Faculty Advisors
The faculty of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese are passionate researchers and teachers of subjects including Global Portuguese, Hispanic Linguistics, and Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies. In addition to our department faculty, we have a strong group of faculty from other departments that represent the interdisciplinary interests of our students. Many serve as members on graduate student committees.
Advising Resources
All students are encouraged to complete an Individual Development Plan with their advisor available here.
Students entering in Fall 2023 are required to meet with their advisor to discuss and sign the Spanish & Portuguese Studies Department Graduate Advising Agreement. Optionally, they may fill out the Advising Agreement Communication Worksheet that offers prompts for a variety of questions regarding communication styles.
Current advisees in italics
Sophia Beal, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies
Jacob Dixon
Dr. Beal’s research focuses on literary and cultural analysis within the Portuguese-speaking world, primarily analyzing questions related to public space and urban development. She contributes to the curriculum in the areas of Brazilian, Portuguese, and Lusophone-African cultural production.
Ofelia Ferrán, Associate Professor
Camille Braun, Yomary Carrillo Tequia
Dr. Ferrán specializes in autobiography, contemporary Spanish peninsular literature, contemporary Spanish women writers, exile literature, feminist theory, literary theory and criticism, narrative constructions and representations of memory. Along with Ana Forcinito, and Brian Engdahl, Dr. Ferrán is a PI of Memory, Trauma, and Human Rights at the Crossroads of Art and Science.
Ana Paula Ferreira, Professor
Ariel Arjona, Jacob Dixon
Dr. Ferreira research includes feminist and gender studies, Portuguese and Brazilian literatures, critical race studies, colonial/postcolonial studies and medieval and renaissance literatures. She is on leave during the 2019-2020 academic year, writing a new book.
Ana Forcinito, Professor
Laura Moyneur, Alejandra Takahira, Carlos Villanueva
Dr. Forcinito specializes in testimonial and visual practices anchored in the promotion of human rights, the reconstruction of memory in post-authoritarian regimes and the eradication of gender violence. Her expertise includes: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature, with a focus on the Southern Cone; memory and human rights studies; feminist theory and gender studies; and Latin American film. She is a PI of Memory, Trauma, and Human Rights at the Crossroads of Art and Science.
Osiris Aníbal Gómez, Assistant Professor
Dr. Gómez joined the Department in Fall 2020 from the University of California, Santa Barbara where he completed his PhD, “Sinfonías originarias: comunidad, pensamiento y poesía". He specializes in contemporary Mexican indigenous poetry and is working on a book project which aims to create a theoretical framework that builds on the concept of comunalidad as the origin and mechanism of collective identity and indigenous political organization.
Michelle Hamilton, Professor
Sara Gardner
Dr. Hamilton is Director of Medieval Studies and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities where she offers courses on religious studies, Jewish studies, and Spanish literature and culture. She has published widely on multi-confessional Iberia. She is currently working on a project examining the intersections of translation, ruins and wonder in the Iberian Arabic and Romance traditions.
Jaime Hanneken, Associate Professor
Ariel Arjona, Carlos Villanueva
Dr. Hanneken specializes in contemporary Latin American and Francophone Literature. Her research foci include: postcolonial studies; globalization; Latin American vanguardias; discursive appropriations of Paris in Caribbean, Latin American, and African contexts; uses and limitations of metropolitan literary, cultural theory in peripheral contexts.
Dr. Marrero-Fente’s research focuses on Global Colonial Studies in the Hispanophone World. His specialities include: Early Modern Global Hispanophone Literature and Culture, Colonial Latin America Literature and Culture, Hispanophone-African Literature and Culture; Hispanophone-Asian Literature and Culture; Human Rights; and Early Modern Hispanic Epic Poetry.
Luis Ramos-Garcia, Associate Professor
Kaylee Rasmussen
Dr. Ramos-Garcia specializes in human rights across the disciplines including theater, art, political science, and literature. His interests also include cultural discourses and poetry in contemporary Latin American and Peninsular literature, and Andean studies and Indigenous literature. He is a PI of UMN Grand Challenges Research Art and Theater Interdisciplinary project titled, “The State of Iberoamerican Studies Series: Human Rights Across the Disciplines and Voice to Vision Project.”
William Viestenz, Associate Professor & Department Chair
Camille Braun
Dr. Viestenz is the current chair of the Dept of Spanish & Portuguese. He specializes in modern Iberian literature and culture. He works in topics of the sacred, post-secularism, political theology, ethics, film studies, the philosophy of history, Catalan studies, and human rights.
Current advisees in italics
Timothy Face, Professor
William Cornejo
Specializing in Spanish phonology, Dr. Face’s research activity includes acquisition, development, and ultimate attainment of the Spanish sound system by native English-speaking adult learners. He also focuses on the intonation of Castilian Spanish and Speech perception as evidence in phonology.
Carol Klee, Professor
Perla Escobar Rodriguez, Sabrina Fluegel, Yoko Hama, Jacky James, Celeste Morales, Negar Naseri, James Ramsburg, Leiry Warren
Dr. Klee specializes in Spanish language contact, sociolinguistics, and content-based language instruction. Much of her research focuses on Peru and she is currently working on a sociolinguistic project with Rocio Caravedo titled, “Language Change in Peru: Dialect Contact as a Result of Andean Migration to Lima.”
Mandy Menke, Associate Professor & Director of Language Programs
Perla Escobar, Raegeom Lee, Marie Mangold, Leiry Warren
As Director of Language Programs, Dr. Menke oversees all instruction and pedagogy of our core language learning classes (SPAN 1001 - 3015W, PORT 1101 - 3003). She specializes in Spanish second language acquisition, second language phonology; language immersion education; and second language teaching
Francisco Ocampo, Associate Professor
Raegeom Lee, James Ramsburg
Dr. Ocampo’s research interests include: language and ideology; language variation; relationship between syntax, cognition and discourse; and word order in spoken Spanish; and language and humor.
Martha Bigelow, Curriculum & Instruction
Second language acquisition, schooling experiences of adolescent immigrant youth, preservice language teacher education, multicultural education
Language processing, syntax, Child Language, semantics, South Asian languages
Colonial Latin American history, cultural and legal history, gender history, transition between the end of the colonial period and the formation of republican nations, Chile, Andean region
Njeri Githire, African American & African Studies
African Literary and Cultural Production; Literatures of the African Diaspora; Literature of Immigration and Racial Formation in the African Diasporic Spheres; Women's Writings and Feminist Theory; Postcolonial Theory and Criticism; Francophone Studies; Food, (Non)-Eating, and Related Topics in Literature
Amy Kaminsky, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies
Spanish and Latin American literature, feminist literary theory and criticism, Latin American film, Exile and national identity in Latin America, Jewish writing and film in Argentina, race, gender, and sexuality
Kendall King, Curriculum & Instruction
Sabrina Fluegel
Sociolinguistics, language policy, language research methods, and language education
Seventeenth-Century English Religious literature, Arabic and European travel literature, Captivity Literature, Euro-Islmaic contacts (early modern), Arab-Islamic civilization
Cognitive History, History and Memory, Comparative Revolutions, Mexico, El Salvador, Drug Violence in the Americas, Human Rights
Pronunciation, influence of language transfer, shifts in grammatical accuracy depending on social situation, communication strategies, language play, and literacy skills in a second language, language teacher education.
Muslim-Jewish Relations; Jewish history of North Africa and the Western Mediterranean, early-modern to modern; Moroccan history; Colonialism and the Jews in the Middle East and North Africa; Holocaust Studies; History of Israel and Palestine