News and Events

News

Spanish Soc 2012-2013

The Spanish society is up and running and planning all sorts of shenanigans! Every year the society plans nights out, language exchange programmes and other Spanish related activities to enhance students’ learning experience.

The first language exchange session of the year took place in the Skeff bar and was attended by over 50 people. The advantage this year is that thanks to the high numbers of Spanish Erasmus students, there are plenty of opportunities for students to get to know native Spanish speakers.

The committee members have shown great enterprise this year by liaising with Spanish societies from universities around Ireland, so it looks like many a road trip could take place after Christmas!

News

New Dr. H. H. Stewart Literary Scholar in Spanish

Congratulations to Paul Griffin who got the second prize of the 2012 Dr H. H. Stewart Literary Scholarships for Spanish. ¡Enhorabuena, Paul!

News for 1st Year Students, 2012-2013

We would like to remind students starting Spanish this year that the introductory lectures start the week of  10 September and that you should register for your courses as soon as possible.  To do this you need to select either SH112/113/107 for the Beginners course, or SH131/132/107 for the Intermediate one.  Grammar classes start on the 17th and the Spoken hours begin on the 24th of September.

For Commerce/Corporate Law students, you need to select either SH201 for the Beginners course, or SH140 for the Intermediate one.  Grammar classes start on the 10th and the Spoken hours begin of the 17th of September.

Once you have chosen your group, you will need to log on to Blackboard ( http://nuigalway.blackboard.com) and select one of the available groups for the Grammar and the Spoken classes.  There is a limit of places and a deadline for this; if by the 17th of September you still haven’t registered for a group, the course co-ordinator will automatically allocate you one. 

Other than that, welcome to your first academic year, and if you need any assistance don’t hesitate to contact someone from the Spanish department.

Lecture by Professor Roberto González Echevarría

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (Spanish) presented a lecture on El Aleph: a Kaleidoscope of Borges’s Stories, delivered by Sterling Professor Roberto González Echevarría, from Yale University on 19 April 2012. For more information, click here.

Public Lecture: The Latin-American Left

Peadar Kirby, Professor of International Politics and Public Policy, University of Limerick, spoke on The Latin American New Left: Towards a Post-Neoliberalism?, at the Siobhán McKenna Theatre, Arts Millennium Building, NUIG, on 8 March 2012. For more information, click here.

The Babel Lectures, 2012

The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, NUI Galway, presented The Babel Lectures: Tradition and Transformation, a public lecture series that takes place on the 31^st of January, 28^th of February and the 27^th of March 2012 in the Town Hall Theatre Studio. For more information, click here.

Richardson and Borges

Prof Bill Richardson delivered a conference paper on the17th of May; for the Cervantes Institute, entitled "Jorge Luís Borges y el significado de la vida" ("Jorge Luís Borges and the Meaning of Life"). The paper looked at how Borges searches for ’truth’ through his fictional heroes and villains, and also at his representation of God and the supernatural, the nature of thought, language and literature, sex and gender, and time and space in his works.

The paper was followed by the launch of Prof Richardson’s new book, Borges and Space, which was presented by the Ambassador for Argentina in Ireland, her Excellency María Esther Bondanza.

Lorna Shaughnessy Book Launch

Lorna Shaughnessy’s translation of The Disappearance of Snow by Manuel Rivas was launched during the Cúirt International Festival of Literature 2012 with a bi-lingual poetry reading by the author and translator. This collection of poems was published in 2009 in all four of Spain’s co-official languages, in one volume. It was described by its publisher Alfaguara as “a book that transgresses limits and frontiers”.

’The Disappearance of Snow’, originally written in Galician, is a succession of soundings in the realms of emotion, spaces in the conscious mind and niches in memory which, at different times, have marked the whole of the poet’s work. In a rich language tinged with a touch of the baroque (and occasional deviations into the surreal) that delves into the roots of experience, Rivas strives to excavate spaces of origin in the land and in a world, (Galicia), that offers something at once primitive and virgin, that generates the myths that accompany the lyric subject, reclaiming the territory (at times joyous, at times dark) of childhood, and that sheds light on the cultural and emotional icons with which his world of referents was built, from Cassius Clay to Marisol to Valle-Inclán, Angel González to Orson Welles, to cite just a few.’ (El País)

Enseñar – o el arte de aprender

El Profesor Miguel Ángel Santos Guerra dará una charla sobre el tema 'Enseñar – o el arte de aprender' en el Siobhán McKenna Theatre el martes que viene día 31 de enero a las 9.00 de la mañana. Bienvenidos a todos. For more information, click here.

