SPAN 150
Topics in Contemporary Studies
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour (when scheduled). Requisites: courses 25 or 27, and 119. Exploration of main trends that characterize contemporary Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures and main concepts used to address them. Possible topics include transculturation and heterogeneity, race and ethnicity, vanguard movements, lettered and popular cultures, literary modernization in Latin American boom, literature and revolution, autobiography, women's writing, border literature, and postmodernist fiction. May be repeated for credit with topic change. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
4 of 5
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2025 - MEXICAN CLIMATE FICTION I was not initially very interested in this topic because I thought it would be too niche or too humanities-based for my liking. I was wrong. This has been my favorite undergraduate class by far. Professor Tobin is clearly passionate about what he teaches. The course is designed masterfully, and I was not once bored of the content we were working with. He knows how to get students involved, even when they might be shy or apprehensive to participate. He pulls many themes together by expertly curating a series of texts, films, and even podcasts. He is without a doubt the best professor I've encountered at UCLA. There are a myriad of interesting themes (Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Guilt and Responsibility, Gender Roles, Robots, AI, Biotechnology, Deep Ecology, Solarpunk, Hyperobjects) and opportunities to explore them in both creative writing and research projects. He is without a doubt the best professor I've encountered at UCLA. This class will change the way you think about not just climate change, but humanity as a whole. I urge you to take this class if you at all have the opportunity to. Class is taught in Spanish, and students are expected to speak and write in Spanish. Grading is based off of weekly blog posts (written with a partner), self-graded participation, one oral presentation, two short essays (one of which can be a creative writing piece or a research paper, the second being strictly a research paper) and a creative final assignment.
Fall 2025 - MEXICAN CLIMATE FICTION I was not initially very interested in this topic because I thought it would be too niche or too humanities-based for my liking. I was wrong. This has been my favorite undergraduate class by far. Professor Tobin is clearly passionate about what he teaches. The course is designed masterfully, and I was not once bored of the content we were working with. He knows how to get students involved, even when they might be shy or apprehensive to participate. He pulls many themes together by expertly curating a series of texts, films, and even podcasts. He is without a doubt the best professor I've encountered at UCLA. There are a myriad of interesting themes (Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Guilt and Responsibility, Gender Roles, Robots, AI, Biotechnology, Deep Ecology, Solarpunk, Hyperobjects) and opportunities to explore them in both creative writing and research projects. He is without a doubt the best professor I've encountered at UCLA. This class will change the way you think about not just climate change, but humanity as a whole. I urge you to take this class if you at all have the opportunity to. Class is taught in Spanish, and students are expected to speak and write in Spanish. Grading is based off of weekly blog posts (written with a partner), self-graded participation, one oral presentation, two short essays (one of which can be a creative writing piece or a research paper, the second being strictly a research paper) and a creative final assignment.
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