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Television as Textbook: Cuéntame cómo pasó in the Spanish (Literature) Classroom

The long-running Spanish television program Cuéntame cómo pasó represents not only a wildly successful series for Radio Televisión Española, but also an excellent example of the project of historical memory. Premiering in 2001 (but set, in the first season, in 1968), the story of the multigenerational Alcántara family forms a microhistory which reflects the larger sociohistorical context of the end of the Franco era and the transition to democracy. This program, its authentic rendering of recent history, and its connection to the polemics of historical memory in contemporary Spain prompted us to create an upper-level hybrid (cultural studies/literature) course using this series as the primary text. This article elaborates the challenges we encountered in creating a course based on the series and our solution to those problems. In addition, we explain our pedagogical approach to using the program as text, including examples of visual interpretative strategies we explored with students. Finally, we reflect on the student experience in this course, the outcomes they reported and that we observed, making the case that use of the visual text created a distinctive and effective learning experience.