Major Spotlight: Spanish and Latin American Cultures

If you had told me my first year at Barnard that I would major in Spanish and Latin American Cultures I would be a bit surprised. I would probably ask: what else is there for a fluent Spanish speaker to learn about the language?

Coming to Barnard, I always knew that I wanted to study Political Science. Politics shape my interaction with the world, serving as a foundation for how I understand the people, cultures, and events circling around me. 

Naturally, Barnard’s flexible curriculum allowed me to explore. I found myself gravitating toward Spanish classes. Of course, these were not your regular rudimentary Spanish classes. During my time at Barnard, I have taken a contemporary Latin American fiction class, a professional translation course, and a linguistics class on Spanish pragmatics, all being conducted fully in Spanish.

I realized the importance of utilizing the classroom not only to understand the world around me, but also to explore myself and my own identity. Even though I am further away from Mexico than I was in my hometown of San Diego, CA, the Spanish and Latin American Cultures program allowed me to understand and connect to my own Mexican heritage more than ever before.

The Barnard Spanish and Latin American Cultures major at Barnard is a highly flexible major. There are only four required classes: three introductory courses and one Senior Seminar. The rest of the seven (seven!) classes are yours to explore. In mine, I took two semesters of a specialized Portuguese for Spanish speakers class and a course called “Seeking Sanctuary in New York City” where I volunteered as a translator for an asylum seeker from South America. 

In the Senior Seminar, students write their capstone project. This is a roughly 20-page research paper exploring the topic of their choosing. Being a Political Science double-major, I opted to write about politics, and investigated the role of podcasts as a populist communication tool in Argentina. The Senior Seminar is a great incubator for all graduating Spanish and Latin American Cultures students to learn from and with each other. For a semester during our senior year, we come together once a week to work on our individual papers. It was inspiring for me to see how other students approached the capstone project in different ways, as they each complimented their own passions through a Spanish lens.

For life after Barnard, having a specialized double major has opened a lot of professional doors. I am now more confident in my professional Spanish language skills, and even spent my junior year summer working at a public policy think tank in Mexico City. The course material has given me even more tools not only to connect with people from other Spanish-speaking countries, but to further understand myself and where I come from.