Please join the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in congratulating Associate Professor Ana P. Rodríguez for the publication of her book Dividing the Isthmus: Central American Transnational Histories, Literatures, and Cultures by the University of Texas Press.
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/roddiv.html
Felicitaciones, Ana Patricia.
It is with great pleasure that the Department of Spanish and Portuguese announces the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship to Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia. This year the Foundation received 500 applications for the competition of Latin American and Caribbean fellowships and 33 fellows were selected.
With the Guggenheim Fellowship and his recently awarded GRB, Juan Carlos will devote twelve months to his project,”Listening Travels: Poetics and Politics in the Caribbean Archipelago.” His research examines how poetry and the act of listening are embedded in the texts of authors living in the Caribbean or passing through the archipelago. He will analyze how poetic enunciation and performance interact with political subjectivity. His project is not focused on the events of ‘real’ politics as seen in a particular poet’s point of view or political activism, but instead uncovers the performance of the poetic literary word in the Hispanic Caribbean as a means of enacting the space and logic of what has been called the politics of literature. This book-length study outlines the conditions of the literary text as a singular space and as a text that affects the beliefs of both the reader and the citizens in a Hispanic Caribbean society.
A recognized poet and literary critic, Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia has received the Premio Iberoamericano for the Best Book written in Spanish or Portuguese in Latin American Studies (2004) for his book, Fulguración del espacio. Letras e imaginario institucional de la Revolución cubana (1960-1971). His El hilo para el marisco/Cuaderno de los envíos won the Pen Club Poetry Prize in Puerto Rico in 2004. In fall of 2010, his research will also be funded by a semester award from the Graduate Research Board at the University.
Recently elected as Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
beginning fall 2009, Quintero Herencia previously has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the department since 2005.
Felicitaciones Juan Carlos.
More information at:
http://www.gf.org/news-events/Latin-American-and-Caribbean-Guggenheim-Fellowship-Awards-2009/
http://www.gf.org/news-events/List-of-2009-Fellows-Latin-America-and-Caribbean/
It is with great pleasure that I inform you that Ms. Vineeta Singh, an
undergraduate student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as well as
Neurobiology, has been selected as Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar.
This is an excerpt of the letter from Donna B. Hamilton, Associate Provost
for Academic Affairs and Dean for Undergraduate Studies:
“Vineeta Singh, a rising senior in the College of Arts and Humanities, has
been chosen as a 2009-2010 Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar. Professor Ana
Patricia Rodríguez, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, was named by
Vineeta Singh as the faculty mentor who has made the most impact on her
academic achievement. The Philip Merrill Presidential Scholarship recognizes
academic excellence in our students and the important role that teachers and
faculty have as mentors.”
Congratulations to Ms. Singh, whose future plans include attending medical
school so she can work with underserved communities.
Please join the Department of Spanish and Portuguese in congratulating our
colleague, and Professor Emerito, José Emilio Pacheco. He has been awarded
the “Premio Reina Sofía”, one of the most prestigious poetry prizes in the
Spanish speaking world. Attached is the article published in El País
On May 5, which is a day of celebrating “mexicanidad” we enjoyed the
inauguration of a new lecture series focusing on writers and scholars
who are students or former students of the Department of Spanish &
Portuguese (“Writers and Scholars from SPAP-UMCP”). The first lecture
was presented by Ph.D. candidate Álvaro Enrigue currently working in the
Ministry of Publications for the government of Mexico (Dirección General
de Publicaciones, del Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,
CONACULTA). Álvaro received the prestigious Joaquín Mortiz prize for
his first novel, La muerte de un instalador (1996), and has authored El
cementerio de sillas (2002), selected as the best book written in México
in 2002. Virtudes capitales (1998) was his first short story
collection. Hipotermia, based on his experiences in Maryland, received
the Premio Anagrama (2005). A new novel, Vidas perpendiculares was also
published by Anagrama (2008). The last two books have been translated
into French and published by the eminent Gallimard Press (2009), and
English translations are also in progress.
Alvaro’s impressive lecture, “El sueño de la República produce
cursis” showed a broad knowledge of Latin American poetics and a sense of humor
that reached faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students alike. The
lecture reflected on nineteenth Mexican intellectuals and the birth of
the middle class alongside the rise of a new modernista language.
Wheaton Woods 5th graders came to visit our Spanish for Native Speakers class (Span 306) on April.
As part of a project that seeks to engage University of Maryland students with the community, the class of Hispanic heritage students invited 5thgraders from Wheaton Woods Elementary School. The goal was to share their experience as university students and to play together games involving aspects of their Hispanic culture. Our guests enjoyed some exciting activities, as they danced salsa, played jeopardy and bingo and even learned how to make guacamole. Thanks to the Span 306 students for their involvement and energy organizing this event!
This interdisciplinary workshop will explore current research on identity and language among Nahuatl-speakers from historical and contemporary perspectives. Scholars will explore a variety of ways of conceptualizing the relation between Nahuatl-speakers and colonial and national Mexican society and institutions. How has religious ideology, schooling, or the creation of written texts mediated the creation of identities? Papers will also explore the challenges of using ethnography or using textual analysis to understand the nature of intercultural relations and of social and linguistic change. To what extent does ethnographic fieldwork or textual sources allow scholars to recognize and conceptualize change in Nahuatl-speaking communities and peoples?
NAHUATL Workshop
University of Maryland, College Park
St. Mary’s Hall-Multipurpose Room
Friday, May 1- Saturday, May 2, 2009
Please email lasc@umd.edu to register before April 20, 2009
The Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures now includes books published in Spanish or English. Under the terms of the Kovacs Prize, the selection committee is especially interested in original, broadly interpretive books that enhance understanding of the interrelations among literature, the other arts, and society and that offer fresh perspectives on the field. Books published in 2008 are eligible for this year’s Kovacs Prize; the deadline for entries is 1 May 2009. Authors of competing books must be current members of the MLA.
More details on this competition and other MLA awards are available at http://www.mla.org/resources/awards/awards_submissions.
The Program in Latin American Studies is pleased to start its Spring 2009
Colloquia Series with a talk by Carmen Martinez, Professor of Anthropology
at FLACSO, Ecuador, and currently Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins
University.
Professor Martinez’s work explores the articulations among indigenous
identities, institutions and intellectuals both in Mexico and Ecuador.
Her talk is entitled “Is the cultural project of the Latin American
Indigenous Movement in crisis?”, and the colloquium will take place on
Thursday, February 5 at 4.15 PM in Greenhouse, room 113. A reception will
follow.
