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.
Advising Resources
All students are encouraged to complete an Individual Development Plan with their advisor.
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.
Learn about our faculty research interests and scholarly work here.
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.
Martha Bigelow, Curriculum & Instruction
Second language acquisition, schooling experiences of adolescent immigrant youth, preservice language teacher education, multicultural education
Dustin Chacon, Linguistics
Language processing, syntax, Child Language, semantics, South Asian languages
Sarah Chambers, History
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 Aaamerican 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
Nabil Matar, History
Seventeenth-Century English Religious literature, Arabic and European travel literature, Captivity Literature, Euro-Islmaic contacts (early modern), Arab-Islamic civilization
Patrick McNamara, History
Cognitive History, History and Memory, Comparative Revolutions, Mexico, El Salvador, Drug Violence in the Americas, Human Rights
Elaine Tarone, CARLA
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.
Daniel Schroeter, History
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