Month: October 2008

Another film from this year’s International Film Series is coming up.   On Nov. 5, at 7 pm at the Hoff, free of charge as usual, José Maria Naharro-Calderón will host  Land and Freedom, Ken Loach (1995).

Partially based on George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, this film about the Spanish Civil War depicts the contradictions and power struggles in the camp of the democratic Spanish Republic, abandoned to its tragic fate by England, France and the United States.land-and-freedom-flyer

It is my pleasure to announce that both of the candidates presented by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese to the Dean’s Senior Scholars Award have been selected to receive the award for 2008.  Vineeta Singh and Dennis Stinchcomb are the recipients of this important award. Singh and Stinchcomb were unanimously selected. There were a total of six awards for all ARHU units. I quote from Dean Harris letter: “The selection committee was impressed by your extraordinary record of academic performance and strong letters of recommendation.”  Please join me in congratulating Vineeta and Dennis.
Also thanks to Prof. Demaría, Cypess, Remson and Ana Patricia Rodríguez for their support and for writing the letters of recommendations.  Felicidades.

Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia
Professor and Acting Chair
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of Maryland
2215-A Jiménez Hall
College Park, MD 20742
Office: 301-405-6450
Fax: 301-314-9752
jcquinte@umd.edu

This Thursday night at the literary café Busboys and Poets in D.C., the Smithsonian Latino Center will present two of the few DIVEDCO films addressing blackness in Puerto Rico, “El Resplandor” and “Nenén de la Ruta Mora.”

Relatively unknown, “El Resplandor” is one of the island’s most powerful films, telling a story of insurrection on a sugar plantation on the eve of the abolition of slavery.  In a surreal adaptation of the island’s folklore, “Nenén de la Ruta Mora” is a poetic tale of a young boy from Loíza and his imaginary playmate.  Discussion about these films will be led and facilitated by Marvette Pérez, Curator of Latino History from the National Museum of American History.

These films are available only in Spanish; a written, English-language overview will be available for viewers who do not speak Spanish.  Please see the attached flyer for more information about this program, including start time and location.flyer-nenen-and-el-resplandor2

For more information and a full calendar of events for the series “Puerto Rico at the Smithsonian,” be sure to visit www.latino.si.edu.

The Department of Spanish and the Latin American Studies Center (LASC) in collaboration with the Cultural Institute of Mexico cordially invite you to attend a reading by Mexican Poet

Friday, October 10, 2008

1:00 to 2:15 p.m.

Holzapfel Hall

Room 0128-B (LASC)

PURA LOPEZ COLOME was born in Mexico City and now lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She spent her early years in Mexico City and Mérida, Yucatán, and completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She was awarded the Alfonso Reyes National Prize for Young Writers (1977) and the Yearly Fellowship granted by the Mexican Center of Writers for critical writing (1982).

She has published nine volumes of poetry including El sueño del cazador (The Hunter’s Dream, 1985) and No Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome, translated by Forrest Gander (2002).

Pura Lopez Colome is well-known for her Spanish translations of works by poets such as Samuel Beckett, Bertold Brecht, Seamus Heaney, Rainer Maria Rilke, among others. Her latest poetry collection, Santo y seña

(Password) was published in 2007. With this work, she recently shared the prestigious Premio Xavier Villaurrutia prize with fellow poet Elsa Cross, for Latin American writers publishing in Mexico. As well, her

1994 volume Aurora will also be issued in the US and UK in 2007.

Por aquí se llega a la Exhibición sobre la División de Educación a la Comunidad