Galician-Irish Symposium

The Speckled Ground: Hybridity in Irish and Galician Cultural Production was held on 30-31 March 2012. The symposium was a collaboration between Spanish, NUIG; The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; The Moore Institute, and the Amergin Centre for Irish Studies, A Coruña. For more information, click here.

An Evening with Frida Kahlo

On the evening of the 21^st of September the Spanish Department was treated to a little taste of Mexican folk art. For full details about the event and some audience reactions, click here.

Award

We are delighted to announce that Rebecca Mann (a 2nd year student of Spanish on the BA Connect with Theatre and Performance) has been awarded 2nd prize in the 2011 Dr Henry Hutchinson Stewart Literary Scholarship for her performance in her First Year Spanish examinations. The scholarship is granted by the National University of Ireland (NUI). Each year NUI rewards First Year Spanish students from across all the NUI Universities who have excelled in their Arts exams and have achieved a high level of academic competence. Well done Rebecca!

The Hispano Society Never Stops!

The Hispano Society has been hard at work putting together a series of events designed to give students an opportunity to practice their Spanish outside the classroom.

On the 11^th of October the society held a Piñata Party.  For those of you unfamiliar with piñatas, they are candy-filled containers that hang from the ceiling. The aim is to hit it with a stick until the container breaks and releases the candy inside.  Our particular piñata took longer to hang up than to crack open!

The Skeffington bar in Eyre Square hosted the first two language exchange parties of the semester.  They were well-attended multicultural affairs with a mixture of Spanish and English spoken throughout the night.  The language exchange nights give students from different courses an opportunity to hone their language skills whilst meeting new people and enjoying the free food.  Given the success of the first two nights, the Hispano Society is planning on making it a regular event.

The weekly coffee mornings have also been very well-attended.  The photograph is of the Wednesday the 2nd of November gathering, which included Music, Engineering and Hispanic Studies students discussing current events in Spanish, although no one would reveal who they were voting for in the presidential election! The coffee morning also gave the society time to begin preparations for a weekend trip to Spain during the second semester. The motivation behind the trip isn’t just leisure as initial dates have been set around April 2012, which would coincide with preparations for the end of year oral exams.  It’s hard to think of a better way to prepare for an exam!

Two New IRCHSS Scholars in Spanish!

Congratulations to two new postgraduate research students in Spanish who have been awarded scholarships by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) - Céire Broderick and Diletta Panero. Céire’s project is entitled: “Redefining Chilean National Identity in the post-Pinochet Era and the Early Twenty-First Century through the Contemporary Novels: Ay mama Inés by Jorge Guzmán, Maldita yo entre las mujeres by Mercedes Valdivieso , Inés del alma mía by Isabel Allende and Tres nombres para Catalina: La Doña de Campofrío by Gustavo Frías” and Diletta’s project is entitled: “Storytelling in the Work of Isabel Allende: A Female Genealogy”. For more information, click here.

SPANISH FIRST Tutorials

This year sees the introduction of special Academic Support Tutorials designed to assist First Year students of Spanish with their study of the language and the cultures of Spain and Latin America. They are called ’SPANISH FIRST’ Tutorials. ’FIRST’ stands for ’Forum for Investigating and Researching Spanish Themes’. Each First Year student of Spanish must attend at least one SPANISH FIRST Tutorial in the course of the academic year. For more information, click here.

People with Languages in Demand

''Everybody in Ireland is looking for people with languages’, according to Peter Cosgrove, of CPL Recruitment Group. This reinforces the message that employers consistently convey to teachers of languages, i.e., that knowing a language helps get you noticed by a potential employer and can assist you to land the job that you want. For more information, click here.

Aula Virtual de Español

This year, for the first time, students of Spanish will be able to have access to the online resources of the Aula Virtual de Español (AVE). Details of how to access the AVE will be given in class.

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