The Taxco Campus Center for Foreigners (CEPE-Taxco) successfully concluded the intensive Spanish and Mexican culture immersion course, Revolutionary Art & Spanish Language in Mexico City, designed, organized, and taught in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
The main objective of the course was to improve the participants’ Spanish and engage them in the cultural vitality of Mexico and its capital city. This course promotes awareness of historical and contemporary issues in our country, through a review of the post-revolutionary muralist movement and its aesthetic and political impact.
Stephanie Munoz-Navarro, professor and course leader at UIC, explained that muralism was chosen as the central theme of study because visual narrative provides a means of participation that facilitates the connection between historical and social issues and current problems.
Furthermore, the academic stated, “We are very satisfied with the outcome of this program, created with our colleagues at CEPE-Taxco, specifically for our needs, especially since it was the first time we tried co-teaching in a bilingual format, which included Spanish and cultural classes, discussion sessions, visits to museums, archaeological sites, markets, plazas, and viceregal sites.”
Rommel Scorza, academic secretary at CEPE-Taxco and also the program coordinator, explained that “this is a short, immersion-oriented, and tentacular course, developed with fewer hours in the classroom and more time in extracurricular activities with a strong sociocultural component. It uses a flexible approach to real immersion, in authentic, diverse contexts, and experiences with real, local actors, always benefiting students’ learning and practice.”
Source: gaceta.unam
