“Spanish Comedy in the Golden Age,” might at first suggest that this course is held in the modern language department on the first floor of Schoolhouse.

Despite its name, though, this senior English elective has less to do with the language or perhaps even the time or genre, and more with considering the mindset that only our American, and subsequently English, culture matters. As Father Voorhees says, “I have the belief that all world literature is valuable.”

Seven major plays are read throughout the term, including Los Epenos de Una Casa written by Sor Juana de Ines de la Cruz and Life is a Dream and Other Spanish Classics, a collection of comic plays.

Before the reading of every play, Fr. Voorhees assigns a student to a character to read or, at times, act. This, says student Noah London ’16, “adds life to the plays we read in class.”

These works, lectures, and articles that “describe the new comedy of the Spanish Theater” provide the “political, religious, and social background” of the plays that are so regularly brushed aside by contemporary and classic American/English literature.

Interestingly today some of the plays the class reads are published by the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company). These at times low-brow comedies also contain intellectual sparks, making the works read in Fr. Voorhees’s class very similar to the plays most Kent students are familiar with.

Maintaining enthusiasm in this class is never a struggle, in part because, says Voorhees, “people find these plays accessible. It has always been a full class.”

And, for those interested in taking it next year, Fr. Voorhees reassures us that “All plays will be read in English!”