Purpose
The Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University announce this year’s intensive Summer Seminars Abroad, a 17-day workshop in Spanish linguistics in Panama City, Panama. The purpose of the program is to provide participants with an opportunity to analyze and practice the Spanish language in a natural linguistic and cultural context, and to receive graduate university credit for that experience.
The program, to take place July 9-25, 2024, is intended primarily for Spanish teachers. Application is open, however, to graduate students from Spanish and other disciplines who have a demonstrated ability in the use of the Spanish language and a need for this type of course. Both native and non-native speakers of Spanish are invited to apply.
The Summer Seminars Abroad for Spanish Teachers (SSAST) have been offered annually since 1991, moving to a different site every two years as a way of presenting as many faces as possible of the Spanish-speaking world to educators and students of Spanish. The move to Panama in 2023 further enhanced the already diverse ethnolinguistic and dialectological profile of program venues. (The program was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.) Previous locations have included Cuernavaca, Mexico (1991 and 1992); Quito, Ecuador (1993 and 1994); San José, Costa Rica (1995 and 1996); Valencia, Spain (1997 and 1998); Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic (1999 and 2000); Santiago, Chile (2001 and 2002); Asunción, Paraguay (2003 and 2004); Antigua, Guatemala (2005 and 2006); Cochabamba, Bolivia (2007 and 2008); Granada, Nicaragua (2009 and 2010); Córdoba, Argentina (2011 and 2012); Lima, Peru (2013 and 2014); Barranquilla, Colombia (2015 and 2016); Havana, Cuba (2017 and 2018); and Montevideo, Uruguay (2019 and 2022).
Indigenous language instruction was added as an option in 2003 and has included courses in Guaraní, Kaqchikel, Quechua, and Miskito. No indigenous language will be offered in 2024.
Please note, however, that a new option became available in 2023 and operates every other year: a similar, three-week program in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. The focus of that program is intensive Portuguese language instruction for Spanish teachers, and it includes a brief graduate seminar in Portuguese-Spanish contrasts as well. More information is available here.
Faculty
The instructors of the Spanish linguistics course in 2024 will be Terrell A. Morgan, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Linguistics at The Ohio State University; and Christina García, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Saint Louis University.
Location
The location of this year’s program is Panama City, Panama.
Our hosts in Panama will be EPA! Español en Panamá in Panama City.