October 10, 2018
Spanish professor presents K-State students' Quijote-Snapchat Project at annual Cervantes conference in Canada
Submitted by Department of Modern Languages
Rebecca Bender, assistant professor of Spanish in the modern languages department, attended the Cervantes Society of North America's Annual Conference at the University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Sept. 27-29.
Bender presented her Spanish students' creative project on Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) in a presentation titled "The Don Quijote Seminar: Pedagogy and Pop Culture." The presentation showcased the assignment and collaborative project created by her students in the spring 2018 Spanish seminar, Pop Culture and Cervantes's Don Quijote de la Mancha (SPAN 732).
Bender's seminar students combined close readings of Cervantes' 17th-century novel with analyses of a modern graphic novel interpretation of the Quijote. They also read about how semiotic tools and theories inform the graphic novel and applied this knowledge to Snapchat, which they used as an alternative way of constructing narratives and presenting visual interpretations of the novel and critical responses to it. You can read about the Spanish 732 Don Quijote seminar and view students' projects at the course blog.
The modern languages department is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. Currently, more than 60 percent of students pursuing modern languages degrees participate in education abroad programs, where they use languages they are learning. To learn more about the department, please visit its website. To learn more about events and opportunities in Spanish, follow the K-State Spanish blog and social media @KStateSpanish.