Teaching

On this page are courses I’ve taught over the course of my career at five different colleges and universities. If you’d like to review a syllabus, please send me an email! rmbender [at] ksu [dot] edu

On the blog:

I occasionally I write about how I integrate my research into my teaching, or how my assignments in the classroom have led me to reevaluate or expand my own research agenda. These posts appear below — I typically include links to free materials that I created for these topics (PDFs of discussion questions, reading guides, assignments). Comments, suggestions, tips, and feedback welcome!

(Jan 2014) The Perfect Wife in the 21st Century: La perfecta casada en el siglo XX
(Feb 2014) Exploring Female Identities in Carmen de Burgos’ “La rampa”
(Apr 2014) The Red Virgin: Motherhood and Power Dynamics
(May 2014) La Llorona: Incorporating Latino Studies into Hispanic Literature
(Nov 2015) Francisco de Goya: The Enigma of the Black Paintings
(Dec 2015) Picasso’s Guernica and Aleixandre’s “Oda”: The Spanish Civil War in Art and Poetry
(Feb 2016) Teaching Spanish America: From the Conquest to Contemporary Film
(Sept 2020) Mapping Madrid through Art, Literature, and Creative Cartography
(Oct 2020) Don Quijote, the Graphic Novel, and Snapchat: Alternative Assessments in the L2 Literature Classroom
(Mar 2021) Cartographic Narratives: Using Data and Mapping Principles to Teach L2 Literature

Teaching experience:

KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY (2015-present)

STUDY ABROAD: “Spain Today: Madrid, Pamplona, Barcelona”
I created this annual program by working with the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Españolas (ILCE) at the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, starting in 2018. Summer of 2019 was its first successful year. It is unique in offering our Spanish Majors a 700-level course in which they conduct research in Spain on a topic related to their professional goals; they present at K-State the following Fall semester. In 2019 we held “photo gallery” event, which was a really fun format: Spanish Majors and Minors Present Research from the Summer in Spain Program. The program ran in 2022 (13 students) and in 2023 was open to MA students for the first time (8 students total); 8 students participated in 2024; 9 in 2025, and I’m hoping for a successful 6th year in 2026 with over 10.

SPANISH LANGUAGE:

Spanish 301: Spanish IV
Spanish 408: Intermediate Spanish Grammar
Spanish 410: Intermediate Grammar  & Composition
Spanish 420: Intermediate Spanish Conversation

SPANISH & SPANISH AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE:

Spanish 550: Introduction to Literature in Spanish
Spanish 550: Hispanic Readings & Media
Spanish 565: Civilization and Culture of Spain
Spanish 567: Introduction to the Literature of Spain
Spanish 567: Heroes and Housewives: Introduction to the Literature of Spain (themed survey)
Spanish 567: Transatlantic Art, Visual Cultures of Spain and Mexico
Spanish 568: Literature of Spanish America (survey)

(Select) GRADUATE-UNDERGRADUATE SEMINARS

Spanish 768: La memoria y la madre: The Mythology of Motherhood in the Cinema of Pedro Almodovar 

This advanced Spanish seminar explores the vibrant, provocative, and haunting cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Spain’s most iconic director. From convents to corpses, ghosts, and gazpacho, his colorful, often controversial films blend camp, melodrama, humor, and tragedy to explore Spain’s shifting cultural landscape. We’ll focus on portrayals of mothers and/or motherhood, as well as memory (personal and historical), to consider how Almodóvar’s bold storytelling reflects Spain’s evolving identities, from the post-Franco Transition to the present day. Readings in both Spanish and English will provide theoretical frameworks for analyzing cinematic form, melodrama, queer representation, and feminist critiques of the maternal.

Spanish 735: Literary Portraiture and Modern Spain (#LiteraryPortraitureKSU)
Graduate and Undergraduate seminar

Spanish 735: Mapping Madrid in the Edad de Plata (#MappingMadridKSU)
Undergraduate seminar

This course focused on the representation of Madrid in the literary and cultural production of early 20th-century Spain (media, literature, art, film). We explored how urban spaces paradoxically create opportunities for free expression and the challenging of social, political, gendered, or religious norms, while also reinforcing or promoting dominant narratives and identities in both individual and collective contexts. Thus, the narrative-city may be celebrated, critiqued, or (re)imagined. Key texts included Carmen de Burgos’s La rampa (1917) and José Díaz Fernández’s La Venus mecánica (1929). The final mapping project was based on my thinking about maps as literary analysis, and some of my students’ final projects can be viewed here.

Spanish 732: Pop Culture and Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha
Undergraduate seminar

• Visit my Spring 2018 students’ final creative, collaborative Snapchat project: www.quijotesnaps.wordpress.com
• Read about my non-traditional approach to this, and other literature courses, in my peer-reviewed article published in HISPANIA (Sept. 2020): “Snapping the Quijote: Examining L2 Literature, Social Media, and Digital Storytelling through a Cervantine Lens“
• View the “Course Trailer” that seniors in my Spring 2021 course made to “promote” the seminar and reading of Don Quijote to future K-State students. They had fun with it, which made me happy given that their last three semesters of college work were sporadically online, hybrid, and distanced. This was a “senior-Covid-project”!!!

Spanish 779: Spanish American AP Literature Readings: Analysis in Context
Graduate & Undergraduate seminar
Spanish 779: AP Spanish Literature: Transatlantic Perspectives
Graduate seminar

Spanish 779: AP Spanish Peninsular Literature: Analysis in Context
Graduate seminar

Spanish 779: Art of Spain & Mexico for the L2 Classroom — ONLINE graduate course for teachers

Read more on the K-State Spanish blog:

Online MA Course: “Art of Spain & Mexico in the L2 Classroom” (for Teachers)

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GRINNELL COLLEGE (2013-2015)

• Spanish 105: Introduction to the Spanish Language I (Intensive)
• Spanish 106: Introduction to the Spanish Language II (Intensive)
• Spanish 217: Intermediate Spanish
• Spanish 285: Introduction to Textual Analysis
• Spanish 295: Refashioning the Self: Hispanic Women’s Literature in the 20th Century (Transatlantic Seminar): SPN 295_Syllabus_SP14_ReFashioning the Self
  

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THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY (2008-2013)

• Spanish 1, Spanish 2, Spanish 3 (as 15-week hybrid-online & 3-week summer intensives)
• Intermediate Spanish Conversation
• Intermediate Spanish Grammar and Conversation
• Introduction to Hispanic Literature
• Mexican Culture and Civilization: Abroad – Puebla, Mexico (Graduate Assistant)

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BLOOMSBURG UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA (2007-2008)

• Spanish 1
• Spanish 3
• Introduction to Spanish (on and off-campus)

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO (2005-2007)

• Spanish 1 (Supervisor: Spring 2007)
• Spanish 2

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