts as represented in a speech or story, visual or textual.

The act of writing subjected spoken or oral expression to a complex system of visual conventions long before Gutenberg created typography. In fact, Gutenberg’s printing in the 1400s visually emulated the hand-written page as it existed around the 12th Century. In the Renaissance, with the help of typographic technology, the written manuscript transformed into the printed page as we know it today.

Contemporary editorial design involves the editing of images and texts. Presenting texts and images so that they can be read and understood without difficulty requires command of a set of subtleties and adjustments that are not obvious to everyone.

This is both a theoretical and practical course. During the first half of the course, we will survey concepts of typography usage, with emphasis on micro- and macrotypography, readability, types of editorial formats, and the grid. Practical text manipulation exercises will be performed using InDesign. During the semester, students will develop two editorial projects.

(PUC #DNO2750)

SPA480.1 Chilean Rock Music and the 20th Century World

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica; may not be offered every semester.  In this course, you will analyze one of the most important Western cultural expressions of the second half of the 20th century — Rock music — and how it is imported from North American culture and transformed into an element of national identity through its commingling with the fashions and experiences of Chilean society and culture. The course is structured with a historiographic perspective on the new cultural history, with an understanding of the past century of Chilean history in light of rock music’s symbolic representations —not just in sound, but visually and audiovisually. You’ll learn to recognize the various influences of youth, society, popular culture, pop music, and more.

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to

  1. Analyze the history of Chilean and worldwide Rock music through the comprehension of historiographic and music-related bibliography.
  2. Apply knowledge regarding popular musical expressions, Rock music in particular, to your understanding of contemporary Chilean history.
  3. Relate Chilean history to mass popular culture, through directed listening to Rock music.
  4. Demonstrate in writing your understanding of contemporary social and cultural history texts.
  5. Relate themes and methodologies linked to the artistic-cultural contemporary Chilean life and events.
  6. Research and analyze the aesthetic dimension of music and Rock music specifically in the historiographic context, in aspects of content and form.

May also be registered under HOM 380.5.

(PUC IHI0508)

SPA380.36 Self-Determination and Plurinationality in Latin America

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica; may not be offered every semester.  The Chilean Constitutional process has brought the discussion about the formation of a plurinational country. What does this concept really mean? When did this concept enter the public discussion around the world? What experiences already exist? When did the Latin American Indigenous movement build the idea of a plurinational State? What is self-determination?

This class aims to help answer these questions from a historical perspective, applying methods and key concepts of social studies to the period between 1992-2021. To accomplish this we will apply an analytic reflection using short-term categories to understand one of the most important movements on a continental level in the last three decades.

Upon successfully completing this class, you will be able to

  • Apply methods and key concepts of history and the respective historiographic analysis considering the Latin American Indigenous movements between 1986 and 2020.
  • Analyze the historic timeframe  in question, considering the Indigenous movements’ perspectives and the perspectives of the movements’ leading academics.
  • Evaluate the Indigenous movements and their principal concepts in their historical dimension.

(PUC IHI0517)

VIS380.1 Photographic Storytelling Workshop

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica; may not be offered every semester.   This course promotes photographic language learning through the development and construction of documentary stories with different themes. Upon completing the course successfully, you will be able to

  • Describe and analyze the principal milestones of photography and photography storytelling throughout history
  • Understand and evaluate the main current trends and tendencies of photographic storytelling
  • Describe the principles of photographic storytelling
  • Analyze and apply the principles of photographic editing and integration of text and image
  • Demonstrate your understanding of these principles through creation of your own work

You’ll learn through a combination of lectures with audiovisual support, site visits to exhibits of photographic storytelling, practical fieldwork, and photo software workshops. In class, we’ll cover the following topics:

  • Photography storytelling definitions
  • Photojournalism genres: illustration, storytelling, documentary, photo essays
  • Photographic testimony
  • Objectivity and subjectivity of the photographic record
  • A brief history of photographic storytelling in Chile and around the world
  • Influential practitioners of photojournalism
  • Current characteristics and trends of international photojournalism.

PSC380.30 Politics and Society in the Arab World

Taught in Spanish at Pontificia Universidad Católica; may not be offered every semester.  In this course, you’ll critically analyze the social and political reality of Middle East countries from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering cultural, geographic and economic variables in the region. We’ll cover the unfolding of events since the beginning of the 19th Century, considering different milestones that have impacted the region, and we’ll analyze specific cases of some countries that have been and are vital to an understanding of current identities and geo-political situations. Your goal in this class is to develop a deep understanding of current phenomena via a reflective, historical, and critical perspective.

On successful completion of this course, you will be able to

  • Distinguish the countries that make up the Middle East, starting from historical processes that started with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, considering also the influence of global and regional powers during and after the two World Wars.
  • Analyze the social and political development of the Middle East countries, through the study of historical milestones and their unique contexts, including the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the different independence processes of the countries in the region, the Cold War, the Nahda, Gulf Wars, emergence of Islamic movements, and the Arab Spring.
  • Appreciate and understand the contemporary situation of the region, considering especially the historical and current roles of women in the Arab societies.
  • Analyze specific countries of the region as case studies, in terms of their global and regional relevance.

Matriculated Syracuse students: May not earn credit for both this course and PSC 344. For Syracuse Political Science majors, this course counts toward the Comparative Politics concentration.

(PUC ICP0148)