Participants (left to right, back to front): Clara Rosebrock ’16, Julia Clare McCarthy ’15, Berenice Leal ’15, Yolandi Cruz ’16, Carolina Martinez ’15, Ellen Bryer ’15, Tiffany Clarke ’16, Cynthia Gomez ’16, and Tessy Lopez ’16.
This summer, ten Smith students participated in a Smith-run Global Engagement Seminar about Federico Garcia Lorca, a 20th century Spanish intellectual who excelled in poetry, theater, music, and design. Students were required to enroll in a pre-departure course in the spring, followed by a summer seminar and six week internship in Spain. The seminar was led by professors María Estela Harretche (Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies) and Ellen Kaplan (Theater and Jewish Studies).
In Madrid, Smithies participated in intensive investigations of archives, then traveled to Granada, Seville, and Córdoba to visit cultural sites. The seminar ended with students bringing Lorca’s stories to life with performances in Spanish by applying acting techniques in order to enhance foreign language and presentation skills. The classroom seminar was followed by each student participating in either a service or learning internship in Córdoba.
Professors Harretche and Kaplan had both taught at universities in Spanish prior to the seminar, and had a deep knowledge of Lorca’s work before embarking on creating this global experience for Smith students. As Professor Kaplan explained, the seminar was unique because it was “conducted in a foreign language” and “incorporate[d] performance into language training” while also “weaving together close readings of texts—poetry and drama—in original Spanish.” The reason Kaplan personally found the experience so extraordinary was “the total immersion in Lorca’s work, surrounded by the landscape that so inspired him and even staying in the same residencia where he developed into the great artist he was.”
Smith student Julia McCarthy ’14, who has studied Spanish for eight years and had never been to Spain, was very excited to participate in the Global Engagement Seminar because of her interest in theater and Spanish literature. She had not studied abroad through Smith before, but found the seminar to be “more immersive and culturally intense” than other study abroad opportunities. As a theater major, she had participated in many theater-related projects but never one in another language. Her global experience this summer was vital to affirming her career goal of intertwining theater with cultural studies and social justice. Her internship in Spain was with the Red Cross in Córdoba in both a summer school and hospital setting.
The seminar developed from Professor Harretche’s passion of Lorca’s work, and in this way both professors created a program that would expose Lorca’s world to students so they could see firsthand what had shaped him and his writing. As a former scholar of the student residence where Lorca lived and worked for ten years, Harretche desired to give her students a “rich understanding” of his work that would only come from “being there—in his footsteps.”
Professors Harretche and Kaplan hope to offer the seminar again.
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