I wouldn't recommend this prof. unless you really love reading and more reading and more reading. For this course we read One Hundred Years of Solitude, Cielos de la Tierra, and an anthology he edited himself (more than 500 pages). All of the readings were extremely interesting, but they take a lot of time. He doesn't give you any clues on what might be on the midterm or final (which, fortunately, isn't comulative) so you are forced to know everything in detail. Furthermore, he isn't very dynamic as a lecturer and bores many of the people in the class. Even though he obviously knows a lot about the subject material, he simply doesn't know how to express his knowledge in an interesting way. It isn't impossible to get an A in the class, but it does require a lot of work. Fortunately, he had an optional ten page research paper that could boost your grade. I did this and got an A-. I did gain a lot of knowledge from the class but it cost me many hours of sleep. Do not take this class as your first upper division spanish literature class, unless you are extremely confident about your spanish.

prof. Skirius is quite boring: instead of going over the themes and ideas in the texts, he focuses on the details in the reading, probably trying to figure out whether people have actually read them. The amount of reading for Span. 142was enormous and half of it unnecessary, because it is impossible to remember all of it anyway. And porf. Skirius is no good at helping you rememebr anything. I'm not sure if anyone else teaches this class, but if there is someone else, take it with them.