As a professor of colonial Latin American literature, ranging from the pre-Columbian to the nineteenth century, I recognize the difficulty for a number of undergraduate students to understand on a meaningful level the selected readings for four of my courses. Such courses are: Early Latin American literature (38334), Indigenous Latin American Discourse (4/58095), Early Latin American Discourse (4/58095) and Early Latin American Travel Narrative course (4/58095). Several students have indicated that they felt a need to "experience" more immediately the context that the different texts represented. In other words, besides having to overcome the foreign language barrier and the unfamiliarity with earlier, remote cultural contexts, they needed background information presented in a manner which they could easily comprehend. Although the transformation of the social, cultural and historical context of colonial Latin American literature into an "experience" is not an easy task, the present abundance of materials on the Internet renders it much more feasible now than in the past.

A series of recent upgrades in computer facilities campus wide, including an electronic classroom and a multimedia presentation facility in my Department (in 313 and 309 Satterfield Hall respectively), have made the Internet much more accessible to students. The ever-increasing media coverage of the Internet has generated a keen interest in the Web as a professional and pedagogical tool. I have already been using and suggesting some Web pages to my students, but the lack of specific and detailed guidelines to relate with the subject-matters treated in my classes and the amount of information provided on the Web, however, has overwhelmed most of them. They need guidelines and instruction on how to establish the pedagogical connections between what is available on the Internet and the texts which they are reading. In light of this, the purpose of my project becomes threefold: (1) to acquire and organize Internet multimedia materials related to colonial Latin America; (2) to integrate these materials into the courses by drawing the pedagogical connections between the materials and the texts being read; and finally (3) to create a Web site that will become a supplement to my teaching activities.