Graduate Student News

Graduate Student Honors and Awards

Research Honors and Awards

Stephen Fafulas, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics won a Dissertation Research Grant from the National Science Foundation as well as a College of Arts & Sciences Completion Dissertation Year Research Fellowship.

Cara Kinnally, PhD candidate in Spanish (Latin American and Latino/a Literatures) and American Studies, and Jared Patten, PhD candidate in Spanish (Peninsular Literature), were awarded a College of Arts & Sciences Completion Dissertation Year Research Fellowship.

Silvia Roca-Martinez, PhD candidate in Spanish (Latin American and Latina/o Literatures) received the Latino Studies Program Dissertation Year Fellowship.

Mike Mosier, PhD candidate in Spanish (Latin American Literature) was awarded the 2012 Timothy J. Rogers Summer Dissertation Fellowship.

Kaitlin Guidarelli, PhD student in Spanish (Latin American Literature) was the recipient of both the Agapito Rey Academic Year Fellowship and the Merle E. Simmons Travel Fellowship.

Ivy Howell, PhD candidate in Spanish (Peninsular Literature) was awarded the Bieder Travel Award.

Michael Gradoville, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics and Linguistics won a Summer 2012 FLAS (REEI).

Iraida Galarza, PhD/MA student in Hispanic Linguistics, and Travis Williams, MA student in Hispanic literature, were the recipients of the 2012 JM Hill Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Papers.

The poster of Silvina Bongiovanni, PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics was selected as an Outstanding Graduate Student Poster in the Laboratory Approaches to Romance Linguistics.

The poster of Rebecca Ronquest, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, was selected as an Outstanding Graduate Student Poster of the Current Approaches to Second Language Phonology Conference.

Teaching Honors and Awards

Nick Phillips, PhD candidate in Spanish (Peninsular literature) won the university wide Lieber Memorial Associate Instructor Teaching Award.

Amina Shabani, PhD candidate in Spanish (Latin American literature) won the 2012 Department Associate Instructor Teaching Award and runner-up Erin Lavin, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received an honorable mention.

Books Published

Eric Carbajal, PhD candidate in Spanish (Latin American Literature), published the novel Cabezas negras (Lima: Mesa Redonda, 2012), which was presented at the 17th International Book Fair in Lima in July.

PhD Degrees Conferred

Solangii Gallego (Hispanic Literature)

Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya (Hispanic Linguistics)

Rebecca Ronquest (Hispanic Linguistics)

Elena Schoonmaker-Gates (Hispanic Linguistics)

MA Degrees Conferred

Lisa Baldwin (Hispanic Linguistics)

Silvina Bongiovanni (Hispanic Linguistics)

Robert "Moses" Fritz (Hispanic Literature)

Nora Gardner (Hispanic Literature)

Mazinha Hauskrecht (Portuguese)

Avizia Long (Hispanic Linguistics)

Joseph Pecorelli (Portuguese)

Alysa Schroff (Hispanic Literature)

Beatriz Sedo del Campo (Hispanic Linguistics)

Lana Spendl (Hispanic Literature)

Courtney Wade (Hispanic Literature)

Tenure-Track Positions

José Espericueta, University of Dallas, Dallas, TX

Ryan Hallows, Concord University, Athens, WV

Marda Rose, IUPUI, Indianapolis, IN

Paloma Fernández Sánchez, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Elena Schoonmaker-Gates, Elon University, Elon, NC

Vincent Moreno, Arkansas State University

Post-Doctoral Fellowship

Rebecca Ronquest, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.

Graduate Student Perspective: Kaitlin Guidarelli

I am humbled to be the 2012 recipient of the Merle E. Simmons Travel Fellowship for Research on Latin American Literature. Established in 2008 by Dr. August Aquila, this fellowship has allowed graduate students from the department of Spanish and Portuguese to conduct critical research for their dissertations.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to travel to Mexico City, where I conducted archival research in national libraries on indigenous women in New Spain. During my stay, I was able to access both personal and official correspondence pertaining to the establishment of colegios for peasant Indian girls, and gain a better understanding of the complex spaces occupied by indigenous religious women prior to Mexican Independence.

As a result of my travels, I made connections with leading scholars in the field of Colonial Latin American Literatures, and look forward to returning to further my research in private archives held within monasteries and convents surrounding Mexico City. The late professor Simmons made a lasting contribution to the fields of Colonial Spanish Literature and Folklore. One of his students, Dr. Aquila, honors his legacy by generously providing future scholars like myself an opportunity to achieve excellence in our academic pursuits.

Graduate Student Perspective: Michael Mosier

This past summer I was very grateful to receive the Timothy J. Rogers Summer Dissertation fellowship which allowed me to make great strides towards completing my dissertation on the intersections of literature and political hegemony in twentieth-century Mexico, Argentina, and Cuba.

The difficulties in balancing academic coursework and research with the demands of teaching can often prove daunting. Thanks to the generous support from this fellowship, I was able to dedicate the entire summer to writing and revising my dissertation. That work included revising and submitting multiple drafts of my first two chapters (finalizing one), and completing a polished draft of the third and final chapter.

I am now in the process of applying for jobs for the fall and if I had not had the help of the summer fellowship, my harried schedule would have left me bereft of the scant hair that remains on my head. Thank you again to the department and to my committee members Professors Dove, Mejías-López, and Birkenmaier (who are in no way responsible for the terrible pun in the preceding sentence).

Fulbright Doctoral Students Arrive from Brazil

Lorena Sales dos Santos is pursuing her doctoral studies at the Universidade de Brasília. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to spend nine months at Indiana University, under the supervision of Dr. Darlene Sadlier. She has a Master’s degree in Literature from the UnB and wrote her thesis on the gothic elements in the short stories of Brazilian writer Lygia Fagundes Telles. Her dissertation is entitled Growing up at the Margins — Trajectories of Black Girls in Post-colonial Bildungsromane. Her advisor in Brasília is Professor Cíntia Schwantes, who also received a Fulbright to study under Professor Sadlier several years ago.

Jaison Castro Silva is a historian who writes about film. In 2007, he received a Master's degree in Brazilian history from the Universidade Federal de Piaui, with a thesis on melancholy and the city in the films of Brazilian director Walter Hugo Khouri. He is working on his PhD at the Universidade Federal do Ceará and is writing a dissertation on urban and cosmopolitan images in Brazilian cinema of the 1960s. In 2012, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to carry out research at Indiana University, under the supervision of Professor Sadlier.