The Making of Latin American Culture

Professor Inela Selimović taught The Making of Latin American Cultures (SPAN 275, Spring 2015) with a blended learning dimension. The course focused on Latin America from the 1800s onward and underscored the search for identity and independence in the emerging Latin American nations as expressed in literary, historical, anthropological writing and films. The blended learning dimension resonated with certain elements of the typical flipped classroom model through which students’ exposure to digital scholarship enhanced their in-class linguistic practice, discussions, and collaborative cultural projects. Our blended learning dimension indeed consisted of students’ blogs, in-class filmed presentations, and video dialogues. The thematically organized blogs echoed students’ learning through the use of online repositories in conjunction with the assigned readings on cultural memory, gender and education, music and social justice in the Latin American contexts. Some blogs, furthermore, inspired additional cultural literacy-based research for in-class-conducted oral presentations. All presentations were filmed, encouraging students to engage with precise and rich individual inquiries, but also collaborative effort through ad hoc discussions and debates. Student-led and filmed out-of-class interviews allowed that we inquire about and build on lecture content regarding the ethos of Hispanic communities.