Our Faculty
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.
Regular Faculty
Timothy Face
Specialties
Spanish Second Language Phonology; Laboratory Phonology; Phonetics; Spanish Prosody; Spanish Intonation; Phonological Theory; Spanish Grammar and Language Structure
Ofelia Ferrán
Specialties
autobiography; contemporary Spanish peninsular literature; contemporay Spanish women writers; exile literature; feminist theory; literary theory and criticism; narrative constructions and representations of memory
Ana Forcinito
Specialties
20th- and 21st-century Latin American literature and film, with focus on the Southern Cone; 19th-century literature with emphasis on the Southern Cone; Latin American and Latinx feminist theory about gender violence; Latin American film studies, with an emphasis on sound aesthetics; Interdisciplinary approaches to testimonial narratives, memory and trauma studies; Transdisciplinary Humanities
Osiris Aníbal Gómez
Specialties
Contemporary Mexican Indigenous literature; 21st century Mexican literature and cinema, with a focus on marginalized communities; Chicano literature and culture; Translation studies
Michelle Hamilton
Specialties
Cultural Contact in Medieval Iberia; Literary Theory and Cultural Studies; Hebrew and Arabic cultures of Europe; The Medieval Mediterranean and its Legacy; Sephardic Traditions; Mediterranean Studies; Religious Studies & Philosophies
Jaime Hanneken
Specialties
Theories of race in Latin American and Francophone contexts, 19th and 20th centuries; Critical Theory of the Global South
Carol Klee
Specialties
Spanish language and dialect contact; Spanish sociolinguistics; Content-based language instruction
Raúl Marrero-Fente
Specialties
Colonial Latin America Literature and Culture; Early Modern Hispanic Epic Poetry; Latin American literature; Early Modern Spanish literature; Cuban literature; Legal History; Human Rights
Mandy Menke
Specialties
second language acquisition; multiliteracies instruction; bilingual and immersion education; second language phonology; L2 syntactic complexity
Francisco Ocampo
Specialties
language and ideology; language variation; relationship between syntax, cognition and discourse; word order in spoken Spanish; language and humor
Luis Ramos-Garcia
Specialties
Human Rights and Politics: Latin America and Spain; Human Rights Across the Disciplines: Theater, Art, Political Science, Literature.; Contemporary Latin American and Peninsular Theaters; United States Latino Theater and Cultures; Latin American Shantytown cultural manifestations: music, literature and popular discourse; Cultural Studies: Spain and Latin America; Contemporary Latin American and Peninsular literature: novel, poetry, cultural discourses; Andean Studies and Indigenous literature: Concentration in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia; Caribbean Spanish Studies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic; Gender studies; Latin American popular music; Women's studies
William Viestenz
Specialties
Contemporary Iberian Literature and Culture; Post-Secularism and the Sacred; Environmental Humanities; Neo-Ruralism; Iberian Studies; Political Theory
Associate Faculty
Michael Arnold
Specialties
Contemporary Spanish peninsular literature; Film and cultural history; Contemporary Portuguese culture; Iberian Musics (popular, urban folk, indie); Hybridity; Cultural Musicology of Flamenco and Fado; Transatlantic studies; Subcultural studies
Sara Finney
Specialties
Foreign language pedagogy, multiliteracies pedagogy, social justice pedagogies, experiential learning, second language acquisition, and learner agency
Hernán Matzkevich
Specialties
Early Modern Peninsular and Transatlantic Hispanic Literature; Jewish Studies; Early Modern Sephardic Intellectual Culture; Discourses of dehumanization and exclusion across Early Modern, modern, and contemporary literature; History of Science; Medical Humanities
Erma Nezirevic
Specialties
Contemporary Iberian Literature and Culture; Critical Genocide Studies; Memory studies; Biopolitics
Eva Palma Zúñiga
Specialties
Latin American, Indigenous and Environmental Literature; Memory Studies and Human Rights; Ecocriticism
Emeriti Faculty
Ana Paula Ferreira
Specialties
Decolonial Studies of Lusophone Literatures and Cultures; "Race" and Racial Mixings in the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking South; Women Writers, Feminisms, and Portuguese Colonialism in Africa (1890-1975)
Joanna O'Connell
Specialties
African and Caribbean writing in French and English; indigenous revitalization movements and writing; issues of colonialism, race and nationalism; Latin-American literature and culture; Mexico; the Caribbean; women's writing; feminism and feminist theory
Nicholas Spadaccini
Specialties
Comparative Literature / Cultural Studies; Colonial Spanish-American Literautre and Culture; Cervantes' Novel, Theater, and Poetry; Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture; Contemporary Spanish Literature and Cultures
Constance Sullivan
Specialties
feminist theories; Spanish literature and culture of the 18th-20th-centuries; women writers of Spain
Barbara F. Weissberger
Specialties
ethnicity; gender; Isabella the Catholic; Spanish literature; Spanish romance