university life

Classes started last monday and things are going pretty well so far.  I am taking the following classes:
Theoretical Linguistics
I'm really enjoying this class.  My professor seems very relaxed and funny.  Today we discussed the history of linguistics ... starting with Socrates and his thoughts on the relationship between words and meaning. 
History and Fiction in Latin America
This class is about Latin American literature and how different works reflect different periods of the region's history.  Last week we read sections of a book from the early 17th century that contains the first reference to the Bermuda Triangle as a place where people disappear.  Today Peruvian author Eduardo González Viaña lectured in our class about immigration in the US (the topic of most of his books).
Literature and Society in Spain
This class is about Bohemian literature in Spain at the end of the 19th c and the beginning of the 20th.  It's an interesting genre to study because few of the authors are particularly famous anymore and many wrote books, plays, and poetry of somewhat questionable quality.  But this community of authors and their works say a lot about society in Spain during their time.  Madrid, the center not only of politics but also of art and culture in Spain, attracted young artists from all over the county.  These creative types found solidarity with one another in their shared poverty, youth, struggle for recognition, and pride in their own marginality (they are the first to write artists as protagonists.)  They modeled their lives around the ideal of french Bohemianism (La Boheme served as a manual for dress, behavior, etc).  The only thing I don't like about this class is the number of foreign students.  There are, inexplicably, around 20 Germans taking this class with me.
Anthropology of Gender
I am very excited about this class.  Not only do we have something similar to a syllabus (in my other classes I just have a huge list of books to read and no indication of when I should read them) but it is incredibly interesting.  We will learn about the evolution of Anthropology from a field that was predominantly interested in the men of a given society to a field that studies men, women, and their interactions.  My professor mentioned as an example of the man-centric attitudes of early Anthropology a line from an pre-1970s anthropological study...it went something like this:  The town was left empty, the only ones remaining were me, the women and the children.
General Sociology
This class seems a bit boring.  It's a first year class for students in the education department and it's going to be pretty basic.  On the plus side, all but one of my classmates are Spanish and, since they are mostly first years, they are more eager to make friends (even with a silly American).