Encuentros con España: Entrevistas Culturales
bringing the culture and civilization of Spain to the classroom

 

The Entrevistas culturales site we are presenting to you here is part of an biger project called Encuentros con España that is currently underdevelopment. As a first stage of the project, the Entrevistas culturales site, with a collection of personal interviews with Spaniards and candid personal stories, aims to assist instructors in identifying distinctive points of views for their students, helping them not only to acquire information, but to recognize and understand the differences between their perspectives and those of Spanish people.

 

Background of Encuentros con España

Considering the importance of the study of Spanish culture and civilization in the curriculum of any humanity program in the United States, and the difficulty instructors have in finding authentic and updated materials on the most contemporary aspects of the culture of Spain, we propose developing Encuentros con España, a one of a kind multidisciplinary multimedia resource web portal.

 

Encuentros con España will serve humanities instructors as a digital resource on current themes of human interest and of historical importance as well as offering engagement in the culture. Without trying to substitute the use of the traditional textbook in the classroom, the web portal will aim to fill the academic need of genuine views and perspectives on the life, history, and culture of Spain and its inhabitants. By producing original materials designed specifically for the project the portal will not only serve as a window to the Spanish world, but as a truly open (and free) multimedia data base that will allow high school and university instructors to more easily bring the culture of Spain to their classrooms, connecting students’ own experiences with the experiences of the Spanish people. Given its original rich multimedia content, Encuentros con España will also foster the development of critical comparisons between students’ own culture and Spanish culture.

 

Encuentros con España future portal organization
When visitors enter Encuentros con España, they will have the opportunity to select their own path to the understanding of Spain’s civilization and culture by choosing a particular visual or written representation of Spain among the many personal encounters and testimonies gathered in this portal without doors. The section named Historias de España will contain all the original multimedia modules produced by the photojournalism and broadcasting teams traveling to Spain. Using Flash as the technology base of these interactive presentations, each multimedia module will become an original linear story with synchronized images, sound, and text on a specific aspect of Spanish life. The section Vistas de España will access the digital image data-base of the portal. By searching the image collection by general topic, place, or tradition, visitors will receive a search result with images and their description when appropriate. In the section Entrevistas culturales visitors will find the collection of personal video interviews with Spaniards in Spanish.  Accompanied by a content summary, each interview will also include a viewing guide to lead visitors through the cultural contents of these contemporary testimonies of Spain. Diarios de España will take visitors into a collection of narratives in the first person written exclusively for this project. Each journal entry will deal with a different aspect of daily life and the culture of Spain from the perspective of an external observer, giving these personal accounts a genuine perspective of the country and its people impossible to find in any current textbook on the culture and civilization of Spain. Finally, the section Recursos pedagógicos will include a review of current culture and civilization textbooks used at the university level through the country. It will also provide users with a review of available print and audiovisual materials on the culture and civilization of Spain.

 

Contact informacion
If you would like to receive more information about the project, please contact either Inma Pertusa at inma.pertusa@wku.edu, or Melissa Stewart at melissa.stewart@wku.edu, the directors of the project, both faculty members in the Department of Modern Languages at Western Kentucky University.

 

 

Encuentros con España is being developed thanks to a faculty grant from Western Kentucky University.
Melissa Stewart and Inma Pertusa (WKU), the directors of the project, thank all the individuals that collaborated with this project providing their opinions, expertice, and time with the interviews.