Spanish and Latin American Studies with Foundation Year BA (Hons)

Birkbeck, University of London

Our BA Spanish and Latin American Studies with Foundation Year offers you the opportunity to focus on Spanish and Latin American studies, including Brazilian studies, and learn Spanish to an advanced level.

Spain and Latin America offer exciting possibilities for the study of literature, culture, history and society. Our interdisciplinary modules cover cultural aspects of modern Spanish and Latin American film, literature, visual culture, linguistics, history and history of art. Included in these is, for example, the study of world cities such as Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro. Leaders in their fields, our language experts, lecturers and researchers provide a unique environment for you to learn and share your experience.

Before proceeding to the main degree, you will spend your Foundation Year preparing yourself for a degree in the arts by improving your study and research skills and gaining arts-related knowledge and understanding. You will also have the opportunity to take a language module as part of the Foundation Year.

Upon successful completion of the Foundation Year, you can automatically progress on to our three-year, full-time, evening study BA Spanish and Latin American Studies.

We also offer part-time Foundation Year degrees which allow you to spread out your Foundation Year studies over two years. As the 'Foundation Year' is made up of 120 credits, as a part-time student you can take 60 credits in each of your first and second years before starting the main four-year BA Spanish and Latin American Studies. This means that you can take six years to complete the part-time degree with Foundation Year.

Highlights

• Our Foundation Year programmes will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. They are ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you did not achieve the grades you needed for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.

• Our Department of Cultures and Languages brings together research and teaching in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish and Latin American studies, including Brazilian studies, and institutionalises long-standing links between these disciplines.

• In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF), Modern Languages and Linguistics achieved 100% for a research environment conducive to producing research of the highest quality, while 73% of our research was recognised as world-leading or internationally excellent.

• Ours is a community of scholars with shared interests in interdisciplinary topics and cross-cultural research. Our affiliated research centres, Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC) and the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS), provide an important platform for this exchange. CILAVS offers a range of events such as film screenings, workshops, and talks by guest speakers from the Department and other institutions.

• This degree course enables you to acquire a critical appreciation of the literature, art, cinema and cultural histories and geographies of Spain and Latin America, including Brazil, in modules taught by internationally renowned specialists. The course will also enable non-native speakers to become proficient users of Spanish.

• The School of Arts is an official partner of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Opportunities for students have included a year’s free membership of the ICA, private views, discounts on all talks and events, free members' screenings and £3 cinema tickets on Tuesdays, up to 25% off ICA Artists' Editions and a monthly e-newsletter.