University of Connecticut |
Spanish Faculty
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros Odette Casamayor Cisneros is Assistant Professor at The University of Connecticut-Storrs. She received her doctorate in Language Arts and Literature from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), in Paris. Having concentrated her research on Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures, Odette Casamayor was also the recipient of a 2005 Rockefeller Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship, which sponsored her as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 2003, her paper titled “Negros de papel. Algunas apariciones del negro en la narrativa cubana después de 1959” received the “Juan Rulfo” literary essay award, which is granted by Radio France Internationale. She is currently writing a book about Post-Soviet Cuban Literature and conducting a research project on racial inequalities in Contemporary Caribbean Societies. 
Rosa Helena Chinchilla Renaissance; Golden Age; Early Modern Literature and Culture; Grammatical Theory in Colonial Latin America; and Cervantes. She is the editor of Fray Francisco Ximénez, Arte de las tres lenguas cakchiquel, quiché, y tzutuhil (1993), and La obra del Padre Manuel Mariano de Iturriaga S. J. en la Nueva España y el Reino de Goathemala (Forthcoming in 2006). Her publications also include a number of articles in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Revista Iberoamericana and other journals. Article topics include Cervantes, Juan del Encina, Garcilaso de la Vega, Nebrija and Juana de Austria, as well as other topics related to literary history (Golden Age, Patronage in the Early Renaissance, Early Modern Spectacle; the Influence of Rome on Spanish Humanism). She has been the recipient of a Newberry Library Fellowship and an NEH Seminar Fellowship. 
Ana María Díaz-Marcos Ana María Díaz-Marcos (Ph.D. 2003, Hispanic Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst) teaches Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies. Her book “El triunfo de lo efímero: representaciones de la moda en la literatura española” was published by the University of Cádiz and the Museo Nacional del Traje (Spain) in 2006. She is the editor of the essay “La casa de muñecas” by Rosario de Acuña. Professor Díaz-Marcos is currently working on an edition of “El arte de ser mujer” by Carmen de Burgos. 
Miguel Gomes Professor and current Chair of the Spanish Section. Author of Los géneros literarios en Hispanoamérica: teoría e historia (Universidad de Navarra, 1999), Horas de crítica: ensayos y estudiosM (Santo Oficio 2002), Poéticas del ensayo venezolano del siglo XX (Inti, 1996), and several other volumes. He also edited, among other books, Estética hispanoamericana del siglo XIX (Biblioteca Ayacucho, 2003), Estética del modernismo hispanoamericano (Biblioteca Ayacucho, 2003), Antología poética de Jorge Nunes (Monte Ávila Editores, 1997). He has published many articles on modern Latin American poetry, essay, and fiction. 
Guillermo Irizarry Professor Irizarry received a BA in Humanities (Drama) from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, a MA in Dramatic Theory and Criticism from the Florida State University, and a PhD in Hispanic Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught Latin American literature, Caribbean literature, and US Latina/o Literature at UT Austin, Bucknell University (2yrs.), at Yale University (5yrs.), Brown University (Visiting) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His current research deals with the hegemonization of US Latin@s and the ontological fragmentation of national and ethnic identities. 
Benjamin Liu Benjamin Liu, Associate Professor of Spanish, received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University in 1994 and 1996. Specializing in medieval Spanish literature, he joined the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Connecticut in 1997. He is the author of Medieval Joke Poetry: The Cantigas d’Escarnho e de Mal Dizer_ (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 2004), of articles in La Corónica, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, and Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, and of several book chapters, the most recent of which is “The Mongol in the Text,” in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, edited by Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi (Brill, 2004). He has received awards from the University of Connecticut Provost’s Office and Research Foundation, and from the Mellon Foundation. His current research examines economic modes of interfaith relations in medieval and early modern Spain and how the circulation of money and goods among Christians, Muslims and Jews configures the complex social relations between these groups. 
Jacqueline Loss Jacqueline Loss (PhD, 2000, Comparative Literature, University of Texas-Austin) teaches Latin American and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Her book “Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place” was published by Palgrave in 2005. She is the co-editor of a forthcoming anthology of Cuban short stories to be published by Northwestern University Press and currently she is collaborating on a collection of literature from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, and Cuba. Among the writers she has translated into English are Cubans Víctor Fowler Calzada. Ernesto René Rodríguez, and Jorge Miralles. Her critical essays have appeared in Nepantla:Views from South, Miradas (Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de San Antonio de los Baños), Chasqui, Latino and Latina Writers, Mandorla, and New Centennial Review, among other publications. She is currently preparing a manuscript whose working title is “Cultural Memory: Cuba and the Soviet Bloc.” 
Gustavo Nanclares Gustavo Nanclares teaches Spanish Peninsular literature and culture. Some of his research interests include the Spanish historical avant-garde, the narrative of the 1920s and 30s and their relationship to international film, and the literature of the Spanish-Moroccan war. He is also interested in peripheral nationalisms in Spain, and has published several works on Basque literature and culture. He is the author of several articles on literature and film in the 1920s and on the literary and intellectual works of Jon Juaristi, Ramón de Basterra, Jorge de Oteiza, Benjamín Jarnés, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Ernestina de Champourcin, José Bergamín, Gilberto Owen, Mario Verdaguer, Miguel Méndez, and others. He is currently working on a book-length project on intermediality in Spanish and Mexican vanguard narrative. 
Laurietz Seda Twentieth Century Latin American and Caribbean Literature, postmodernism, globalization, film, drama, women and cultural studies. A recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Grants (2000, 2003), professor Seda is the editor of the theatre anthology La nueva dramaturgia puertorriqueña and co-editor of Teatro de frontera11/12. She was the guest editor for a Special Issue on Caribbean Theatre for Latin American Theatre Review (Spring 2004). Professor Seda is member of the editorial board for Latin American Theatre Review, Revista Teatro XXI and Boletín del Archivo Nacional de Teatro y Cine del Ateneo Puertorriqueño. She has also published numerous essays on contemporary Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Argentine, and Chilean theatre in edited collections and in journals such as Hispanic Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, Gestos, Conjunto, and Revista Teatro XXI. In 2005 she directed and organized the VI Conference/Festival Latin American Theatre Today:Translation, Trangender and Transnationalism. And in the same year she created the Premio de Teatro Latinoamericano George Woodyard. Professor Seda is currently working on a book tentatively titled: Cruzando puentes: La dramaturgia latinoamericana ante la globalización, and is co-editing a book of essays entitled Trans/Acting:The Politics of Performing Latin American Theatre. 
Eduardo Urios-Aparisi Pragmatics, Metaphor, Discourse Analysis, Politeness Theory and Applied Linguistics. He has published with G. Reyes and E. Baena Ejercicios de pragmática, 2 vol. (2000 Madrid: Arco Libros), and in a diversity of fields including metaphor ("Quarrelling about metaphor on love a pragmatic approach," in M. E. Placencia & R. Márquez-Reiter (Eds.), Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Press 2004), Greek comedy and literature, and also in creative writing. He is currently working on multimodal metaphor in Television commercials and in cinema, and on teacher-student interaction. |
